Jodi-Anne is a Wellbeing Educator, Counsellor and Healing Facilitator. She shares information via her videos, website, workshops, books, and coming soon online courses. She conducts individual appointments in person and online assisting individuals to heal and find peace.
She is a qualified counsellor specialising in healing from trauma and abuse, utilising Family Constellations, Tension & Trauma Release Exercises (TRE), Psych-K, and Crystal Light Bed Therapy.
To learn more visit https://www.jodiannemsmith.com/
Today I woke up feeling great peace and joy in my body. I felt like celebrating. I didn’t know what I was celebrating. As the day wore on I felt pleasure, joy at being alive and at feeling so good. After a while I noticed that I felt a little agitated. I couldn’t sit any longer and just BE or read or do pleasurable activities. Part of me was wanting to push, to achieve, to do. Part of me was upset about me feeling pleasure.
When I felt into that agitation and breathed through the resistance I heard a quiet thought that said to me that feeling pleasure was not okay. A scene from my childhood filtered up to consciousness and I felt shame and dirty. I witnessed a time when I was about 5 years old and a the son of friends of my Mother’s would visit and play doctor with me. We would sneak into the spare bed, take off our underwear and touch each other. It was quite innocent, but he told me that I couldn’t tell my Father about it as my Dad would be very angry with me. This was the seed of the subconscious beliefs that ‘pleasure is not okay’.
As I witnessed this scene and felt into the associated memories and emotions I cried. I cried tears of sorrow and anguish over what we had done and the impact it has had on my life. It led to me not allowing myself to feel lasting pleasure. It led me to feel that pleasure was a dirty, shameful thing that should be hidden. It taught me that feeling pleasure will lead to punishment. That it is naughty and something I will get told off for. These formed deep, core beliefs that have affected me ever since.
Thankfully I have learned how to reprogram subconscious beliefs so now when ever such an unhelpful belief pops up I can replace it with a belief that I would prefer using the Psych-K process.
Today as I sat and listened within I heard a number of related issues to be reprogrammed and the list below is the new beliefs that I programmed into my subconscious.
Feeling pleasure, peace is okay
I am allowed to feel pleasure
I deserve to feel pleasure
It is safe for me to feel pleasure
Positive things come from my feeling pleasure
I am accepted when I feel pleasure
I accept pleasure into my life
I AM PLEASURE
These beliefs now form my core operating programs in relation to pleasure so I should start to notice some subtle and or significant shifts in my behaviour and what I attract / allow into my life. YAY!!!!!!
Life is what life is. Its going to happen regardless. You can choose to judge it, fight it, be angry or miserable about it or you can choose to enjoy it and accept it.
You don’t have to have a complex life. You don’t have to save the world, find the solutions. It is okay to do work you enjoy. It is okay to choose a simple life that fulfills you and brings you joy. This is the goal! To move beyond ego, beyond searching and seeking and be simple and still. To accept and flow with what is. To love life, serve yourself and others being anchored in God’s love.
This was a powerful message for me from my higher self. For most of my life I have felt driven to ‘save the world’, to ‘save Mother Earth’, to find the solutions for sustainability. I have known for a long time that this compulsive drive stemmed from my childhood conditioning – from wanting to save my Mother from an abusive husband (my step-dad), and from wanting to succeed enough that my Dad might take me back, might love me. My Dad loves nature and I spent a lot of time in nature with him when I was a young child, so in my mind it seemed natural to think that if I achieved in the sustainability field it would matter to him. Despite knowing the source of this pattern and the fact that my desire to rescue Mother Earth was just a projection of my needing to save myself, the pattern has remained in place. Partly because I didn’t feel that I was a worthwhile human being unless I was being of service to the Earth or to others. I felt unwanted, unlovable, and unsafe interacting with the world. I hid who I really was behind the work-a-holic, super achiever. This helped me cope, but it didn’t lead to happiness. It led to a lot of seclusion and ultimately depression when I finally faced the fact that success meant nothing.
Since that realisation I have done a lot of soul searching and reprogramming of my subconscious beliefs to know that I am lovable, I am good enough, I am wanted and worthwhile. This helped and for the last few years I have focused more on honouring myself and living a simple life. I have only worked part time and I haven’t focused on achieving very much at all. I live in the country surrounded by nature and I grow my own vegies, collect fire wood for our wood heater and compost our food scraps. This way of living makes my heart sing. I am at peace amongst nature and in the quietude of life. But too much isolation isn’t healthy either! Too much isolation leads to loneliness and eventually depression.
So now I’m venturing back out into the world and aiming to have balance between working and living simply. It is an interesting process watching the old stuff come up and being grateful that I can just lovingly dismiss it. I am not hooked by it. I don’t have to achieve. I don’t have to ‘save’ anyone or anything. It is okay for me to relax and enjoy life. It is okay for me to play and let people close. It is okay for me to love and follow my heart. It is okay for me to marry and have a baby. It has taken a long time to reach this place of peace. There has been lots of resistance, lots of grief and lots of fear. A big part of me would prefer to hide forever and keep people at a distance. But not my heart. My heart wants to love fully and deeply, to honour all who I come in contact with, including myself. I know now it is okay to be me. That it is enough and that it is all I need to do. It’s time to enjoy life and being me!!
You went through what was needed to get you to God and it worked. Now you must live in both worlds.
You are second guessing the Divine and that is always pointless.
Just because you can’t see how it is going to work out, doesn’t mean it won’t. You are required to trust and have faith.
Sometimes it is tempting to question what the hell is going on here on Earth. I mean, seriously, do we have to go through so much pain and suffering? Do we have to become so lost in despair before we can find peace and happiness? The answer, for me, is yes. If life was all rosy and easy then we wouldn’t turn to God for help, we wouldn’t surrender to a higher power. We would live simply from the ego fulfilling our every desire and focused on achieving more, having more pleasure, and getting more material stuff. This is true for a lot of people. There may be some saints out there who go beyond the ego level without suffering first, but they are far and few in between.
It is often the case that people only open up to a higher purpose in life once they have hit rock bottom. Once they have tried all that they can do to heal themselves or lift themselves up out of the painful situation that they are in. It is when we fall to our knees in desperation and we call out to a God we may not even believe in or believe can help us, that we start to surrender, that we start to separate from the ego and to embrace a new possibility.
For me, and many I know, it was my pain that caused me to open to a wider version of life than I ever knew was possible. I embraced personal growth, spirituality and eventually God. I reveled in the peace, the love, the joy that was found in such communities. The safe space that was created when wounded but loving people joined together in search of healing and happiness. I LOVED THIS! But I embraced it so much I stopped interacting in the real world. I lost focus on my career, on life. All I wanted to do was healing type activities and spend time with healing focused people. I lost balance. I lived in my higher chakras and not my lower chakras.
To be truly healthy we need to live in both worlds, to interact with all people and to spread love where ever we go. It doesn’t matter what your job is, you can spread love with those you interact with – be it just a smile, a kind word, a listening ear. You can positively impact all that you come in contact with, just by being YOU, just by being patient, kind and loving. That is being of service. You don’t have to go live in an ashram or give up all your material possessions. You just need balance – a foot in each world. We are spiritual beings in human bodies living an Earthly life.
Follow your intuition, when it guides you to something but otherwise just BE, turn within – the answers you seek are there.
Don’t force yourself to do anything. Wait until you want to do something then do it.
This advice was given to me by my higher self when I was struggling to do what I felt I needed to do. I felt overburdened emotionally and physically with my to do list. Spirit advised me to be kind to myself, to not force myself to keep doing, doing, doing. This has been one of my biggest patterns this lifetime – I value work and achieving and have seen resting as foolish and lazy. Of course keeping busy means you don’t have to feel the emotions building inside, you can keep shoving them down until of course they explode! Not an effective coping mechanism in the long run.
I find it hard to shut off if I have something I feel I need to do. But I have followed my higher self’s advice often enough to know it is true. If I force myself to mark those assignments or do that task which I don’t really feel like doing, I end up doing it but it s hard work, I’m resentful and exhausted by it. Whereas if I trust that I don’t feel like it for a reason, if I go off and read a book, go for a walk, or call a friend – if I honour my needs first – then sure enough a time does come when I am willing to do the task and I can now do it from a place of love and joy. Sometimes it seems like time is running out, but the task always gets done. A burst of energy comes when needed. I am learning to trust this process and surrender into grace, into God’s timing not my timing.
You don’t need fixing neither does anyone else. Just spread love.
When you feel despair know that you’ve lost resonance – you’ve lowered energy and gone into shadow – so do a balancing process and reconnect to your radiant self, to God and to your heart.
Many of us feel like we need fixing, like there is something wrong with us, that we’re not good enough or not okay as we are. In reality that is just our perception based on a lot of conditioning from the past. When we fall into this way of thinking it is easy to beat ourselves up, to become angry or upset, to fall into despair and grief. The black hole can get bigger and bigger depending on our thinking patterns and the actions we take.
When you start to beat yourself up, stop, take a deep breath and a step back. Try to witness what is going on and to see where you are feeling vulnerable. What is it that has been triggered? What is it that you are afraid of? Send yourself love. Give yourself the consolation and comfort that you need. Be the good parent to your own inner child.
We actually are all perfect as we are. Any damage we carry is just emotional baggage that can be released. We are still whole and complete underneath it. We just have to release the baggage and take off all those layers of protection that keep us feeling small and behaving that way.
To do that all we need to do is to accept our self and how we are feeling. So instead of beating your self up, stop, breathe, recognise the pattern and the thoughts. Send love to your self and the parts of you that are hurting. Breathe into your heart chakra and connect with your emotions. Allow them to flow through you. Just breathe. If you need to scream, scream. If you need to cry, cry. If you need to release rage do so – just do it in a way that does not hurt you or anyone else. Some people yell, some people punch a punching bag, go for a long walk or run, do whatever you need to do to shift the emotion. And know it is just that emotion. Once you release it you can balance back up.
Many of us are afraid to release our emotions, afraid that if we let some of it out, the rest will come pouring out and over whelm us. It’s okay. Support yourself through the process. If you need to have a friend with you, do so or if you need to have someone you can ring if you really struggle then arrange it. If you need to see a therapist to help you learn the skills of emotional release and balancing then do so. Whatever works for you is okay. There’s no need to keep swallowing it and pushing it down. You don’t need to punish yourself any more. Let freedom in. Make space for it by clearing out the old emotions and baggage. Create space for love, joy, laughter and peace. It is well worth the effort!
Here is a short video, 11:22 mins, of Jessica Ortner (from The Tapping Solution) interviewing Sonia Ricotti (author of the book Unsinkable). It is a fabulous summary of what to do when you feel like you have hit rock bottom and you are stuck. Sonia reminds us that fighting ‘what is’ leads to negative emotions and keeps us caught in our story, our interpretation and judgement of the events. Instead she encourages us to accept ‘what is’ and ‘surrender’. When you do this you allow yourself to feel and release any emotions around the situation. This creates more space inside you, which enables peace and clarity. From here you can start to see what actions you could take to help yourself move forward.
The Celestine Prophecy and the follow on books by James Redfield are a great example of conscious evolution and the process that we all must go through as we open up to our intuition and living life according to synchronicities and flow. Through out the novels James explains his understanding of the way the Universe works and how we are all evolving. It contains great wisdom and every time I read them it reminds me at a deeper level of the beauty and mysteries of life. It helps me to reset my sail and tune in on a deeper level to my internal guidance. I love his books and the insights that come from them. Below is a list of the Celestine Insights and some short videos – one of James Redfield discussing his most recent book in the series titled ‘The twelfth Insight’ published in 2011 and the trailer to the Celestine Prophecy movie which was released in 2006.
The Celestine Insights
Here is a copy of his Celestine Insights as published on – http://www.celestinevision.com/insights.html.
THE FIRST INSIGHT . . . A CRITICAL MASS – A new spiritual awakening is occurring in human culture, an awakening brought about by a critical mass of individuals who experience their lives as a spiritual unfolding, a journey in which we are led forward by mysterious coincidences.
THE SECOND INSIGHT . . . THE LONGER NOW – This awakening represents the creation of a new, more complete worldview, which replaces a five-hundred-year-old preoccupation with secular survival and comfort. While this technological preoccupation was an important step, our awakening to life’s coincidences is opening us up to the real purpose of human life on this planet, and the real nature of our universe.
THE THIRD INSIGHT . . . A MATTER OF ENERGY – We now experience that we live not in a material universe, but in a universe of dynamic energy. Everything extant is a field of sacred energy that we can sense and intuit. Moreover, we humans can project our energy by focusing our attention in the desired direction…where attention goes, energy flows…influencing other energy systems and increasing the pace of coincidences in our lives.
THE FOURTH INSIGHT . . . THE STRUGGLE FOR POWER – Too often humans cut themselves off from the greater source of this energy and so feel weak and insecure. To gain energy we tend to manipulate or force others to give us attention and thus energy. When we successfully dominate others in this way, we feel more powerful, but they are left weakened and often fight back. Competition for scarce, human energy is the cause of all conflict between people.
THE FIFTH INSIGHT . . . THE MESSAGE OF THE MYSTICS – Insecurity and violence ends when we experience an inner connection with divine energy within, a connection described by mystics of all traditions. A sense of lightness–buoyancy–along with the constant sensation of love are measures of this connection. If these measures are present, the connection is real. If not, it is only pretended.
THE SIXTH INSIGHT . . . CLEARING THE PAST – The more we stay connected, the more we are acutely aware of those times when we lose connection, usually when we are under stress. In these times, we can see our own particular way of stealing energy from others. Once our manipulations are brought to personal awareness, our connection becomes more constant and we can discover our own growth path in life, and our spiritual mission–the personal way we can contribute to the world.
THE SEVENTH INSIGHT . . . ENGAGING THE FLOW – Knowing our personal mission further enhances the flow of mysterious coincidences as we are guided toward our destinies. First we have a question; then dreams, daydreams, and intuitions lead us towards the answers, which usually are synchronistically provided by the wisdom of another human being.
THE EIGHTH INSIGHT . . . THE INTERPERSONAL ETHIC – We can increase the frequency of guiding coincidences by uplifting every person that comes into our lives. Care must be taken not to lose our inner connection in romantic relationships. Uplifting others is especially effective in groups where each member can feel energy of all the others. With children it is extremely important for their early security and growth. By seeing the beauty in every face, we lift others into their wisest self, and increase the chances of hearing a synchronistic message.
THE NINTH INSIGHT . . .THE EMERGING CULTURE – As we all evolve toward the best completion of our spiritual missions, the technological means of survival will be fully automated as humans focus instead on synchronistic growth. Such growth will move humans into higher energy states, ultimately transforming our bodies into spiritual form and uniting this dimension of existence with the after-life dimension, ending the cycle of birth and death.
THE TENTH INSIGHT . . . HOLDING THE VISION – The Tenth Insight is the realization that throughout history human beings have been unconsciously struggling to implement this lived spirituality on Earth. Each of us comes here on assignment, and as we pull this understanding into consciousness, we can remember a fuller birth vision of what we wanted to accomplish with our lives. Further we can remember a common world vision of how we will all work together to create a new spiritual culture. We know that our challenge is to hold this vision with intention and prayer everyday.
THE ELEVENTH INSIGHT . . . EXTENDING PRAYER FIELDS – The Eleventh Insight is the precise method through which we hold the vision. For centuries, religious scriptures, poems, and philosophies have pointed to a latent power of mind within all of us that mysteriously helps to affect what occurs in the future. It has been called faith power, positive thinking, and the power of prayer. We are now taking this power seriously enough to bring a fuller knowledge of it into public awareness. We are finding that this prayer power is a field of intention, which moves out from us and can be extended and strengthened, especially when we connect with others in a common vision. This is the power through which we hold the vision of a spiritual world and build the energy in ourselves and in others to make this vision a reality.
James doesn’t list what the twelfth insight is yet, but he provides this introduction to it on the twelfth insight webpage – http://www.thetwelfthinsight.com/
THE TWELFTH INSIGHT . . . ????? – I believe a new, very exciting time is beginning in human history. I call it the 12th Insight. The Mayan Calendar calls it the Ninth Wave of Creation. But whatever it is called, it is a new clarity about the nature of the universe, and how we, as individuals, can put spiritual knowledge into very practical application to find a higher path through life. Think about it. We have been pursuing spiritual knowledge in a mass way for decades. And finally we’ve reached the clarity to put it into action, to live it everyday! As we act individually, we create together a new cultural approach to life that is the key to solving all the problems facing human society. I believe we can already sense what is occurring. There is a new call for civility and honesty in politics and business. It’s the new urge we feel to live a more authentic life of integrity. The emerging Twelfth Insight represents a spiritual life that the best of every religious tradition has always held true, and that, in fact, points the way toward peace. There has never been a more exciting time to be alive. In spite of all our problems, this new awareness can be contagious, moving from person to person and can resolve everything. We just have to consciously share the truth of what we are doing. Remember, it’s not the end times. We’re just beginning. It’s morning in the world!
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The Celestine Prophecy Movie
James Redfield’s first book the Celestine Prophecy was made into a movie several years ago now. It is a good summary but of course like all movies it can only contain some of the material from the book and some of its wisdom. It is well worth a watch and the books are well worth reading once, twice or many times! Here is the movie trailer.
The below is advice from Al-anon on how to help an alcoholic:
Learn all the facts and put them to work in your own life. Don’t start with the alcoholic
Attend AA meetings, Al-Anon meetings and if possible go to a mental health clinic, alcoholism information centre or to a competent counsellor or minister who has had experience in this field
Remember you are emotionally involved. Changing your attitude and approach to the problem can speed up recovery.
Encourage all beneficial activities of the alcoholic and cooperate in making them possible
Learn that love cannot exist without compassion, discipline and justice, and to accept love or give it without these qualities is to destroy it eventually.
It is easier to find a list of don’ts in dealing with alcoholics for it is easier to understand why you fail than to know why you succeed. The following list is not inclusive but it makes a good beginning.
Don’t lecture, moralise, scold, blame, threaten, argue when drunk or sober, pour out liquor, lose your temper or cover up the consequences of drinking. You may feel better but the situation will be worse.
Don’t lose your temper and thereby destroy yourself and any possibility of help
Don’t allow your anxiety to compel you to do what the alcoholic must do for him or her self
Don’t accept promises, for this is just a method of postponing pain. In the same way don’t keep switching agreements. If an agreement is made stick to it.
Don’t allow the alcoholic to lie to you and accept it for the truth for in so doing you encourage this process. The truth is often painful, but get at it.
Don’t let the alcoholic outsmart you for this teaches him to avoid responsibility and lose respect for you at the same time
Don’t let the alcoholic exploit you or take advantage of you for in so doing you become an accomplice in the evasion of responsibility.
Lastly don’t try to follow this as a rule book. It is simply a guide to be used with intelligence and evaluation. If at all possible attend Al-Anon meetings and seek good professional help. You need this therapy as well as the alcoholic.
Above all, don’t put off facing the reality that alcoholism is a progressive illness that gets increasingly worse as drinking continues. Start now to learn, to understand and to plan for recovery. To do nothing is the worst choice you can make.
(Information from Al-anon Family Groups, 1987, A guide for the family of the alcoholic, Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, New York p14-15)
Feeling pleasure, peace is okay
