Sky Yeager
Shamanic Practitioner - Usui Reiki Master - MariEL Reiki Medicine
|
You can now listen to a podcast recording of my latest article below And find more episodes on Spotify |
|
|
There is no shortage of interesting happenings in this evolving shift in consciousness that humans are going through right now. One thing I find so interesting is that many of us are dealing with the same or similar issues at the same time. I think this happens so we can help and support each other, but also because it is an issue that is up in the collective right now. As we recognize and deal with issues on a personal level, we also affect the same issue in the collective. This follows the universal law of “As within, so without.” And vice-versa. Many of my friends and colleagues that I talk with regularly have been saying that they are re-visiting boundary issues. And that is up for me as well. Most of us should be pros with this issue by now, as we have been working on this since we started our spiritual paths. But as I noted in a past article, we level up and around in a spiral and not a straight line, which always brings a new perspective. So much so that it is easy to get blind-sided and unexpectedly come face to face with a new nuance of the same old issue to tend. We can hold several different kinds of boundaries at once, for our physical body, and energy body, for our time, for our relationships, and more, but it is really about energy. Where do we want to share our energy, and where do we want to conserve it? On a relationship level a lot of us who provide service for others in one way or another, as a parent, friend, therapist, teacher, mechanic, or other provider sometimes have a hard time saying no to others who need our services. This is a familiar boundary issue for most folks. But the first thing we learn as any of these caregivers or service providers is that we cannot give effective care to others if we do not care for ourselves. We may have figured out how to balance our boundaries in one or more of these roles like parent or practitioner, but have a hard time with that balance when it comes to other roles like family members or friends. Boundaries around time are usually tied to relationships including those between our roles. This is why care professionals had to come up with the term “work-life balance”! There are hundreds of books and courses out there on boundaries if we want to delve more into it, but here I want to focus on them as they relate to energy. Many of us who are trained in energy work were taught to set very clear energy boundaries. This is not only to keep us from taking on clients' energy issues, but also to protect them from taking on any of our own. And because of that, we have a responsibility to tend to our own energy in the most impeccable way. It is not always easy and we do the best we can, but sometimes things sneak in that we have not dealt with before. Those always provide an opportunity to widen our perspective, and are great learning experiences! I recently found that I had taken on energies that were not mine as I was doing tending work for myself and my ancestral lineage. These were manifesting because I was doing that specific work. They came through on an ancestral level and were also tied to a past life, so it was convoluted. I was not aware of this consciously until it came up in a session that a friend did for me. Unraveling that and preventing it from happening again is a work in progress, but also a valuable lesson. We can also sometimes get complacent. We take our boundaries for granted and think that they’re doing their job, but they have become tattered and thin. I have helped a few colleagues lately with boundaries relating to cording issues. One of them said she could actually feel the hooks coming toward her from other people! Sometimes we forget we have tools for dealing with these because we haven’t had to use them awhile. And sometimes we forget that we have every right to use them. In her case she realized that a history of family guilt crept up on her while she was not paying attention. She re-set her boundaries with unconditional love toward the other parties, but also for herself. She told me she was taking her life back to joy again. It is a good idea to regularly evaluate our boundaries and decide if we are happy with their strength and flexibility, and discern if we are setting them from a place of love for ourselves. We can also evaluate our interactions with other people’s boundaries and look for those places where we may have stepped over the line, or even plowed right through them. We can learn a lot from that. And it also doesn’t hurt to apologize! If you would like some tips on managing your boundaries, you may want to pick up a copy of my ebook, Practical Tools for Energy Body Balance. 
0 Comments
Many humans consider themselves on a spiritual path with a practice dedicated to that path. Those paths and how they look and feel are as unique as we are. There are plenty of folks out there living a spiritual life who do not think about it in that context because it is so intertwined with who they are, there is no separation. I’ve always been a seeker, searching for doorways and paths that lead me to the Great Mystery, the Divine within and all around me. For years my spiritual life has been a path that I focused on, something I thought a lot about, and wanted to grow. Gradually I loosened the mental attention to it and it became embodied, less seeking and more being. When we are living from our hearts, we are probably not thinking about the path that we are on being Spiritual. We are just living our lives. But then something comes up and we put ourselves in that context. Maybe someone asks us a question about our beliefs or asks if we have a spiritual practice. Or we are called to re-evaluate our beliefs and practices, realizing something doesn’t resonate with us any more. Sometimes we may just want a new way of looking at Spirit. Sometimes our evaluations turn into expectations of what we think our spiritual path should look like; peaceful, sitting in stillness, unruffled by triggers, blessing all with unconditional love. Or perhaps we thought we’d be able to see everyones auras and hear angels give us advice every day. Maybe we thought we’d be able to heal the world by now. I’ve lost track of how many times I have said I would be an excellent meditator if I was in a temple or ashram. But life is not like that and truly, most of us did not sign up for that. One of my teachers told me that anyone can meditate in loving kindness alone on a mountain, but doing it while juggling work, family, and the chaos of modern life is master level! There is a lot of talk in the modern spiritual community about “leveling up” and progress when it comes to our practices and path. How do we as conscious seekers measure progress? Is it even something we can or should try to measure? Instead of progress, which sets us up for a pass/fail kind of thinking, I’d rather think about it as an alignment. Am I in alignment with the current path I am on? Just asking that may be a sign I need to re-evaluate. But if I am not really sure, I look for a few familiar signposts that help me evaluate my current path. Here I list just a few main ones, but there are other subtle ones as well. Trust - I have learned to trust my team of Spirit helpers, and to trust life. If I find myself worrying for days in a row, I know something is out of alignment for me spiritually. I can then backtrack until I find where I stepped off and regroup with my team. Synchronocities - I have them every day. But if they are specific to reflect answers or confirmations to questions, topics or situations I’ve been thinking about or asking my Spirit team about, I feel supported, in alignment. Non attachment - to me it means I can let things go without getting emotionally entangled in my own drama. It also means that I can be okay with the answer my team gives me even if it wasn’t the answer I may have wanted. And releasing others to their perfect path helps me to feel aligned on my own. Connection - Realizing the big picture, the multi-dimensional web of life, and that I am connected to it all. I can sense it, and feel aligned in my place in that web and that my path is part of it as well. Unconditional love - being able to access that state even when I do not agree with or condone the actions of someone or something helps me feel in alignment with my path. Joy - finding joy, even in small things in difficult times, and being able to radiate it is a sure sign I feel aligned in my path. I don’t always feel like I have all of these all the time, but together they work as a good indication to show where I’m at on my path. If it is where I want to be, then I feel like my practices and tools, my focus and intentions are working for me. I feel I am in alignment with my spiritual path. Until the next time I feel called to re-evaluate anyway. And as always, I just share what works for me. I realize there are as many paths out there as there are people, and we may have different sign posts. Comparing our path to anyone else’s is not helpful or relevant. Everyone uses a variety of tools and practices to get along their path, and everyone needs to do what works best for them. May your signposts be clear and your paths be meaningful!  Every so often, we have the feeling that we are not moving forward in our spiritual journey. It may feel like obstacles in our spiritual development, like we have hit a metaphysical wall. Or it may feel like our path just dissolves into nebulous mist and we can’t see a way forward. We tend to think of these uncomfortable pauses as blocks. Sometimes these blocks are distractions. We may have too many things we are giving energy to and so we lose our focus. I’m not just talking about things like Facebook and Netflix. I also mean things that are spiritual commitments that we think are helping us grow. Do we really need to take one more online class even from a teacher we love and resonate with? One time last year I realized that I was signed up for three different online classes running concurrently because one on chakras was free and I might want a refresher, one was with an herbalist that I really admired and the other was a shamanic topic I was really interested in. I didn’t get much done on any of them at that time. I still have access to two of them but it feels like they are just hanging out there like items on a to-do list. I realize some of that perspective is my mind-set. I need to decide if I still need to give my energy to them, and if I am going to approach them like a task or a resource. In some cases we may have outgrown something in our lives and by keeping it, we keep ourselves in the same mind-set and energy we have had for a long time. We cannot move forward until we let go of what we have outgrown. This can be items cluttering the closets or garages that we haven’t used or worn in years, but also relationships that have a co-dependent element to them. And that includes community groups and organizations as well as individual relationships. If we have the idea that we are the one holding a group together and that if we left, it would fall apart, then that is a sign that maybe we need to drop our attachment and let it. It could give someone else the opportunity they have been waiting for to take a leadership role and even re-imagine it into something different and beautiful. And it gives us the space in our schedule to go on to create something else. We also may have outgrown inner relationships to our mind-sets and belief systems. These can be much more difficult to drop than external relationships. These can take the form of habits, addictions, and limiting self-talk. Feeling dependent on anything, even if it is benign or beneficial, like needing to have a cup of coffee or tea every morning, can take us out of our power. That unempowered feeling can ripple out into other areas in our lives that have a big impact, like finances or relationships. And ripple even farther out leading us to believe that what we do cannot change the world. And as I have talked about in other articles, quantum physics proves that we can (and we must)! To choose to have that cup of coffee or not, and feel good and enjoy either choice takes us out of dependency and into our power. We may be thinking, it’s just a cup of coffee, what is the big deal? Realizing that we have those dependencies and addictions is key. It is part of our humanness. And we have to ask ourselves the questions, where would I be freeing up my personal power if I did not direct it to those dependencies and addictions? What would that look like? What would that feel like? I can tell you from personal experience that our energy feels much lighter and that Spirit can work with us much easier. We have more clarity. This is especially true if any of our habits include things like cannabis, alcohol, sugar or other substances that overused can scatter or dull our energy body. And this also applies to any attachment we have, it could be shopping, collecting things, involvement in personal drama or collective drama or anything else that causes us to spend our energy with little helpful return. Worthiness can be a big roadblock if we have trouble believing we are worthy of progressing on our path. I’ve touched a bit on this in past articles. The energy we spend doubting our worth and capabilities can be a drain and can be used in so many better ways. Doubt can also crystallize into fear that keeps us from taking that leap of faith that will lead to living more authentically and aligning to our soul’s purpose. Sometimes our spiritual team just hits the pause button because we need time to integrate. Especially if we have experienced any big epiphanies, shifts in awareness, or even significant astrological transits. In every case I mentioned, what we perceive as roadblocks are really places where we built in ways to step up to the next level in our journey of conscious evolution. These are gifts we give ourselves to look deeper, re-evaluate our goals and whether we are even still on the right path. We just forget that we are the ones giving ourselves these opportunities because we are used to externalizing so many things. Maybe the next time we feel like we hit a roadblock, instead of feeling frustrated or confused, we can see it as an Ah-hah moment instead.  |
MissionTo help you tend to soul issues that may manifest in physical, emotional, mental or spiritual aspects of your life, and to give you tools to empower your path to harmony and well-being. Categories
All
Links-There are so many kindred spirits doing the work out there. I include these links to help our community connect with one another.
FAIRY CONGRESS - Offers a summer weekend gathering in person with workshops, circles and of course faeries and nature beings! They also offer a winter virtual weekend with amazing guest speakers like Orion Foxwood, David Spangler and R.J. Stewart. I highly recommend joining the online network to participate in monthly workshops, circles, and book clubs. https://fairycongress.com/ SACRED HOOP Magazine Guide to Shamanism Compilation- http://www.sacredhoop.org/Pages/FreeGuide.html Owner Valeria Pearson lovingly created SOLE TO SOUL YOGA studio with a community focus. There are classes for all levels and events that lift the spirit. I am delighted to partner with her to offer a kirtan chanting circle once a month. https://www.soletosoulyogaoregon.com/ My friend and herbalist mentor, LAWRENCE BIRCH is a Certified Clinical Herbalist, plant whisperer and shamanic practitioner. If you need custom tincture blends or are interested in a wildcrafting apprenticeship, he is the teacher extraordinaire: http://givingtreefarm.com/ ROGER WHEELOCK and GAYLE RUTH are shamanic practitioners and teachers in the Pachakuti Mesa Tradition. https://www.rainmother.com/ I am grateful to be able to take part in ceremony with them, and to support their love for the Peruvian people through the World Ayni Association. Roger has a practice in Asheville, NC https://www.communityshaman.com/ NEW WORLD KIRTAN = Kitzie's podcasts include interviews with artists and kirtan music. I love attending her weekly Satsang group and the New World Kirtan Band concerts - newworldkirtan.com/ |
RSS Feed