I received a free advance reader copy of Driven via Netgalley in return for an honest review.

When we think of heartbreak, most of us think of losing a romantic love. Yet the pain of losing a loved one to death is every bit as devastating – if not moreso—than the heartbreak of a lost romantic love. Both losses can launch us into a deep spiraling grief that consumes us, body, mind and soul. Melissa Stephenson vividly brings that raw emotional pain to her writing. The death of her brother Matthew is one of the primary storylines running through Driven: A White-Knuckled Ride to Heartbreak and Back. She describes the horrid experience all of us go through in the early days of a loss, waking from a sleep to remember that a loved one has died and our world is no longer what it was: “It’s a vicious cycle: the forgetting, the waking, and the fresh wave of grief and nausea that crash over me as I remember.” As her deep grief continues Stephenson describes the ensuing depression: “My life feels like roadkill, a mess beyond fixing, only my brain won’t stop thinking any more than I could talk my heart out of beating. I live because my body does, a black hole incarnate.”

These emotions are the brutal reality of what we experience when someone we love dies. Stephenson also isn’t afraid of exploring the thoughts that most of us don’t want to admit we have around death. She talks explicitly about wondering what Matthew’s life-ending wound looked like, a deeply personal thought that most would hide in fear that they would be judged “too morbid” or even worse. Yet all of us have these questions and thoughts about death even if we won’t admit that we’ve thought about them. As Stephenson reflects on her brother’s cremation, her vivid imagery shows clearly how the details surrounding his death invaded her mind:

I have written before on numerous occasions about how emotions can be stored in our bodies. This is a universal experience for all humans, though many of us are not aware of this reality. Once we are conscious of the fact we have stored emotions in our bodies that may be manifesting as physical pain or disease, then the question becomes how to release those stored emotions in order to find health. However, just as the traumas each of us suffer and store are all unique, so too are the solutions to release those emotions different for each person and situation involved. 

So where does one start? There are many different approaches to releasing stored emotions; I am only presenting some of the more common ones in alphabetical order. The goal of using all of these strategies is to find ways to bring stored emotions and traumas to the surface so that they can then be cleared. However, before you begin trying to remove any of these stored emotions, I strongly recommend you find a good, open-minded psychotherapist to work with. Bring difficult emotions to the surface can be very painful, but the work is incredibly rewarding once you are liberated from that stored emotion or trauma.

Acupuncture: Acupuncture is a healing modality which works directly with energy in the body. Because Traditional Chinese Medicine's fundamental understanding of how the body works is vastly different than the Western model, it can be difficult for many to understand what acupuncture actually does. The best explanation that I can give is that acupuncture moves energy through the body to clear blockages. These blockages can be literal, such as a clogged duct causing mastitis, or emotional, such as fear preventing one's kidneys from working properly. 

Breathwork: One of the easiest and cheapest approaches is breathwork; this is something that can be used in conjunction with many of the other modalities listed but it can also be used on its own. The most powerful experience I had with relieving my stored traumas from my daughter's death involved only breathwork, intent and maybe a crystal or two (but I can't remember for certain). The release that happened was something I would never have thought possibly happen just from breathing and focusing on the area where I had stored the pain of her death. This is an approach that I am able to teach clients how to use, but again, as you start out, I would recommend only using it with supervision because of how powerful it can be.

Craniosacral Therapy: Craniosacral therapy is a system of very light touch that helps release energy blockages in the body. I have had some powerful releases with it. This is one of those modalities where the first impression might be that the practioner is not really doing anything, but once the energy gets moving, amazing change and relief can happen. It's been effective for physical, emotional, and spiritual pain for me. It's also very relaxing and enjoyable most of the time!

Crystals: When I was younger, I did not understand what all those hippies were doing with their crystals. A former therapist encouraged me to buy a few, and once I did, I was hooked. I love crystals of all sorts, and I've had countless powerful experiences with crystals helping change my energy and release stored trauma as a result. Crystals can take anywhere from hours to months to be effective depending on the size, the number used, the location, and the problem. However, they too can cause all kinds of powerful results. They work based on the principle that everything and everyone on earth has a vibration. The crystals help raise human vibrations to a more positive level, and in the process, stored negative emotions and entities will depart the body because it is no longer a hospitable host for them.

EFT: Emotional Freedom Technique is a process of tapping on a series of acupressure points while reciting an affirmation. The goal of EFT is to release anxiety, trauma, and negative programming while replacing it with more positive thoughts and aspirations. Many use EFT for weight loss and issues around PTSD. EFT has soared in popularity in recent years, and many other similar tapping programs have been designed. I do not use EFT personally because it is not the right approach for me, but I have had success with a self-created, intuition-based tapping process based off of the "Beginning and Ending Technique" described by David S. Walther. I use this tapping when difficult emotions are surfacing so that I can keep from entering an overly anxious and unproductive state of being.

EMDR: Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is another body-mind modality that should be learned and initially practiced with a trained professional. I have never used this technique, but I know of many who have been able to use it to successfully help with severe PTSD.

Essential Oils: Our society tends to enjoy essential oils for fragrance reasons; many undereducated salespeople also falsely promise miracle cures from their use. This is not the way in which I use essential oils. All essential oils also have spiritual properties, and some are very effective in helping act as a lubricant to release stored traumas and entities. Like crystals, they can help change a person's vibrational level. I work with essential oils using intuitive guidance finding the best oil for each person and then confirming possible contraindications with Robert Tisserand's amazing tome,Essential Oil Safety.

Flower Essences: Flower essences are a purely energetic form of healing which is part of why they along with homeopathy are not very well understood by our society. In using a direct method, flower essences are created by placing the flower in a bowl of water and leaving it sun and/or moonlight to absorb the energy of the flower. Crystals can also be added. The flower is then removed, the water is combined with a preservative such as alcohol, and the essence is complete. While this sounds like something that would be powerless, the energy in these essences can be palpable just holding the bottles. I've used many, many, many flower essences over the years for me and with my clients that have made both minor and major shifts in lives. They help change energy in the body so that the emotions can release.

Hands on Energy Work: This is not a do-it-yourself practice for beginners. A skilled practitioner is able to do manual manipulation on others' bodies to help release stored energy. I've experienced this with work by BodyTalk practioners, chiropractors, naturopaths, and massage therapists. I'd recommend finding a very grounded, very wise, very experienced person to do this as if it's done wrong, it can cause harm. I do not yet offer this service but expect to within a few years.

Homeopathy: Like flower essences, homeopathy is an energy based means of releasing emotions. Homeopathics are created from energetic vibrations of often toxic substances. Because they are energy based, they are safe to use (unless you are sensitive to lactose, though there are some lactose free ones on the market) and can cause major shifts in one's emotions and physical symptoms. I recommend working with someone who can assist and dose you properly with these substances as if you don't have the right remedy, you will be wasting your time, money and effort.

Light and Color: There are various programs and machines that work with colors and light to help shift internal energy. A more mainstream version of this are Seasonal Affective Disorder lamps. I have never used any kind of machine to do this, but I do find that I tend to pick clothes that strengthen my chakra that needs the most assistance that day.

Massage: Most massage therapists will tell tales of people emotionally falling apart for absolutely no reason while being on the massage table. This comes from the massage relaxing the body and releasing the tension and emotions we are holding. For me, I have experienced this most often with past life issues: I've seen many of my past life experiences while under the hands of a skilled massage therapist. Most massage therapists are not trying to make this happen, but it does occur. Going in with an intention of making it happen and treating your massage like a meditation time will help for the possibility to arise.

Meditation: If you aren't an experienced meditator, this isn't an approach I'd recommend as your introduction to meditation. However, once a person has become skilled at meditation, it is entirely possibly to enter a meditative state and work internally with the energy in one's body to release emotions that are stored. It is usually combined with breathwork. When I do it, I often am using crystals, flower essences, essential oils, and sound in addition. It's a very difficult process to explain, but once one knows how to manipulate energy, then one can essentially use one's mind like a shovel to loosen and scoop out the negative stored energy that one doesn't want to retain any longer.

Sound: The use of sound therapy to help clear chakras and other emotional issues is widespread; there are many practitioners who only focus on this. There are Meetup groups for it. I have playlists on Spotify which address it. One of my favorite CDs for sound therapy is by Jonathan Goldman. I can feel my energy vibrating when I play it. Most of the time, this does not create a major release for me, but there are times when it has been very effective. This is an easy way for many people to start changing their energy in a subtle way.

Tai Chi: I have never practiced Tai Chi, but like yoga, the practice is one that creates a great deal of healthy movement of energy in the body. I recommend it as a way for people who don't want to try yoga to find a physical way to get their bodies, minds and spirits working together to release negativity.

Writing:  I often recommend journaling with old fashioned pen and paper as a way of starting to bring up issues that have been submerged in our subconscious and bodies. For some song composition, poetry, or other forms of creation are more appropriate. While writing often does not usually remove the block by itself, it can bring things to the surface so that other means can be more efficacious. 

Yoga: Last but not least, yoga is a time honored way of releasing emotions. There are several groups in the Austin area that do yoga for trauma release; there are also numerous therapist who combine yoga with talk therapy. While American culture tends to see yoga as exercise, it's also a deeply spiritual practice that can change lives through its impact. It's one of first ways I often recommend to people for learning to become more in tune with their bodies.

When a river is unintentionally dammed up, one can go about releasing the block in a few ways. One can remove a key piece of the block and then get the heck out of the way as the waters will be able to flood through. One can also add more water until the sheer pressure breaks the dam. Likewise, with our emotions, when something is blocked in our minds and bodies, we actually have to work to remove it. This is not the gut reaction for most humans who would prefer to turn away from the dam. The methods above can help remove a key piece of blockage; some are gentler than others. All can be effective in helping clear stored emotions and traumas from the body in order to create more health. 

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

I am not a big believer in miracles. Most of the time when people proclaim something to be a miracle, I can see logical reasons for what happened even without any supernatural intervention. I think true miracles are rare. They are the things that defy all understanding without a supernatural influence. When someone is in an accident that leaves the car crumpled like a tin can yet they walk away with nary a scratch, it defies any logical understanding. Those type of miracles do happen on occasion, and when they do, I believe higher powers are involved.

In December 2000, my then-husband and I traveled to Missouri with our new babies. While we were there on Christmas Eve, we visited the park where we had scattered our eldest daughter's ashes in the summer of 1999. My former mother-in-law gave us a clipping from an evergreen tree in their yard to leave at the memorial site. It was from an ordinary evergreen tree (probably a variety of spruce or fir) and ordinary clipping, slightly larger than my hand. When we went to the park, we left that clipping on rocks near the opening of an underground spring. It was a cold but clear winter day at 15 degrees Fahrenheit, and there was about 12 inches of snow on the ground. 

Four months later, we made another visit to Missouri. On April 23rd, we went out to the park to visit the memorial site again. When we arrived, we spent some time around the spring, and then I noticed something amazing. In the creek near the grotto entrance was the exact sprig of evergreen we had left there four months previously. And most amazingly, it was completely green. It was no different than the day we had left it there; it was just located a few feet away from where we left it. All the trees in that local area are deciduous, so it was not a similar looking branch from any of them. It was the same clipping.

Can this be explained logically? Maybe. The weather was cold in December, and the constantly cool fresh stream water probably helped the cutting stay fresh. However, the temperature in Missouri in April is usually in the 40s overnight and 60s during the day, higher than the sub-freezing temperatures we had experienced in December. Furthermore, there had been many rains during those four months, and the rain and the regular current of the stream should have moved the evergreen cutting downstream long before our return. Anyone who has had a real cut Christmas tree can also affirm that even with water, it does have a limited lifespan before needles begin falling and the whole tree turns brown. One wouldn't usually expect an evergreen clipping to stay green for four months even in ideal condition.

For me, though, this is one of those situations where I think the probability of all the perfect conditions lining up are very unlikely without the influence of higher powers. I believe that the green evergreen branch was kept in that condition at that site as a measure of comfort for me, a way of affirming for me that life does not end with death. Even if it was just a series of amazing odds, the power of the experience was incredible for me. 

As a footnote, while I was finishing this blog post, Spotify began playing unprompted in the background on my computer. The synchronistic song selection? "Watching Over Me" from the Canadian Tenors. Its lyrics proclaim:

The pure, the bright, the beautiful that stirred our hearts in you
The whisper of a wordless prayer, the streams of love and truth
A longing after something lost, the spirits yearning cry
Striving after better hopes: These things can never die!
There will always be a shining sun
There will always be the rising of the sea
There will always be an angel watching over me

~Rememebering Rebecca, died and born, June 10, 1999~
 
©2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Despite LinkedIn’s warnings, I accept connections from almost everyone on there who asks me to. In my mind, the purpose of networking is to meet new people. Most of the time, this philosophy works well. Occasionally someone connects with me to spam me with their services; at that point I disconnect from them. Today’s example was an email from a business coach who claims to be an intuitive focusing on the divine feminine. I had initially thought we might have something in common. However, the beginning of the message read:

Are You Ready to Break Free from Exhausting Hourly Sessions?
Are You Ready to Make More Money Working Less Hours? 

I was aghast as I read those words. To me, a great translation of the rhetorical questions being asked is, “Do you think you’re too good to actually help people who are paying for and need your help?” Individual work is at the core of what I and many other coaches and therapists offer. It’s not exhausting to me; it’s very uplifting most of the time. It’s a sacred call that I’ve received to assist others. If someone doesn’t like working with clients individually, then being a coach is not the right job for them. If they’re feeling drained by it all the time, they may need to examine their energetic boundaries to make sure they’re working in a protected space that keeps them from absorbing their patients’ problems. (That is something I help clients with if they desire it since it’s an issue for many empaths and intuitives.)

Spiritual arrogance is all too common in this world. People who think they’ve found the divine (or God or whatever word you prefer) let their newfound spiritual prowess go immediately to their head. They are certain that their intimate knowledge of Spirit has made them better than anyone else; for some of them, this is so much so that they can’t be bothered to interact with others learning to grow. Some of them just want to stand on a podium, shine in their greatness, and accept the awe-filled laurels that they believe they deserve from the masses. Of course, working from a warped interpretation of the law of attraction, they’re certain their spiritual nature and connection to the divine will allow them to attract millions of dollars by doing nothing more than just being their wonderful selves.

Here’s a hint, though: The more arrogant that someone is about their spiritual abilities and the more they need to display their divine connection overtly, the less connection they are likely to have. Most of the time, those who list a long heritage of gurus or teachers, especially those who connect them linearly to a divine teacher such as Jesus or a saint, are really very insecure in their own knowledge and abilities, so they rest on the laurels of others. In contrast, some of the holiest people we’ll ever meet are the ones who are examples of modesty and humility. They’re confident in their connection with the divine and their purpose here on earth. They go about their business, helping others as they do. They don’t seek fame and easy fortune. They just want to live in peace and want the same for others, too.

There’s an old adage that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. This doesn’t apply to just miracle medical cures and get rich quick schemes. People who promise you amazing divine knowledge from one easy course are likely speaking from a place of greed and arrogance, not holiness. They are likely involved in a pyramid scheme of confused people, and following their way is not likely to bring you the amazing things you are hoping for. The same is true of healers who promise that all of your problems can be solved in one workshop or with one supplement. It’s very rarely (if ever) true. The slow and steady path is often the best one to take for personal growth. Even if it’s prompted by a sudden tragic event, the growth from that single event will not happen overnight in most cases. Instead, change has to happen through honest and diligent work.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

My kids and I completed watching Star Trek: The Next Generation plus its ensuing movies a while back, and now we have moved on to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I've never been able to get into DS9 the way I enjoyed other modern Star Trek series, but my one son loves it so we’re watching the series via Netflix. In episode 10 of season 2, a new humanoid species arrives as refugees at the space station. The Skrreea are a matriarchal society, something that comes across as shocking to the station’s crew. Haneek, the only woman who arrives in the first group of four to the station, talks with the leadership of DS9 about her culture as they discuss the impending arrival three million more Skrreea from the Delta Quadrant:

Clearly this is meant to be a parody of the biased and erroneous statement we often hear in our society that women suffer from too many hormonal mood changes that therefore make them unsuitable for powers of leadership including politics. There’s a terrible age old joke about how a pre-menstrual President would be far too likely to hit the big red button and start a nuclear war. In Skrreean society, men's emotions are seen as troublesome just as women's emotions are seen as almost dangerous in ours.

The real truth is that we are all emotional creatures regardless of our sex or gender. We all feel and we all act on those feelings. While higher levels of testosterone may make some people more aggressive and higher levels of progesterone may make some people more likely to cry, the bottom line is that we all have emotions that we feel overwhelmed by. How we act on those emotions is probably influenced by both nature (hormones) and nurture (what our society teaches us the gender-specific appropriate response is).

Another truth that our society is very afraid of at times is that all of us possess a masculine side and all of us contain a feminine side. We all have traits that are seen as male and others that are seen as female. What most of us don’t have is a good balance of those traits because we are afraid to embrace one side or the other. In her seminal work Living in the Light, especially in chapters 8 and 9, Shakti Gawain discusses the feminine and masculine within each of us. As Gawain explains, the feminine side of us is the nurturing, intuitive side. We all are nurturing on some level, though not all of us are called to be parents. Still, we know how to care for others around us who are family members, friends, or lovers. We also have intuition, though since the Enlightenment, our science-dominated society has taught many of us to suppress this intuition in favor of rational thought. Unfortunately, our society sees this nurturing and intuitive side as weak and powerless. This is far from the truth. Our intuition can be one of the strongest ways we live if we allow it to be a part of our lives. Men who are in touch with their feminine side, who aren't afraid to follow their intuition or feel their emotions (aside from anger and aggression), are often judge by our society for being weak and feeble as the feminine is poorly stereotyped as such; the media crucifying Howard Dean in the 2004 election season for expressing what was seen as unacceptable passion is an excellent example. In contrast, the masculine side within all of us is the action side. It is the part of us that follows the understanding of the feminine intuition in order to make things happen. Men are expected to be doers, to be problems solvers. Women who have this same strong masculine action side are judged by society as being too “butch” or too unfeminine; Hillary Rodham Clinton is a prime example. However, we all have to be people who take action if we want to accomplish anything in life!

This disturbing division of the feminine and the masculine in our society is based on unhealthy stereotypes. Even in my own life, I've experienced quite a bit of judgment because I am “too masculine” since I am a strong, highly-organized, educated woman who doesn't hesitate to act on what will help her life. I had a male friend act surprised when I said that I missed having opportunities to dress up in frilly dresses; he erroneously presumed that since I didn’t wear makeup I didn’t enjoy most stereotypically feminine things. For me, developing my masculine side was probably more of a survival technique, one that I began in my childhood as a way to protect myself. Like Gawain experienced personally, part of my challenge as an adult has been embracing my feminine side and recognizing that it is not a sign of weakness: The feminine is merely a different type of strength.

It will be a wonderful day when our society can accept the masculine and feminine as different but synchronistic qualities which work together to make our society complete. I look forward to the day when the way women are still treated now is seen as ludicrous as the Skrreean idea that men are too emotional to be involved in leadership. Once the yin and the yang of our lives is more in balance, our society will become totally different than what most of us experience now.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Lately I have been working on doing some groundwork for a singles' Meetup group that I will be starting in a few months; I will post widely when the group is announced.  As a result, I am perusing a bunch of books for the seminars.  In particular, I am looking for short prayers, meditations, and reflections on various topics that we’ll be discussing.  The following are reviews of a few of the books I have read.

The Little Book of Love by Kahlil Gibran and compiled by Suheil Bushrui is quite literally little measuring in at about 4” x 6” and having only 80 pages of content, many of which have abundant white space or dark illustrations.  This book must be aimed at young lovers because the font size is difficult for some of us who have crossed the 40 year age barrier.  Despite those issues, the book has a few beautiful quotes and would make a romantic gift or stocking stuffer for a loved one.  My heart would certainly melt to have a lover give it to me.  However, it seems to fall in the category of a “bathroom book” in my opinion: All of its short entries are easily read in brief sittings.

Quiet Mind: One Minute Mindfulness by David Kundtz offers approximately 180 short reflections for the reader.  This time the font is in a readable size!  Focused around the idea of finding quiet and peace in our crazy lives, the author approaches a wide range of topics from death to road rage to the arts to walking, all in two short pages a piece. The spirituality is non-denominational and refers to many different traditions throughout the book. I found most of the pieces (though not all) to be engaging and worth reading.  It’s an even better bathroom book than The Little Book of Love in my estimation!

Guided Meditation Scripts for Beginners by Amy Meyers and Sharon Whisler is a short e-book available in Kindle format for $2.99.  The book is great in some ways and disappointing in others.  The meditations are repetitive:  The four breathwork meditations are actually all the same foundation with a little more added on each time.  The chakra meditations don’t feel powerful enough to me to actually realign one’s chakras: They seem more suitable to simply bring attention to each chakra.  Many of the love meditations feel more like writing prompts than guided meditations, though one could argue that journaling can be a form of meditation.  However, several of the meditations will be perfect for me to use with my group.  For the small investment, I feel like I likely got my money’s worth.  It’s just not a book I would generally recommend to others looking to find guided meditation scripts.

The Celtic Spirit: Daily Meditations for the Turning Year by Caitlin Matthews is a compilation of 365 daily readings.  While the title asserts they are meditations, I think reflections or mini-history lessons are the more apt descriptions in many cases.  Some of the reflections are excellent; others are very weak, meandering through topics Matthews seems to have forced together in a way that doesn't feel natural.  Many of the readings were not engaging or thought provoking for me.  The topics also began to feel repetitious by the end of the year with multiple days focusing on topics such as trees and the grail.  The suggested “meditations” at the end of each reading are often actions, and some of those actions would take days or even months to complete.  While I appreciate those readings that were excellent, I felt overall the book was a weak effort.

Like many others, I am a fan of the poetry of Rumi.  There are many collections out there, so when I ordered The Book of Love: Poems of Ecstasy and Longing by Rumi and Coleman Banks, I had the expectation that this would be a book focused primarily on love.  In reality, only part of the book focuses on love.  Other sections focus on topics such as drunkenness and animals.  While I appreciated the academic tone of this book with helpful prefaces and footnotes, it simply wasn't what I was looking for. (The cover on the edition I received is also nowhere near as beautiful despite this being the promised edition.  It's a plain orange jacket.)

In contrast, Rumi: A Spiritual Treasury by Juliet Mabey was exactly on the mark.  A physically smaller book, the poetry contained in it is more accessible to the general population.  I loved the contents which actually focused on excerpts of spiritual poetry by Rumi.  The book is divided into various chapters on different aspects of the human relationship with God.  While the book is written in a traditional male perspective of God that doesn't fit with my personal beliefs, I was still able to enjoy its contents.

Finally, I thoroughly enjoyed Life Prayers from Around the World: 365 Prayers, Blessings, and Affirmations to Celebrate the Human Journey by Elizabeth Roberts.  The collection is grouped by topic rather than daily prayers as one might expect from the “365” in the title.  While it includes prayers and thoughts from many traditions, earth based spirituality is prevalent throughout.  The collection has many thought-provoking poems as part of these prayers.  Topics covered include all parts of the life cycle, moments of grace, justice, crisis and more.  I was captivated by most of the included works from start to finish.

I will be posting more meditation and prayer book reviews in April as I've got a stack of several more on my coffee table that I am working my way through!

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

In recent months, my kids and I have been watching Star Trek: The Next Generation.  I watched a bunch of the episodes back in the 1990s in reruns, but this is the first time around for my kids.  It’s been fun seeing their reactions to the series, especially to “‘80s hair” which they love to ridicule.  For me, I’m seeing totally different things this time around than I saw twenty years ago.

In season six, many of the episodes at the beginning of the season were appealing to me for how insightful they actually are.  One episode in particular, “Realm of Fear,” deals with psychological phobias.  As a clear parody to fear of flying in our time, Lieutenant Barclay has a severe fear of transporting.  Ship’s counselor and empath Deanna Troi teaches Barclay a Betazoid relaxation technique known as plexing.  To engage in plexing, the person who is experiencing fear taps on a point on the neck behind the ear.  This point corresponds with gallbladder 12 in Chinese acupuncture; one of its uses is actually for regulating and calming the spirit.

As I watched this episode and as Troi began teaching Barclay about flexing, I immediately thought, “That’s basically EFT!”  EFT is short for Emotional Freedom Technique, and it’s an increasingly popular method of conquering psychological, emotional, and physical issues.   I've known people who have used it for releasing stored trauma, for controlling stress and anxiety, and for weight loss among many other issues.  While it is always great to learn a method like this from an experienced practitioner who is also able to assist with issues that might arise along the way, there are videos on the internet to teach it to oneself.

In EFT, which is sometimes just called “tapping,” an individual taps on a series of acupuncture points while reciting a formulaic mantra that s/he/ze adapts to the specific situation at hand.  So, for example, if I were dealing with stage fright, I would tap on the designated series of points while reciting to myself, “I deeply love and accept myself, and I am an amazing actress who feels completely comfortable on the stage.”  I would recite this mantra as I worked my way through all of the EFT tapping points.

I was first introduced to EFT about eight years ago.  To be honest, I absolutely hated it when I was introduced to it.  It made me feel awkward.  The formulaic mantra did not work for me.  Nothing about it felt right.  However, I was open to trying it because I had several friends who absolutely loved it.  Despite my efforts, it just didn’t seem like the right approach to me, so I gave up on it.  

A couple of years later, I began working with a group of chiropractors who use a different set of tapping points across the entire body without a mantra as they help process stored trauma.  They tap on the patients using the points that show up during an applied kinesiology chiropractic session.  This set of points actually rings far more true for me, and I will often notice that some of those points are the ones that hurt when I am in emotional distress.

As I developed my intuitive abilities, I began pulling up emotional traumas from this life and past lives that I needed to work through.  As the deep painful emotions came to the surface, I began tapping on my own.  I listened to my intuition, and I tapped where I was being told.  Most of the points are the ones that the chiropractors I see use, some are EFT points, but others are acupuncture points that aren't commonly used for processing emotional pain.  They are ones that I need to use, though.  I then formulate my own mantra that works for me for that particular situation.  For example, sometimes the mantra is, “The past is the past; I am safe now.”  Other times it might be, “I am alive and healthy.”  Whatever the necessary mantra is, it quickly comes to mind for me and I am certain it is what I need to work through that issue.  On my own, I have used tapping to help clear various stored traumas.  I couldn’t imagine not having that skill to help me in my healing.

As I began talking to my youngest child after we watched the show, I told him that plexing was a version of a technique that therapists use to help people with stress.  His response was, “That’s real?”  It was a surprise to him that there a similar successful method for handling stress; he had assumed it was totally science fiction.  Plexing may be a science fiction, but EFT is definitely not.  It helps many people to release stored emotions in their bodies and to find a greater peace than talk therapy alone can provide.  If you are searching for a new therapist or life coach, I highly recommend working with one who uses EFT or one of the many other techniques out there for processing the traumas that might be holding you back.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

I spent a significant portion of my childhood and the early part of my adulthood as a Catholic; at one point, my Catholic school classmates believed I was the mostly likely person in our class of 51 to become a nun if not Pope.  (I was actually the first to get married, having never entered the convent; two other classmates did enter the convent with one professing final vows.)  I also received my master’s degree from Boston College in theology with an emphasis on the history of Christianity.  Thus, when issues around Catholicism arise in society, they often intrigue me.  One such topic is the popular tradition of giving up something for Lent. 

In Catholicism and other Christian traditions, the idea behind giving something up for Lent is to make a sacrifice that is in some way a tribute to Jesus having made the ultimate sacrifice of his life to erase the original sin of humanity. In days of old, the Lenten sacrifices were meant to be a form of penance, a way of apologizing to God for one’s sinful nature. Even now, whatever one gives up is meant to be done as a gift to God.  Back in the dark ages when I was in high school (also known as the late 1980s), priests would encourage parishioners in their Sunday homilies not to give something up for Lent.  Rather, they would push for church members to do something positive instead.  They argued that in today’s world, for most middle and upper class church goers, giving up soda for six weeks was not a real sacrifice that in any way made a decent gift to God.  On the other hand, if one took the money one saved from not drinking soda and donated it to a homeless shelter or a food bank, that action made the sacrifice more valuable.  Many of us who attended Sunday school or Catholic schools were even sent home with paperboard Lenten offering boxes to collect those funds for a specific charity. Likewise, instead of giving up chocolate, the priests encouraged people to make a donation of their time to a non-profit in need or to a community member who could use an extra hand.

I am no longer Catholic by any stretch of the imagination, yet it bewilders me when I see non-Christians using Lent as a reason to give something up.  I even know atheists, who clearly do not believe in Jesus' sacrifice, who give up food items for Lent.  For them, Lent seems to be just a time period between two big parties (Mardi Gras and Easter) that can help them with self-control and dieting.  To me, it seems as though all the “cool kids” are doing it, so others jump on the bandwagon to use Lent as a means of moral support while they give up some high caloric item that isn't really good for them.  I actually find this disrespectful to Christian traditions and beliefs.  Almost no one in our American society would dream of using Ramadan as an excuse for a crash diet or a 30 day juice cleanse, yet co-opting a very holy Christian time period of preparation and spiritual cleansing to use as a time of dieting is seen as socially acceptable. 

If you are someone who gives up food items or diets in some way for Lent, I strongly encourage you to examine your motivations.  Why do you use this time period to give something up?  Who benefits from you giving up your favorite treat?  How do you use the money that you aren’t spending on those lattes or mochaccinos? Are you co-opting a devout religious time for something that has nothing to do with religion?  Does this serve a higher purpose or is it an act of selfishness you are partaking in?  Are you doing this act quietly or are you using it to get attention on Facebook or elsewhere?  Having grown up with a narcissist who shamelessly sought attention, I've always appreciated the following Bible verses:

If you choose to do something for Lent as a Christian or non-Christian, I suggest you adapt your “sacrifice” in some way to benefit others.  If you are running an extra mile each day in Lent, consider taking along your elderly neighbor’s dog with you, benefiting both the neighbor and the dog.  If you are abstaining from a delectable treat during this time period, donate the funds you saved to a charity you support.  If possible, also donate your time to a group or individual who could use your assistance.  These are ways in which we can give something up while simultaneously helping others and benefiting ourselves.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

(I received a complimentary copy of this work from Hay House via NetGalley.  The opinions here are my own and are not influenced by anyone.)

I’m a fan of many of the Hay House authors, so seeing that publishing house associated with a new book induces me to try an author I might not have read otherwise.  In most cases, I’m pleased with the selections I read from Hay House.  This was not one of those cases.

In Love Never Dies: How to Reconnect and Make Peace with the Deceased, Jamie Turndorf, Ph.D., explores her newfound connection to the spirit world after the death of her husband, former Jesuit priest Emile Jean Pin.  As a former atheist, this new world of spirituality is an adventure for Turndorf, one she approaches with the blind enthusiasm of a young child after she conquers her initial misgivings.  After her husband’s unexpected death from a reaction to a bee string, Turndorf is surprised to discover her connection to her beloved Jean continues through their deep spiritual love for each other.  She writes that together they have a ministry to help others in processing death and connecting to those in the afterlife so that all involved may continue to grow and heal.

Love Never Dies does have a few good qualities.  It is simply written making it accessible to the popular masses.  The book also has the potential to comfort many in the first and last sections where Turndorf describes her experiences and the experiences of her clients as they reconnect with their deceased love ones.  The book brings up an incredibly large number of questions for a book group to discuss around life, love, healing and death.

From there, however, the book simply falls apart.  It’s repetitive and poorly edited starting with the weak rhyming poetry at the beginning of each chapter.  Turndorf proudly declares that she hadn’t checked out the “competition” before writing her book making it an all original work.  While there are merits to an untainted narrative, those merits are outweighed by the negatives in this book.  Turndorf’s lack of vocabulary to discuss concepts such as synchronicity weakens her arguments and presentation immensely.  The result is a book that feels like an amateur falsely pretending to be a professional.

Turndorf also is blinded by her own narrow experiences regarding the metaphysical world.  She only sees what she wants to see and doesn’t consider that there are possibilities beyond the definitive answers she purports to reach.  For example, Turndorf declares that demons or negative spirit entities might exist though she’s doubtful about it.  She thinks that if negative spiritual beings do exist, Jean protects her from them always.  Any experienced psychic, intuitive or medium who has worked extensively with the metaphysical will cringe at this naïve view:  In his Hay House publication Infinite Quest: Develop Your Psychic Intuition to Take Charge of Your Life, John Edward speaks extensively on the importance of spiritual protection when one is working with the other side.  Turndorf’s inexperience becomes dangerous as she guides readers into murky waters without life jackets.

Furthermore, Turndorf blindly believes that all the departed are willing to work on their faults and help their living loved ones heal.  This, too, is a declaration of an inexperienced practitioner who is, in my words, blinded by the white light.  Other gifted mediums such as me are able to encounter spirits in all their essence, seeing their soul level faults which do not miraculously heal upon entry to the afterlife.  Many souls choose not to work on their own healing in the afterlife, no differently than their course here on earth.  In those cases, Turndorf’s advice risks connecting hurting individuals with souls who will continue to emotionally and spiritual abuse them from the other side.  This is not only ignorant, but it’s dangerous and is the last thing a psychologist should want for clients.

Even on a much simpler and less dangerous level, Turndoff offers bad advice to those wanting to begin meditation as a means to connecting with departed souls.  Setting up beginners with the task of meditating for many hours is going to defeat many people before they even get out of the starting gate.  It’s far better for beginners to slowly introduce themselves to meditation to reduce the risk of perceived failure and to encourage successful future experiences which may eventually be longer.

Turndorf’s faulty logic is so convoluted at times that it is difficult to follow.  Throughout Love Never Dies, she contradicts herself on larger philosophical issues.  Turndorf presents the concept that things that happen more than three times are a scientifically valid result. Unfortunately, she fails to recognize that even if something occurs three times, it’s still possible to misinterpret information about those results.  Throughout the book, I feel she often misinterprets her experiences because of her lack of experience and narrow-minded views.  For example, Turndorf declares many times that we avoid loving fully because losing a loved one is so painful.  However, there are other possibilities for why we might restrain our love that she never even considers.  It’s possible that we don’t love fully because we don’t know how to.  It’s also possible that we don’t love fully because we don’t believe we deserve love.

This narrow perspective continues as Turndorf obsesses over her theories that she is metaphysically gifted because of her premature birth and three month NICU stay away from her mother.  She writes about high fevers and illness predisposing people to being able to being open to spiritual contact, yet she fails to examine the role of her own experiences with Lyme Disease in regards to her metaphysical experiences.  As a practitioner who has had Lyme and who works with many others who have Lyme, I would argue that the vast majority of people who deal with chronic or late disseminated Lyme Disease are those who are metaphysically gifted.  A little research outside of her own bubble would help Turndorf to see these other possibilities. 

As the book progresses, I found Turndorf’s words to her clients and to her readers to be cruel and potentially damaging.  I cringed as Turndorf relates how she said to a newly bereaved parent that “she could view this recent loss as a gift from the spirit.”  While this lesson is true on some levels, the way she phrased this to a parent who has recently lost a baby is heartless at best. 

Furthermore, comparing our pain to others’ is not beneficial.  Telling ourselves “it could be worse” demeans the pain we are experiencing.  Turndorf writes, “When we see someone in pain, we’re being invited to stop feeling sorry for ourselves and give thanks for the problems we have that pale in comparison.  Another person’s difficulty reminds us that we could have it so much worse.”  What she fails to contemplate is that some of her readers (including me in my not so distant past) will fall into that category of having things “so much worse.”  Having been told many times by others that they could look at my life and realize how good they actually have it, I can speak from experience that such an attitude does not help the person undergoing the trials.  The heartless response simply makes their pain increase.

If all of these issues aren’t enough, I found Turndorf’s basic psychological advice to be weak at best.  After 30 years’ experience in practice, she is not a novice.  She earned her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from California Coast University in 1994.  She is a nationally known psychologist using the pseudonym “Dr. Love.”  However, her personal relationship with Jean raised many flags for me as a reader and life coach, beginning with the fact that she was 21 and he was 58 when it began.  Turndorf claims that she and Jean had a perfect spiritual love, yet the aspects of their relationship she shares demonstrate a couple that struggled to love each other in their earthly forms.  She asserts that Jean was “one of the world’s true mystics” but he didn’t know he could be so close to her in spirit form.  This doesn’t build his credibility or hers.  Even Googling her late husband (who died in 2006, after the advent of the internet) does not turn up the abundance of hits one would expect from a man whom she claims was a one of the 50 most holy people to have lived in the eyes of the Dalai Lama.  As she describes their relationship after he “left his body,” Turndorf sees her late husband’s love as fulfilling her and becoming her own love.  Almost all psychologists would argue that seeking to use another’s love as a replacement for self-love is not a healthy approach in the long term.

Finally, in one of the experiences at the end of the book, she details of a client named “Mo.”  Turndorf uses guilt to trick Mo into working with her deceased husband.  This woman clearly has spent a lifetime being manipulated by others who prey on her overactive sense of guilt.  A healthier treatment option might have been to work with Mo to recognize her issues around guilt until she regained the self-esteem necessary to work on herself out of self-love.  The ends did not justify the means in this treatment.

Turndorf seems to think grieving is the only reason people need to connect to Spirit and those on the other side.  As she presents the issues in Love Never Dies, she fails to see how other tragedies can be more devastating and more impactful that grief.  Her narrow-minded and uneducated views result in a book that will help facilitate discussion about important topics but which ultimately may give some very bad advice to vulnerable readers.

(Attached below is a PDF of questions that could be used for book group discussions.  Feel free to alter or edit these questions for your own personal use in a group discussion or journaling.)

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

(I received a complimentary copy of this work from Hay House via NetGalley.  The opinions here are my own and are not influenced by anyone.)

When I read metaphysically oriented books, it is usually with two goals in mind.  The first and foremost is my own personal growth and development.  I’m reading to learn and expand my horizons.  The second is to help others.  As I read, I am often thinking about how the concepts and examples can help my clients.  Adventures of the Soul: Journeys Through the Physical and Spiritual Dimensions is a book that both expanded my horizons with a few new concepts and provided some great information for me to use in teaching my clients.

Adventures of the Soul is the first book by James Van Praagh that I’ve read, but it won’t be the last.  I’ve heard Van Praagh speak on various online seminars produced by Hay House, so I knew that I was on the same page as him, so to speak, when it comes to metaphysical beliefs.  However, some great speakers aren’t great authors.  That’s not the case here.  Van Praagh’s relaxed writing style feels like a friendly conversation.  His own material on our souls’ journeys both here and in the afterlife are interspersed with personal anecdotes, popular culture references including relevant movies, and information from other books.  I ended up with a reading list of quite a few other books I wanted to read as a result of reading Adventures of the Soul!

The premise of Van Praagh’s book is that our journey on earth is to learn to vibrate with the pure love of the Spirit.  Our human incarnations provide us with the opportunities to face challenges which help us grow.  Van Praagh expands upon ways in which we can raise our energetic vibrations, thus improving our soul and our quality of life.  He concludes the book with several guided meditations for one to use in this quest.  While these are actually the types of meditations that initially turned me off the concept of meditation when I was a teenager, they are likely very helpful for many others who need guidance in beginning their meditation practice.

Van Praagh also spends a good deal of the book discussing the afterlife, reincarnation and what he has learned through his years as a medium.  As someone who has only spent a few years working professionally as an intuitive and a medium, this was the section of the book where I found the most new (to me) information.  Van Praagh’s concepts of the various layers of the place where we go after our mortal deaths expanded on details which I’ve not yet encountered in my work with the other side.  I was aware that different layers exist, but I’ve not had reason or desire to probe further into information about them.  Because so much of the other detail Van Praagh gives resonates with what I experience in my work, I’m inclined to trust his descriptions of details of those things I’ve not yet encountered.  This book gave me a foothold for doing more exploration in that area should I ever choose to do so. 

One of the things that I appreciated most about Adventures of the Soul is that Van Praagh emphasized the concept of taking what works for you and leaving the rest behind.  He quotes Buddha as having said, “`Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.’”  It’s refreshing to read a book from an author who doesn’t see himself as the absolute authority on the topic he’s writing about, a sign that Van Praagh wasn’t letting his ego interfere with his mission as he wrote the book. 

(Attached below is a PDF of questions that could be used for book group discussions.  Feel free to alter or edit these questions for your own personal use in a group discussion or personal journaling.)

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz is a very popular book in spiritual circles, so much so that I could list all of the four agreements long before I read the book.  However, I felt that I should actually read this seminal work so that I could truly understand its meaning.

Ruiz presents the Toltec belief system around suffering and happiness in the world.  It argues that from the moment we are born, we begin making agreements with other people whether we actually want to or not. Our language is one of the first agreements: We have to share belief in the definitions of words in order to communicate.  We have to agree on social behaviors in order for society to function.  However, not all of the agreements we sign up for are healthy.  These are the agreements we make that shatter our self-esteem and our happiness.  They are the ones that teach us to judge ourselves and others harshly.

In order to break away from those beliefs, Ruiz presents four agreements which he argues will change one’s life if one is able to follow them.  The four agreements are:

Following these four agreements, one is able to slowly change one’s visions and beliefs.  One can break away from judgment, hatred, lies, and fear.  Instead, one can be reborn into a life based in love.

By being impeccable with one’s word, Ruiz is not just asking us to be truthful or to avoid lies.  Instead, Ruiz believes that our words create our entire world.  They are how we manifest positivity and negativity.  By being impeccable with our word, one will be able to “take responsibility for your actions, but you do not judge or blame yourself” (31).  Being impeccable means that we no longer call others derogatory terms because those words only reflect on who we are:  We will express ourselves in love instead of hate.  This is a challenge for most of us because the world we live in promotes both gossip against others and self-hatred. 

Not taking anything personally is a clear idea though one that is hard to put into practice for many.  When someone yells at us, we judge ourselves and believe we have done something wrong.  Instead, we should believe that they are yelling at us because of their issues and their upbringing.  The way they treat us reflects more on them than us.  Thus, we should not take their actions personally.  This agreement can help heal old wounds by helping us to rewrite history under a new lens.  By understand that people’s insults are based on their own insecurities, such as someone insecure in their own appearance attacking our appearance, then we can understand that the pain we took on actually belonged to someone else.  Enacting this agreement can eliminate a huge amount of suffering that we create for ourselves.

Assumptions are a part of our lives, and unfortunately, they undermine communication and relationships.  As Ruiz argues, if we have the confidence to stop making assumptions and to ask questions, our world will change.  Even if we are dealing with someone we have known for twenty years, we should never assume that they know what we want.  We need to be clear in our desires so that no one has a chance to make faulty assumptions.  Likewise, we need to ask others what they need so that we don’t make faulty assumptions either.  The saying “to assume just makes an ass out of u and me” holds true in this agreement.

Finally, Ruiz states that we should always do our best, though he is clear that our best will always be changing.  On the days we are sick or weak, our best won’t be as strong as it is on our healthy days.  That doesn’t mean that we should give anything less than our all, though.  However, it also does not mean that we should overdo it.  Furthermore, Ruiz believes that once we begin to do our best, we will be happier because we are no longer working for rewards.  We are working to do what makes us happy instead.

Ruiz states, “[The four agreements are] so simple and logical that even a child can understand them” (88).  He’s right, and that is one of my complaints about this book.  It is very simply written in many places.  It can also be unnecessarily repetitive.  The English teacher in me wanted to pull out a red pen to edit it down; this short pocket book of only 140 pages could have been far less than 100 and still been as successful. 

I also found Ruiz’s views a bit narrow at times.  His concepts about childhood presume that a child is not raised in an abusive home and that every child is loved and cared for properly.  That’s unfortunately not true.  Even by the tender age of two, some children have already taken on emotional, spiritual, and physical responsibilities in dysfunctional homes in order to protect themselves.  Furthermore, I think that Ruiz’s beliefs that positive visions can create anything are overly idealized.  While we can create our own happiness, we cannot visualize anything into being.  No matter how hard I try and how much I visualize it, I will never be a six foot tall runway model in this lifetime.  However, I can find happiness in my body as it is.  I just will have to find another career to enjoy. I also strongly disagree with Ruiz’s perspective on mental illness; I could fill an entire post just on that topic.

Despite the weak editing and its differences in view from my own beliefs, The Four Agreements is a book that has changed many lives and has the potential to change many more.  If you are looking to find a way to be happier in your life, especially if you are in a situation that seems impossible, this book could provide the foundation for you to work from.  I also think it could provide a great platform for couple’s counseling for partners who find that communication and compatibility have disappeared from their relationship.

© 2015 Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Often we find ourselves repeating the same patterns in our lives.  We date a guy who reminds us of our father, but we don’t quite buy into the whole Freudian Oedipal theory.  We watch friends seemingly dating the same person over and over again even though each time they think they’ve picked someone totally different than their previous partners.  We switch jobs only to end up a similar awful situation as our previous positions.  Why?

In my personal belief system, we continue repeating patterns until we learn the life lesson we need to learn.  I believe we all came to this planet with specific goals set before us, although I don’t know if we are aware of those goals or not.  Regardless, challenges will continue to present themselves in our lives until we master the higher concept behind them.  Once we’ve learned that lesson, then we are free to move on to the next.  Of course, that’s an oversimplified description of it all as we are often learning many lessons at once.  Because I believe in reincarnation, I also believe that lessons can carry over from past lives if they weren’t completed in previous journeys.

In my own life, especially in earlier years, there was a repeating pattern of narcissists playing prominent roles.  For me, once I was old enough to manage my own decisions in life, the challenge was to figure out why I kept having narcissists appear in my life.  The first question anyone should ask themselves when examining a repeating pattern is, “Are they serving as mirrors of my own behavior?”  For me, narcissism is not a personal issue.  My instinct is to think of others and to care about their health and safety and feelings.  I’m empathic and that dominates my being.  So for me, narcissism is not something I struggle with on a personal level.

Then why so many narcissists in my world?  As I worked through my personal and spiritual issues, I finally was able to realize that I drew those types of people to me because I had low self-worth.  I believed that I didn’t deserve someone who would love me fully for who I am.  So instead, I accepted the abuse and neglect that narcissists would force on me.  As a child, I had no power in my life to stop the behaviors of those around me, but as an adult, I do.  I am able to walk out of a relationship when I am being used or mistreated or even abused. 

Now that I’ve recognized the pattern, I am able to stear clear of the manipulation of narcissists once they come into my life.  I may have to work with them, yet I keep my physical and emotional distance.  I no longer let their distorted views damage my perception.  I stay strong, believing in the amazing person I am.

© 2014 Green Heart Guidance

My business card says I’m a holistic life coach and intuitive energy healer.  So what does being “an intuitive energy healer” mean?  To start with, it’s a term I made up.  I was trying to find a good way to describe the work I do because no other term I’d seen really encompassed it all for me. 

An energy healer is someone who works to heal people on an energy level.  Some healers use Reiki; others work with crystals; others use essential oils.  There are many other energy healing methods, some of which are becoming fairly mainstream such as acupuncture.  Most energy healers are hands-on healers. 

I am an intuitive:  I work with energy from a distance most of the time rather than being in the same room as my clients.  Because of this, I didn’t simply want to list myself as an energy healer because for many people, that connotes an in-person experience.  However, unlike many other intuitives or psychics who receive messages from the other side, the messages I receive very often have to do with healing especially through energetic means.  The work I do isn’t just for fun to try and peak into the future.  It creates an avenue for people to work on deep personal healing.

So an intuitive energy healer, in my opinion and creation, is one who works with metaphysical energy by accessing information from higher powers.  I help my clients find solutions for their problems, especially surrounding health issues, that aren’t always easily solved through physical means such as prescription drugs and herbs. 

© 2014 Green Heart Guidance

I often mention that I work with my spirit guides, but I haven’t really talked about who and what they are.  Spirit guides are those on the other side who watch over us and guide us through life whether we know they are there or not.  Most of us have a primary spirit guide, someone who is with us all of our life.  My primary spirit guide is an ancient female energy who identifies as a Native American from what is now the southwestern U.S.  We then have other spirit guides who are part of our support team.  They may come and go throughout our lives.  Some may be deceased relatives whom we knew in this life or a previous one, and others have no relation whatsoever.  I have several other spirit guides who are part of my team who check in with me from time to time.

The closest Christian parallel to our primary spirit guides would be our guardian angel, though in my cosmic view, guides and angels are different.  In my understanding, angels are spiritual beings who have never been incarnate; guides are individuals who have been human in the past at some point but have died and live on the other side.  In Christian terms, the other side is heaven.  The rest of one’s spirit guide team could be viewed as the saints whom Catholics often petition for assistance.  They are holy people who can help us from the other side.  Keep in mind that all saints aren’t perfect.  The Catholic Church has canonized some folks who have sketchy pasts!  However, they are individuals who have worked for positive change in our world.  

One of the things that has been part of my spiritual development is discovering who on the other side is there to help me and who has a personal agenda.  It’s a process of discernment.  Sometimes it’s easy to tell that you are dealing with a very holy guide.  My primary guide is one such person.  I received a message for a client whose primary spirit guide was an amazing, serene, powerful soul.  He described himself as the old man on the mountain or as a beautifully wrinkled Native American elder.  It is always an honor to be in the presence of energies like these.  

Other guides are not so blessed and elevated.  I’ve had deceased biological relatives show up to guide me from their place of bias and confusion.  I refused their help.  I had a guide show up whom I eventually figured out was a man I was partnered with in three previous lives.  He was a toxic soul who had plenty of issues and quite a bit of anger at me.  Needless to say, I declined his help as well and was grateful when he realized the situation was hopeless and reincarnated in an attempt to anger me.  (It failed.) 

And then there are the guys who claim they want to help me as guides but who are really just not aware that they are dead.  What they really are after are sexual partners.  Yes, they can be that confused that they don’t understand that a carnal relationship between living and dead people just isn’t going to work out!  These misguided “guides” usually have an energy of a swift-talking guy in a bar.  I very quickly send them on their way, too.  

As you attempt to meet your own spirit guides, be aware that everyone you meet on your journey may not be the holiest of people.  Just because they are souls rather than humans, they haven’t necessarily entered a state of perfection.  Keep a clear sense of judgment about you.  If something feels wrong, it probably is.  When you find your true guides, you will be able to feel their love and help.  They want nothing but the best for you.

© 2014 Green Heart Guidance