12 keys to living more authentically

Many people are seeking authenticity and wonder why obstacles arise in this Path.  Watch what happens as it dawns that every apparent obstacle is actually a stepping stone to experiencing life from a point of wholeness.  Everything we do is like taking another step or leap into the loving arms of authentic being. Reflect on these 12 keys to living more authentically:

1. Tune into your internal messaging system

2. Sit with emotions (and hear their messages)

3. Take ownership for your feelings, thoughts and behaviours (rather than blaming others)

4. Keep your promises (live in integrity)

5. Do contemplative work (shadow work & inner child work)

6. Explore mindfulness techniques (i.e.varied approaches to meditation)

7. Explore dream symbols & images

8. Uncover interplay among identities

9. Know self is the only person you can help

(we can change our beliefs and behaviours, how we are perceiving, discover how authenticity feels and live from this vibrational point. We cannot force another person to do any of this.)

10. Develop wisdom (the result of life experience, intuition, discernment & deep inner listening)

11. Be open to forgive (allow yourself to experience the grief process: includes difficult feelings of anger, sorrow, anguish and dissapointment)

12. Know experiencing all emotions fully without judgement opens the heart to self-love  

5 steps to decode emotions

Growing aware of suppressed emotions is a step toward freedom that can be experienced in emotional release. We are often conditioned to keep our true feelings to ourselves rather than express how we feel in the moment. Cathartic breathwork psychotherapy, emotional release technique (ERT) and freedom release technique (FRT) all draw from the power of intuition to guide us to freedom.  Consider 5 tips to decode our emotions:

1) Understand our deepest fears

We each experience a range of emotions on a spectrum. To be willing to explore how we feel, implies writing or journal or taking other steps to make conscious what the emotional upheaval is really about.

2) Be willing to let go of what we cannot control

When patient, we can uncover blessings and wisdom within sources of apparent discomfort.  All emotions can be understood as a gauge as to whether you are being truly honest or inauthentic.

3) Reframe mid-life crisis

One view is that every 21 years, the body experiences emotional upheavals that may take shape as growing annoyances, then perceived mid-life crisis or really shake up our paradigm.  We can view and feel this as an internal build up or blocks of energy. This is an invitation to pay attention, uncover and release suppressed emotions before the volcano erupts into something more serious.

4) Live life to the fullest

Discover what it is to feel the gamut of emotions.  We need not focus on emotional trauma.  Making the unconscious conscious empowers us to see beyond it. Come what may, we can all refer to emotions as a guide to greater wellness and optimum living. We always have a choice about how to perceive and experience life.

5) Find support

If relevant, be open to the services, healers and other guidance that presents.  Everything is synchronicity when it comes to decoding our emotions.  Ask and it is given. Be open-minded and see what already presents.

5 keys to living backwards

If you have ever moved anywhere or completed any project, you intuitively know the key is to work backwards frm a point, that is, to imagine the future you looking observing what is necessary for the evolving you to catch up.  Consider these 5 keys to living backwards:

1. Detail the end vision (where are you?, what are you doing? For whom? Why?)

2. Ponder what fully accepting the vision involves (multisensual exercise- flow of energy/ events)

3.  Work backwards creating milestones (how to get from here to there-mind to heartfelt)

4. Notice how you feel where you stand (what is missing?)

5. Focus on passion of being alive, here, now in this moment (presence)

The power of self-inquiry

Many people wonder which impulses to follow. How do you know when to trust yourself? and when your impulse is leading you astray?

Unless you are already enlightened, that is, you always feel in harmony and manifest instantly, then not all of your impulses are going to come from your higher self-intuitive guidance system.  Some of your feeling-based impulses are going to come from your lower level blockages; your fears, limiting beliefs, emotional wounds, baggage and karmic patterns. As such, humility is a reliable guide.

So, if everything in your life is not in perfect harmony, disharmony is not going to shift unless you are willing to do a bit of self-inquiry. Breathing more consciously is a good start, but you benefit greatly from going further.

As it is, the universe is designed to project and help you work through your emotional blockages as quickly as possible, mainly to create the exact situations that dig up what is holding you back so you face it.  Making blockages conscious with honesty and humility and appreciating the service they perform (blockages are initially designed to self-protect, and always offer valuable lessons), gives the energetic blockage has permission to dissolve.

If in a particular moment, you choose not to face yourself, the universe patiently keeps creating new situations that offer the same opportunity to face your shadow (the unacknowledged and disowned parts of yourself) until yo uare ready to look deeply into yourself and feel what you have not been wiling to feel. This is to be done with unconditional love and compassion. 

As Carl Jung echos: "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate."

Whatever arises in your life, as yourself if you are being guides by higher self or the lower emotions of fear. Ask to be shown what you cannot yet see.  Be receptive to lessons you have not yet recognized and integrated.

Value unmet expectations

You expected something, and it didn't happen.

You expected something, but the opposite happened or nothing.  Your ego is shaken, you are in emotional turmoil. Whenever you are miserable, look deeper to uncover why. Empower yourself.

Causes are not outside but within you. The common practice is to look outside, to lay blame or ask:

Who is making me miserable?
Who is the cause of my anger?
Who is the cause of my anguish?

Just as you cannot be intimidated without your consent, you cannot realize what is really going on by focusing outside yourself.  If you look outside you miss a deeper message. Watch what happens as you look within instead.

The source of all misery, anger, and fear, is hidden in you, (the ego).  From the moment you recognize the source, you feel who is beyond it. To know is your own ego that gives you trouble is the end of its hold over you. Nobody consciously perpetuates his own misery or discomfort if he understands it.

Ever notice how humans are conditioned to focus on what is not working rather than on what is? Shift your focus of your attention consistently and transform the nature of experience.