BLOGS

Today I’m going to focus on the topic of transcending your fear. Especially as it relates to the pandemic. And I’m going to do this by quoting my upcoming book, The Sage’s Template.

“The experiences of this life are either fear-based and uncomfortable or love-based and comfortable.  Most everyone is looking to feel comfortable and in a “good” place, so what is the purpose of this dual format of experiencing?  By design, in this life, you will experience fear. Fear is what creates the illusion of separation. It is through the knowing and then transcending of fear or suffering that you are able to experience the truth of who you are.”

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Life is defined by the relationships. Your relationships with your Self, partner, friends, family, colleagues, strangers, animals, plants, Mother Earth, Father Sky, Spirit, God, etc. define your life. How you communicate in those relationships defines the relationships that define your life. As this new year begins, I offer you all the opportunity to look at your relationship with all that and who are in your life in any capacity. Where you have joy and fulfillment within you as a result of the relationship, prosper that relationship! Usually, however, relationships go through various changes and challenges and have various meanings in your life. Today, I want to address those relationships that you, for one reason or another, distanced your Self from in 2015.

Every person on this earth has their own life purpose and path. Each person has free will. The free will is what allows everyone the unique opportunity to find joy, acceptance, and love in this life or suffer with hurt, abandonment, and fear. In your relationships, you may get frustrated or hurt by another’s choices, behaviors, or absence. Many of you will retract back from the relationship with thoughts that, inadvertently, propagate the hurt from the other’s actions. You will judge their behaviors or choices as against you and, therefore, unworthy of a relationship with you. But, what if, that other was coming from a very different place than what you expected, assumed or felt? Did you, for the love of your Self, take the time to ask them?

Often times, in your closest friendships and in your partnerships, your greatest challenges are presented. That is by design. You are here with a purpose. That purpose is to heal the suffering and to open your Self to the truth of what and who you are. So, your best friends, partners, and family will be those souls in your life who are here to help you achieve your greater purpose in this life. Where, in your closest relationships, you may feel deep betrayal or hurt, it is an opportunity to ask why it is in your life and to heal the wound. If you choose (and you may) to walk away from the relationship or distance your Self from the other, you have inadvertently chosen to push aside life’s gift. The gift is the healing of the suffering that is within you. The healing is given the opportunity to occur in and as a result of the relationship. For example that same person who frustrated, hurt, shamed or betrayed you may create the exact same experience with another but that other may not have the same emotional reaction/s. This is because your history is what allows those fear-based emotions to be tied to that particular experience with the other.

So, in this new year and new beginning, ask your Self if there is a relationship in your life that needs to be healed. It may be a relationship that truly needed a new beginning because of whatever lead to the dissolution or distancing. There is a reason why the relationship suffered. It offers each of you the opportunity to ask what lead up to this event. What part of your experience in the relationship was not being fulfilled prior to the upset? Were you speaking your needs clearly? Were you letting the other know when the smaller “things” hurt or bothered you? Did you let your Self be known to the other in terms of how you define that type of relationship and the experience you wished to have with them?

I ask each and every one of you to look at all past and present relationships and ask your Self which ones you have created a gentle distance, a significant distance, or dissolution. Then I challenge each of you to address that/those relationships this year. What will it take to feel a mending of your wounds? I challenge you to find the strength and courage to face the other with your needs and emotional reactions. You are not addressing them to get them to change but to speak on your own behalf and begin your healing. Create a new beginning for your Self.

I wish each of you a wonderful, love-filled experience with your Self as you venture forth and address at least one relationship that needs mending. Feel free to use AskKristen on my website or send me an email, if you would like more specific support to your unique challenging relationship in life.

How do I accept the unexpected?

All the learned expectations are the foundation of a lot of our challenges in this life. Expectations are not who we are! Consequently, as we begin to unravel the challenges in our life we begin to move beyond expectations.

So here are the things YOU can do !

The simple answer to the original question is “You accept the unexpected by embracing the challenges in life and learning to live in the present.” Let me explain, everyone has challenges in this life. Those challenges are what allow you to feel any of the fear-based emotions. Conversely, anytime someone feels a fear-based emotion they are experiencing a challenge in some way. As you begin to embrace the challenges, understand those challenges, and heal those challenges, you become free of them. In life, you can get to a place where you are excited about the presentation of another challenge because you know that with its healing comes greater freedom, love and acceptance in this life!

So if you learn to embrace the challenges in this life, you will also learn to move beyond your fear of death and/or aggression. As you begin to move beyond that fear, you become more of an observer in this life. As an observer, you are more in the present. The more present you are in this life, the less expectations and anticipations will play a part. When in the present, there is no past and there is no future, there is only now and in the now you have no expectations. Therefore, there cannot be the unexpected.

It is at this point that you are accepting everything as the unexpected. You learn to read the unexpected as life speaking to you. You embrace the unexpected as those opportunities to grow and to see where you are limiting yourself. You allow the unexpected to be the gifts that are constantly taking you into greater freedom. Simply, you have grown into a space of accepting and embracing the unexpected because the unexpected is your way of life.

You cannot learn to accept the unexpected by doing. It is the outpouring of being present.
I hope each of you enjoys the uncertainty and constant change that life had to offer you. The gifts are endless for each of you and they are found in the unexpected!

Love doesn’t keep a relationship together. Communication and moving beyond your defenses does.

Often, people fall in love and wonder why it doesn’t hold. We aren’t “taught” to develop relationships. So magical thinking tends to take over. Love is always, right? No. There is fear and fear is the absence of love. For example, fear of not being good enough leads to jealousy, insecurity, mistrust, rejection, shame. Fear is in all people. Therefore, it must be in our love relationships.

If you learn to communicate from your Self and NOT about the other, you will begin to break the cycle of assumption and misperceptions that are anchored in and fueled by fear. Learning to communicate in this style is in opposition to how you were probably taught. It may not be easy but it is rewarding. In this way of communicating you will open your Self and the relationship to the infinity of life. Therefore, love grows and thrives. It does not stagnate and die.

Fear fragments and takes you away from love. It is fear, if not healed, that shatters the love. All fear marks, and is marked by, the challenges in your life. Everyone has challenges. It is by definition in this life. So the challenges and fears of life must be a part of your love relationships.

To learn to embrace the challenges (fear) is to open your Self to the healing of Self and relationship. As you open your Self to your truth, you are teaching your partner who you are and what you believe, perceive, and desire. You are speaking of your fears and challenges in an effort to allow the team or partnership to heal you and, therefore, with you.

As we learn to open ourselves to being seen and understood at this level we are learning compassion of self and, therefore, compassion of other. It is with the willingness to communicate your truth and to open your Self beyond defensiveness (or fear of threat) that you begin to live compassionately for self and other. This is where love resides. It is here that you will find everlasting love and companionship in your life partnership.

I wish you all great, endless love in this life – for Self and Other!!