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Open To Your Own Wisdom

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Higher Self: 11 Ways to Connect With Your Soul

August 17th, 2020

By Aletheia Luna

 

Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool. ? Ralph Waldo Emerson

Through the ages, the Higher Self has been given many names: the inner Self, Soul, Christ-consciousness, Beloved, Buddha-nature, and Spirit. Regardless of what we call this fundamental inner Core, it is our deepest, most Divine essence.

Yet despite being familiar with these concepts, many of us still struggle to understand the Higher Self and its role in our lives. In other words, how can we transform this topic from an intellectual concept into a feeling that we experience

What is the Higher Self?

The Higher Self is your True Nature: it is your wise, unconditionally loving, creative, Whole, and eternal inner Center.Deep down, we all carry a certain level of resonance with these words. We recognize that there is something mysterious within us, something sacred. What few of us manage to come to terms with, however, is that our Higher Self totally goes beyond our conditioned fears, limiting beliefs, wounds, and ego fixations. It actually represents our most authentic state of being that we’ve lost touch with in modern life. While our Higher Selves are completely free, they can be blocked, repressed, and denied by the limited ego (or small self).

The Shaman and the Lake Story

You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself. Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.

? Alan W. Watts (The Book)

I want to share with you a story that will help illustrate what the Higher Self is:

Once there was a Great Ocean. All of existence was birthed from this Great Ocean, lived off this Great Ocean, and returned back to this Great Ocean. In the beginning, millions upon millions of tiny rivers sprung from this Great Ocean. Each river snaked across the land like delicate veins. But one day, a great drought came. No one saw it coming. The scorching sun dried up each snaking river so greatly that they all turned into lakes. No longer were they connected to the Great Ocean, so they felt great loneliness and isolation. As time went by, each little lake became more and more depressed, forgetting the Great Ocean.

One day, a shaman came to drink from one of the lakes. He noticed that it was depressed. “Why are you so sad?” he asked. The lake, despondent and gloomy responded, “Because I am nearly dried up and there is little water left. Time is running out. Soon I will be gone forever.” The Shaman peered intently at the lake and laughed hysterically. “Silly lake, don’t you know that you are connected to the Great Ocean? Although you change, you are changeless. Your water evaporates and returns back to the Great Ocean. It is then reborn, repurposed, and redistributed. How can you live or die? You are birthless and deathless. You are in all things. You are all things.”

This story is the best way I can think to describe the Higher Self.

We are all like the lakes in this story. We believe that we are separate, isolated and cut off because of the ego. But something within us (the Shaman) continuously drives us closer to the truth through the voice of intuition, instinct, and deep knowing.

Eventually in life we have an illuminating moment of self-realization or remembrance: that we are rivers that are connected to the Great Ocean. The river represents the Higher Self. The Great Ocean represents Spirit, Source, or Oneness.

‘Benefits’ of Connecting With Your Higher Self

Here are some inevitable benefits of reconnecting with your True Nature. In fact, I prefer to think of these “benefits” as “semi-permanent to permanent shifts of being” depending on how strong the encounter is:

  • Lowered or completely diminished anxiety
  • Lowered or completely diminished depression
  • Openness and receptivity to life
  • Creativity and inspiration
  • Enhancement of intuition and spiritual/personal gifts
  • Greater tolerance and patience
  • No longer fearing death
  • Developing a mystical perception of life
  • Cultivating unconditional love for self and others

These “benefits” touch only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to experiencing your Higher Self! Because the experience is so individualized and personal, we all taste different benefits to varying degrees.

11 Ways to Reconnect With Your Higher Self

I first encountered my Higher Self during an intensely traumatic shamanic experience. In this encounter, I lived through what felt like hell.

All of my deepest fears were exposed and laid completely bare in front of me.

For about an hour or more I experienced waves of the purest forms of anxiety, paranoia, terror, insanity, and loneliness imaginable.Despite constantly feeling on the verge of madness, I managed to surrender and accept what was happening. This shamanic experience awakened me to the existence of my Higher Self, or what I prefer to call “Divine Nature.”

Thankfully traumatic experiences aren’t the only way to reconnect with your Higher Self, however!

Other people encounter the Higher Self during activities such as meditation, fasting, wilderness retreats, dreams, visions, or even near-death/out of body experiences.However, for everyone the situation or technique is different — there is definitely no one “prescribed” way to experience the Higher Self. Sometimes, we experience our Higher Selves in completely spontaneous and ordinary circumstances!

Here are some paths and practices that may help you reconnect with your Higher Self:

1. Discover the face of your Higher Self

What does your Sacred Self look like or resemble? You might like to use visualization, inner journeying, or self-hypnosis to help you with this. Although your Higher Self is ultimately beyond all labels and forms, it helps to have a visual depiction to aid the human mind.

2. What does your Higher Self feel like?

For example, when you have a mystical experience or a spontaneous meeting with this deeper part of you, what sensations arise within your body? How does your chest, belly, head, and body as a whole feel? You can also connect with your intuition to help you answer this question. As your intuition is the voice of your Soul/Higher Self, it provides direct access to this eternal part within you. Pay attention to what the voice of your intuition feels like within you. Is it a soft whisper? Perhaps it is a feeling of inner stillness, calmness, compassion, or deep knowing.

3. What message/s does your Higher Self have for you?

You might like to explore automatic writing, dream analysis, and even the use of oracle cards to connect with the messages of your Higher Self. You can also try developing more body awareness and use inner visceral mindfulness as a way of tuning in to present moment guidance. Meditation is another powerful way of connecting with the insight offered by your Higher Self.

4. Make time for silence and contemplation every day

Start with a minimum of 10 minutes daily. You can use this time to meditate or to simply revel in nature and the wonders of existence. What feelings or thoughts do you have during this time? You might like to record them in a journal.

5. Explore what things you can surrender or let go of

One of the biggest reasons why we struggle to connect with our Higher Selves is that we are carrying too much mental and emotional baggage. What needs to be surrendered and removed from your life? How can you practice letting go more? Introspect and examine what beliefs, ideals, assumptions, and/or conditionings are causing you to feel separate and unhappy.

6. In what ways can you accept and love yourself (and others) more?

Love opens your heart, and your heart is a direct doorway into your Soul. What could be a more powerful way of reconnecting with your True Nature? The more love you feel, the more life expands, and the more deeply you can embody your Higher Self. Learning how to love yourself is a crucial way to experience your True Nature. Ask yourself, “What within me needs to be held in the loving arms of compassion and self-forgiveness right now?”

7. Try non-resistance (“going with the flow”) for one day

Here’s an experiment: commit to allowing everything to happen as it happens, including your thoughts, emotions, and external circumstances. Try this for at least one day. How do you feel? The more we resist life, the more we are stuck within our dualistic minds. Non-resistance doesn’t mean being a push-over or doormat (it’s important to create boundaries and say no). Instead, non-resistance is a philosophy toward life. It honors reality – and the more connected we are with reality, the more access we have to our Higher Selves.

8. Discover who (or what) your Spirit Guide is

Spirit Guides are powerful beings that help us to connect with the truth, courage, wisdom, and love within us. Whether you believe them to be archetypes or actual independent energies is irrelevant: they can help you connect with your Higher Self by guiding you into rediscovering who you really are.

9. Find your soul place

We all have at least one soul place on earth. A soul place is a special site or spot where we experience unique feelings of belonging, empowerment, and energetic rejuvenation. Finding your soul place will help you to connect with your True Self by relaxing and slowing down your nervous system, as well as inspiring you to be introspective and mindful.

10. Practice mirror work

When you stare gently into your eyes in a mirror and call on the presence of your Soul, what do you feel? What do you experience? The eyes, after all, are the mirrors of the soul. See if you can gently move past the voices of self-judgment that naturally arise when doing this activity, and tap into your inner Source. This is a powerful and rapid way of reconnecting with your Higher Nature. Read more about mirror work.

11. Connect with the present moment

Awakening to your True Nature can only (and ever) happen right here, right now, in the present moment. This is the secret passed down through ancient traditions and spiritual teachings: Paradise is here within you, the Kingdom of Heaven is Now.

The difficulty we face is the monkey mind that is constantly running around, trying to get us to some special future place. But the beauty and ultimate compassion of Life is that you don’t have to find your Higher Self/Soul in the future: it’s right here within you!

Unfortunately, most of us struggle to settle into this simple but sacred truth. Our minds have such a strong grip on us that we can barely sit still for two seconds without squirming and trying to avoid how we feel. This is why a combination of spirituality and psychology is so important. We need psychology to help untie our inner knots, and we need spirituality to help loosen the mind….

To connect with your Higher Self, try establishing a regular meditation practice. Explore different meditation techniques (such as following the breath, open awareness, body scan, self-inquiry, etc.) and see what works for you. Sometimes a combination of techniques works the best. If you need help, try downloading a free meditation app such as Calm, Headspace, or InsightTimer.

“Higher” Self is Not Exactly True

In fact, any label that describes That-Powerful-Presence-Within-Us isn’t correct as it both transcends and integrates all labels. On an absolute level, our True Nature simply is – it is beyond time, beyond duality, beyond even thought.

However, for the human mind it does help to refer to that Powerful Presence within us with a phrase such as Higher Self because it does indeed feel ‘higher’ than the ego (and so it is in a sense). But that is not all it is and we need to be careful of making the mistake of associating spirituality with nothing but the ascending, transcendent path.

Remember that true spirituality, your True Nature, encompasses everything.It is here in the dull moments just as equally as it is in the ecstatic and blissful moments. It is here while you’re scrubbing dirty pans in the sink just as much as it is while you’re gazing at the stars.

Terms such as ‘Higher Self,’ ‘Buddha Nature,’ and ‘Soul’ are useful, but they’re ultimately limited. Who you are is so much more than a concept. Remember that as you seek to reconnect with the Truth of Who You Really Are.

Higher Self Q&A

How to listen to your higher self?

The best way to listen to your Higher Self is by learning how to trust your intuition. Your intuition is like a conversation between your mind and heart: it communicates the deepest and wisest truths that you need to be aware of in the moment. Start by journaling about any intuitive ‘hits’ you’ve received during the day and check back on them. What happens when you listen to vs. ignore these intuitive tugs or gut instincts?

Is the higher self the same as the soul?

Yes. The ‘Soul‘ is just another way of saying Higher Self. These words can be used interchangeably.

What is my lower self vs. higher self?

Your lower self is your small, limited ego. It is the self that believes itself to be separate from existence. Your Higher Self, on the other hand, is your True Nature that recognizes itself as one drop in the Ocean of Life. While your lower self is defined by fear, isolation, and paranoia, your Higher Self is defined by love, interconnectedness, and expansion.

What questions should I ask my higher self?

When reconnecting with your Higher Self, try to think carefully of deep and significant questions you’d like to be answered. Questions might include, “What is my life’s purpose?” “What are my gifts?” “Why do I keep repeating this negative pattern?” and so on. Remember that the answers may be revealed to you slowly, so be patient but receptive.

How to connect with your higher self?

There are numerous ways of connecting with your Higher Self. Some paths you may like to consider include meditating, going out in nature, practicing dream work and mirror work, using oracle cards, doing guided visualizations, and so on. Choose a path that resonates with you.

from:    https://wakeup-world.com/2020/08/17/higher-self-11-ways-to-connect-with-your-soul/

A Sense That Something is Coming

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It Feels Like Something Big is Going to Happen

5th March 2012

By Chris Bourne

A defining moment in the history of humanity? 

I’m hearing from lots of people around the world that you’re feeling something ‘big’ is going to happen. It seems we’re all tuning in to a time of pretty major upheaval at some point in the not-too-distant future. It’s no surprise, such times have been foretold frequently enough and there’s a great deal of uncertainty right now in world affairs. It feels like the energy is moving in a direction of radical change. I feel that a major ‘event’ is going to happen, to cause people to look up from the pavement, through the flashing neon-lighted concrete and steel, directly into the ‘heavens above’. It feels like something defining is needed to shake humanity to its very core. And if that’s true, which certainly feels the case to me, then by the Law of Attraction, we’re bound to draw that kind of event to us.

Problem/Reaction/Solution

There’s many ways in which such a big event could happen. Take for example war in the Middle East. If you’ve not realised it yet, the powers-that-be need such a major event to restructure the world’s failing economy. The West is indebted way over its head and there is no earthly way to pay back the foreign loans. Both the US and EU economies are teetering on the brink of financial collapse, which would likely cause major social unrest (it already is).

So they need to reduce the debt radically and quickly. What better way than to create another round of ‘problem/reaction/solution’? Generate a problem area – like the Middle East – then manufacture a ‘just cause’ to create a martial economic state, devalue the currencies and write off the foreign debt in the process. Am I dreaming, or is it already happening?

But I suspect Humanity’s attempts to control the unraveling matrix will be overtaken by other major events – shifts in universal consciousness which cannot be so easily constrained. There are major internal realignments taking place within the solar logos for example, resulting in the release of solar flares. Indeed we’re moving into a period of quite intense solar storm activity. Should the earth be hit by such a storm, as has happened in the past, it could immediately wipe out not only our power grids and communication systems, but also probably swathes of the earth’s arable land. Solar activity is certainly something that has registered strongly in my consciousness of late.

The crystal clear clarity of the main stream
But let me quickly add, that by talking openly about such things, I am not intending to spread fear – quite the opposite. For me the worst thing that could possibly happen is that society limps on in some kind of zombie-like status-quo. To me, a slow degradation of our humanity and our quality of beingness is in the interests of no one. The universe is yearning to unravel the blocked energy that our society has wrapped itself up in, and I for one, will not be sad to witness that blockage unwinding itself.

To me, this situation presents a major opportunity for mankind. If we can have trust in the inherent beingness flowing through our souls, then we’ll be presented with the opportunity to leave this dense, distorting eddy current and rejoin the crystal clear clarity of the main stream.

Many people are living in fear already, and they don’t even realise it. They’re living in a not-so-cosy state of isolation from the natural flow and our interconnectivity with all life. They’re so busy trying to protect what little they have, that they’ve forgotten our true heavenly nature: that which is beyond death and suffering; that which is magical, mystical and eternal…

Who would grovel around in the dirt and the muck for a few decades,
scratching around for an ever dwindling piece of illusionary security,
in exchange for just one day of divine, interconnected freedom?Looking fearlessly into the jaws of fear
It seems many have forgotten the true magic of what it really feels like to look directly into the jaws of fear and not be cowed by it. Instead to say “yes my body may get broken, but my spirit never will”. Tell me what that is worth?

When you confront and loose your fear of death,
something truly magical happens:
you start to loose your fear of living too.It means you start to become increasingly vulnerable to the moment. When we’re vulnerable and can be awesomely okay with that, it means we can keep opening. We don’t tighten down when things get tough. And if we don’t close down, then we’re open to the univeral stream flowing through us. In this place, literally ANYTHING becomes possible. Paradoxically, it’s by letting go of life that we truly get a chance to live!

Following the flow of the soul
So how might we best approach the challenging and changing times that are beginning to unravel all around us. Here are some tips and advice which spring into my consciousness…

  1. Learn to follow the soul: whatever it costs right now (and money has a limited shelf life so why hang onto it?), we must learn to honour and follow the soul. If it means ending that job, or you need to walk away from that cosy apartment, above all, take time to listen to the quiet voice within and follow it. Test it, take a chance that you really can hear. It’s an inherent language which is natural to us all, but it dwindles when we don’t listen (for essential advice on following the soul, check out…openhandweb.org/five_gateways_book).
  2. Become more as one with mother earth: we are each a part of this planet (even if many don’t behave that way). Humanity has mistreated Gaia, but she is a very forgiving soul and she wants as many as possible to join her in the new paradigm. If we consciously take time to go into nature and tune into Gaia, then in time, we will begin to understand her heavenly language. In my experience, she does not use words, but more feelings and metaphorical mirroring.
  3. Become more self sustaining: it’s no secret that the system in which we currently live, has written countless blank cheques that can no longer be cashed. Yes, make full (and appropriate) use of the resources whilst they last, but don’t mistakenly sleep-walk through life as if today was yesterday because tomorrow, you may find the gravy train has run out of juice. We need to become more self-sustaining in terms of growing our own food, finding alternative supplies of water and also alternative energy where possible.
  4. Gather in small communities: when these big shifts really shake the established society, it’s going to be vitally important to know who our real friends are. Who are those we can truly rely upon and work with? That might mean gathering in small, micro communities right now – extended self supporting families. Have you got a spare room to rent or could you put up a cabin in the garden? It’s a strong growing trend of people coming together to energy-exchange resources and services (here’s a useful transition towns video. openhandweb.org/060411_times_are_transition).
  5. Store emergency supplies: in the uncertain times ahead, it may well be that total collapse does not happen, but more a kind of progressive degradation where resource, energy and supply chains are frequently stretched and sometimes dry up. I’d say it’s vital to keep a couple of months supply of essential resources: dried and tinned food for example, bottled water, candles (useful for light and lighting fires), and even a couple of jerry-cans of fuel. You might need to make an essential trip.
  6. Learn to live off the land: bushcraft skills are likely to be of great value. You and your family (small community) may need to move to a more secure area – especially in times of social unrest. It’s actually not hard to live at one with the land if you’re committed and motivated, but it does take practice and some essential, inexpensive equipment (check out our survival tips thread. openhandweb.org/survival_tips)
  7. Invest in your future now: anyone still saving for that rainy day? Well guess what…it’s raining! The time has come to abandon fear. The time has come to live the future now, in this moment, the only real time we have. If you feel called to explore a new gift, a new way of being or to process baggage that you may be carrying, don’t delay, because you may need that gift tomorrow. There are a plethora of wonderful healing and enlightening practices springing up around the world. Many people are tuning into this wonderful shift in consciousness and we can all learn from one another. If you feel drawn, follow your heart, it may be the wisest penny you ever spent (and likewise, if you feel drawn to work with Openhand, you’d be most welcome. openhandweb.org/contents/courses)

Openness, commitment and love
No one can accurately prophecy because the future is shaped by the feelings, intentions and choices we all make in the moment. However, there comes a point when the moment is so committed to a particular flow of circumstance, that it becomes inevitable for a chain process to unfold. It’s just like taking a step, there comes a point when your foot is sure to land, it’s simply a question of when and exactly how.

I feel that’s the situation we’re all living in right now.
It feels very much to me as if certain ‘tipping points’ have been activated.
I’d say a convergence of consciousness is taking place with the divine purpose of unraveling a particularly persistent blockage – the very society in which we live.We can either live in fear of that, deny it is happening, or do something much more courageous, much more divine, much more human. We can embrace the coming changes with openness, commitment and love. We can see it as an opportunity to truly let go of the limitation and constriction of the past. We can re-embrace the divine flow of life and allow it to sweep us up into our rightful place – an eternal fearlessness, openly embracing change and continual evolution.

Indeed, something big is about to happen!

from:    http://wakeup-world.com/2012/03/05/it-feels-like-something-big-is-going-to-happen/