Do not fear moving forward in the direction of your happiness. Plant your feet in the soil of adoration and stability. Be watered by those who appreciate both your petals and your thorns. May life’s simple pleasures become your joy. May your soul be filled with peace and laughter.
Do not fear love. Open your heart to new and endless possibilities. Be nurtured back to wholeness and celebrated for just being. Be reminded that there are no hoops that you have to jump through, no tests are necessary to prove your worthiness. For you are enough as is, star. Accept the complicity and the uniqueness that is you.
Do not be afraid to succeed. To have your gifts make room for you and have your talents expand. May the world be moved by every tremble in your voice, stroke of your paintbrush, word that you write and note that you play. May your activism invoke ancestors to help create new worlds, and may your teachings awake a sleeping nation.
Do not be afraid of your truth. Shed old skin until you are you again, and then… again. Proclaim loudly, “This is who I am and this is who I am not!” Stand in it unapologetically. Do not shrink in the faces of those who have yet to accept themselves. You will be their example. May you continue to evolve, learn, grow and love every part of you. Find balance between the dark and light, for the truth is always somewhere in the middle.
Gather your things, love. A new world awaits the fearless. There is no shame in starting over and no growth in comfort. Change is here and ready for your embrace. The past now has no place. You’ve been here many times before and survived the worst. It is time for your reward.
If you’ve always wanted to start the habit, here are five ways to start journaling and get you started:
1. What was difficult this week?
Addressing what was hard this week will shed light on the challenges in your life. Often these negative events cause repressed emotions that show up in monstrous ways. There is nothing healthier for your overall mental space than to let your words be your therapy and write about the challenges in your life. In doing so, you may come up with creative solutions you never knew existed—so give yourself the time and space to work through your problems as you navigate through them in the outside world.
2. What gave you joy this week?
Gratitude is a gateway to something truly beautiful. By pinpointing exactly what brought you joy and how it felt while engaging in an activity, you can bring more happiness and intention into your life by knowing what makes you feel the most alive. Understanding yourself and what lights you up is a path to a life well-lived.
3. How can you show up better next week?
In some regards, you may have failed at doing something this week. Flipping the script and changing your perspective to a more positive frame of mind can help you understand that failure teaches you lessons that will help you become a better individual. This is crucial when it comes to being aware of where you went wrong and how you can show up better for yourself in the coming weeks—life is, after all, a learning process.
4. What are new things you experienced this week?
If you experienced anything new this week, how did it make you feel? What is something that surprised you? Were you proud of yourself that you jumped out of your comfort zone and tried something new? Take careful note of these experiences, as they may unlock a key to something you never knew existed for your future self.
5. What new things do you want to experience next week?
One of my personal favorites when it comes to journaling is planning for the future, including things you want to manifest. While it’s not the best idea to hyper-focus on it, allowing yourself to dream and cultivate your future is an exercise that will bring you so much fulfillment and satisfaction when you see your wildest dreams come true. Having a vision is powerful—just don’t expect it to look exactly as you saw it because it may very well look even better than you saw it.
Journaling is not just a reflection of what’s around you but a reflection of how you’re feeling internally. It’s an intentional practice that gives you the time and space to not just open the door to a new world, but to change the story of your life if you don’t like the one you’re currently writing.
The term “Higher Consciousness” has been thrown around a lot recently. With the influx of spiritual teachers and coaches, this term has been becoming mainstream, and for good reason. With so much going on in the world, I think all of us are looking for meaning in our life.
I have studied self-development for years and read every book on the topic available. But it wasn’t clicking for me. I was trying to follow certain rules or force myself into spirituality because I wanted to be perfect at it. Who else is a recovering perfectionist?
It wasn’t until my life got turned upside down that I understood what spirituality actually meant and what attaining Higher Consciousness could look like in my own life. I realized it was so simple that I could throw away all the supposed “rules” I was placing on myself.
Now I want to pass this message on to you. I know that so many of us suffer from loneliness, depression, anxiety, etc. But the real reason humans are here is to enjoy life through exploration and love. Even if you can tap into this feeling of higher consciousness for a brief moment, you’ll realize just how impactful it is to your mental health.
Let’s first discuss what Higher Consciousness is not:
Believing that you are better than people.
Using spirituality for your own ego or self-image.
Thinking you need to go live in a monastery for the rest of your life.
Buying into the idea that you need to have a perfect daily routine to be spiritual.
Reading too many self-help books but not actually implementing the lessons.
Having to be from a certain religion to believe in it.
The beauty of Higher Consciousness is that any human on this planet can reach it. If you desire to tap into this higher energy and feel more fulfilled in life, you absolutely can.
Here’s what Higher Consciousness means:
Knowing that material things don’t bring genuine happiness.
Being grateful for life every single day.
Pursuing the people, events, and hobbies that bring you love and fulfillment.
Acknowledging that there may be tough moments in life, but the good ones always follow.
Seeing love in all the people and nature you interact with.
Believing in yourself and your purpose for life.
When you’re tapped into this higher consciousness, life just feels sweeter. It’s like you’re experiencing life on volume 10. The trivial day to day happenings don’t affect you as much. However scary the news is, you still will do everything in your power to live a life you love.
Of course, life will still throw curve balls at you and things may not go your way. No human on this planet can escape the unexpected. But when you’re tapped into this higher energy, you fully trust that life will work itself out. That the good times will come back around and that there’s lessons to be learned in the tough seasons.
Now you’re probably wondering, this all sounds great, but how do I actually achieve it? Well, there’s endless possibilities. The way to achieve it is just doing the things that make you feel more alive and more aligned with this state. But here are some ideas to get you started!
Ways to tap into Higher Consciousness:
Follow your passions and the things that excite you.
Start noticing the coincidences in your life and know that nothing is by chance.
Stop placing worth in your salary, cars, house, and other material things.
Deepen your relationships with the people in your life that you care about.
Don’t get caught up in the daily drama with other people or events.
Stop caring what other people think of you—their opinions won’t matter in a year from now.
When you get into a Higher Consciousness and notice just how amazing life truly is, your relationships will improve significantly. You will be happier and not fazed by small inconveniences.
But most importantly, your relationship to self will grow stronger everyday. You will be confident of your life’s purpose and you’ll make the most of the limited time you have here on Earth.
I remember when starting over felt like the heaviest burden in the world. An experience to dread. Something that made me feel like a failure sometimes, like I couldn’t get it right the first time around. It made me feel like I was losing my stability until I realized that starting over is one of the most liberating experiences ever. It’s sometimes essential. It’s sometimes what you don’t know you need. It’s sometimes the only way to move forward because when you start over, you have a chance to write a better story.
Your new life will cost you your old one; your new dreams and plans will force you to let go of your past and the things that didn’t work out for you. It will force you to release all that wasn’t serving you. Your new life will cost you old friends and meaningless attachments but it will reward you with the things that you actually desire. The things you were scared of doing. The people you were intimidated by. The risks you were too afraid to take.
Starting over means being brave enough to say goodbye to so many things and so many people because you’re choosing yourself instead of bending over backwards to please others. Starting over means living the life you were meant to live instead of following someone else’s dream or path. Starting over means you’re no longer stuck because you’re not afraid of changing everything around you for a better life.
Starting over means building a stronger foundation because now you have experience, now you know what makes something stand tall and what makes it fall apart. Starting over means writing a new story because now you’re wiser and you actually have something to say. You have an ending to look forward to and you know who you need in your story and who doesn’t really have a role anymore. Starting over means allowing yourself to be reborn again in the same lifetime, it means seeing life from a whole new angle and living the life you’ve always imagined. Starting over means you’re not giving up on yourself and you’re not settling either. It means you’re fighting for yourself and the life you were meant to live.
So please don’t let anyone make you feel like starting over means you’ve failed, because the real failure is staying stuck in a place you hate, living a life that doesn’t excite you, or being with someone who doesn’t love you. The real failure is choosing to live in the same environment that broke you instead of going out and creating a whole new one. Starting over doesn’t mean burning bridges or losing everyone you love, it simply means you’re crossing that bridge and moving on with nothing but love for what you left behind, but you know you can’t take it with you anymore.
Starting over means trusting that new beginnings will eventually lead to better endings and that you are capable of taking your life in a whole new direction because as painful as it can be, sometimes letting go of who you used to be and the life you used to live, can bring about the best experiences and the happiest of endings.
Every problem in life has a solution. Every problem in life can be dealt with. Every problem in life needs some time to be spoken about. And all it takes is the couragefrom within. All it takes is some resilience.
We’re all human beings, and yes, we all might have the ego within us that probably holds us back from finding possible solutions to our problems. The ego within us that stops us from giving in a little to others. The ego within us that refuses to give people a chance to be heard.
Not everything in life sucks. Yes, sometimesthings don’t happen the way we want it to be. Yes, sometimes things don’t happen when we want it to happen and that is okay. Things meant to be will eventually find their way back. All it takes is some time and effort. Time and time again, you need to remind yourself what you are capable of. You need to continue to persevere and you will eventually achieve what’s ideal for you and all that you’ve ever wanted.
We’re all human beings and we’re incredibly resilient. We all have dealt with pain at least at one point of time in life and we all have recovered. That’s because of the strength that we have within us that pushes us further and we don’t give up easily. We may not have achieved what we dreamt of when we were all much younger, but we may have achieved something we never thought of.
Eventually, we all would do fine with what we are faced with.
At this moment, even if life does not seem to be that good, trust the universe that the happier days of your life are just ahead of you. Even if you don’t believe right now, trust me, things will get better. And that’s because eventually everything will work out.
The mind body spirit connection describes the three always-entwined aspects of oneself. The physical, mental, and spiritual combine to make us who we wholly are. We speak of body, mind, and spirit as separate parts or aspects of ourselves, but this is more for convenience sake and having a frame of reference. The mind is not separate from the body any more than a toe or a liver is separate from the body.
The mind body spirit connection is a wondrous thing. When you understand, support, and tap into its power, you access the three pillars of holistic healing and are better able to manifest your true desires. It inspires and informs your experiences.
Ancient people understood that a healthy mind helps create a healthy body and a healthy body is important if you want a healthy mind.
Even when it appears that only the body, or part of the body, needs healing, the cause may trace back to the mind or spirit. When that is the case, healing the mind promotes healing of the body. Likewise, a dis-ease in the body can cause disruptions in the mind. These understandings have shaped modern day mind body medicine as well. For example, medical researchers know that mental stress is a contributing cause behind the majority of diseases.
But there is more to it.
For thousands of years, ancient people also believed that each living being is a connected part of ‘all that is’ in the web of life. You could no more separate a sentient being from the whole of creation than you could separate mind from body or spirit. To strengthen and reinforce this understanding, they took part in elaborate rituals to make the mind and spirit work to heal the body.
In the East, practices such as chi gong, tai chi, and yoga developed as practices to reinforce the mind, body, spirit connection.
Examples of the Mind Body Spirit Connection
Next time you feel stressed, notice your physical, mental, and emotional symptoms. What are you saying to yourself? What emotions are you experiencing? What sensations is your body experiencing? You may have sweaty hands, narrowed vision, and a faster heartbeat. Your mind may be racing, feeling panicked, or angry. Your prayers, if you can pray them, may be furtive and self-focused. Meditation? Forget about it. However, when you feel peaceful and expansive in your mind, your body is relaxed, you can breathe. You may feel connected to your intuition, to ‘all that is’ and the divine. You may feel inspired to offer gratitude, praise, to sing and dance.
Here are a few more examples:
Consider when you hurt a part of your body or get sick. Your whole being is affected. The pain in a stubbed toe radiates through your entire body. It is difficult to think of anything else.
Consider what happens when you hear really good news. You feel excited, your body feels supercharged with energy.
Notice how a baby’s whole being moves and responds with every nuance of emotion and physical sensation.
Mind Body Dualism
In the Middle Ages, beliefs about the mind-body-spirit connection began to shift. 17th century philosopher Rene Descartes popularized the notion that the mind and body are separate entities. His theory of mind body dualism gained a following, thus influencing religious theology and medicine. Our conventional allopathic medical model of treating parts instead of the whole person developed out of this philosophy.
Despite this erroneous teaching, language continued to reflect the innate knowledge people have of their mind body spirit connection.
You have probably heard or used expressions like these:
“He has a broken spirit”
“I knew it in my gut”
“I feel it in my soul.”
“I was so scared/excited my hair stood on end.
“My heart is bursting with love” or “breaking with grief”.
“I’m so nervous I have butterflies in my stomach.”
Before learning to mask their feelings, children demonstrate how the body and mind integrate in perfect synergy. You can watch how quickly their emotions ebb and flow by what their bodies are doing. Shrieking screams, tears, red face and flailing arms and legs clearly express feelings of anger and isolation. Sparkling eyes, full rosy cheeks, cackling laughter, and clapping hands express their delight.
Is the Mind Over the Body?
It is a well-known fact that our minds create our bodies. The nonconscious parts of the brain govern automatic biological processes without need of the thinking mind. As we introduce emotions into the mix, the brain produces chemicals which go into the body and affect its functioning. For example: stressful thoughts cause a rise in cortisol, which prepares the body for flight or fight at the expense of immunity and healing. Positive thoughts cause a rise in feel-good chemicals that induce relaxation and healing.
The thinking conscious mind can cause voluntary responses. You decide to hold your breath, you temporarily stop breathing. You decide to raise your arm, the signal is sent to the muscles and it goes up.
Experts once believed that the mind was just another name for your brain. (Some still do.) But research is showing that your mind is in your body and even around your body.
Although your brain exerts a powerful influence over your body, there is much more to the mind-body connection than a master-slave relationship. The belief that mind powers and levels of consciousness belong to the brain alone is a belief of the past.
Human intelligence involves much more than the cognitive intelligence of the brain. Not only does the brain communicate with the body, parts of the body communicates with the brain. And so do the microbes living inside us. Each affects the other on a continual basis.
Cells and the Mind Body Spirit Connection
Cell biologist Bruce Lipton, PhD likens cells to miniature people. Since they have the same systems and receptors as skin, they perceive their environment and the community of cells at large. Their environment is affected by nutrients, toxins, and the perceptions of the individual. This means that our beliefs, attitudes, thoughts, and feelings affect our biology for better or worse. These factors influence how genes express themselves more than the DNA. It is not a matter of nature versus nurture, but nurture over nature.
Cells are constantly communicating with each other via photons of light in the layer of the human energy field right outside the body. They receive information from the brain and energy field and respond accordingly. When we experience an emotion, our cells experience the same emotion through energy vibrations and changes in body chemistry. Each cell in the body functions independently and as a member of the community that makes up your body.
The heart-brain connection
Your heart has thousands of its own neurons that initiate communication with the brain via the vagus nerve and vice versa.
In mammals, both brain and heart are involved in receiving, decoding and processing intuitive information. However, it appears that the heart receives this information first. Unlike Westerners who place great importance on thinking and learning via the brain, some indigenous cultures teach youngsters to perceive and think with their hearts. Only when they are older do they learn to access information with their brains as well.
Did you know that your heart has a much larger electro-magnetic field than your brain? The following heart intelligence video explains how coherence, the unity or alignment of the heart with the brain, elicits a peaceful state that positively affects you and others.
Scientists have also found brain-like structures in other systems throughout the body. The gut is sometimes called the second brain. Researchers have also discovered that the billions of microbes residing in the gut and throughout the body may exert the greatest influence over us of all. They impact the workings of the body and communicate directly with the brain.
The Spirit or Soul
Whether we have an aspect of ourselves called ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’ and whether or not that ‘soul’ connects to a Consciousness beyond ourselves is hotly debated.
It has been a long-held belief among humans that we have a soul, a spark of the Divine within us. This spark connects us to ‘all that is’. It is our true nature, our higher nature. This nature is vibrationally higher than the self-serving, yet necessary, ego. It is our authentic nature of Love. Through our spirits we forgive, show compassion, evolve as individuals, and feel the call to live our life’s purposes.
A popular theory is that your personal local mind is connected to a universal mind. The local mind is over the body and the nonlocal mind is beyond personal consciousness. It is the infinite, nature, the universe. We are all subject to its laws.
There are many names for universal mind and the scope attributed to it. Some call it God. Others call it Nature or the Universe, the Field, or Infinite Intelligence. It is believed that this is the realm of all knowledge and our connection to ‘all that is’.
We can feel the Oneness of the Field and tap into its wisdom at the superconscious level of mind.
Manifesting with the Mind Body Spirit Connection
We have much to learn about harnessing the powerful potential of the mind body spirit connection for accessing intuition, healing ourselves, and manifesting our heart desires.
The mind-body works in mysterious, often unpredictable, ways. People who have experienced spontaneous healing know that healing can and does happen without any conscious effort on our part. This is called the placebo effect. The same holds true of people who believed they are cursed. Through the power of the nocebo effect, they might act like zombies, writhe in pain, or be scared to death from a suggestion and the subconscious belief in its power.
Researchers are working hard to solve these mysteries. In addition to exploring the benefits of heart-brain coherence, recent scientific discoveries on the ever-changing quality of the brain have led to a lot of research on how to rewire the brain for healing, achieving goals, becoming more compassionate, and so on.
Tapping Into Your Mind-body Connection
Individuals and metaphysical practitioners use techniques to access the wisdom of the mind, body, spirit connection. How successful and accurate these methods are varies with skill, the ability to relax and achieve coherence, belief systems, being detached from outcome, and perhaps elements we are not yet aware of.
Several subconscious mind power techniques are popular tools for deprogramming and shifting outdated patterns and limiting beliefs. They offer new suggestions to your mind, neutralize the charge of troubling emotions so that mental, spiritual, and physical energy can be freed up. Together with mental rehearsal to practice new ways of being and taking action, the brain and body have the energy, circuitry, and experience needed to create a healthier, happier future.
Examples of mind-body manifestation techniques include:
visualization
affirmations
hypnosis
emotional release techniques
meditation
Some people use muscle testing or pendulums as a way to access the wisdom of the subconscious for information about anything from which remedies and techniques are best to which foods are harmful, and so on.
Summary of the Mind Body Spirit Connection
We have much to learn about how the mind, body, and spirit are one, as well as how we are connected to the greater whole.
Although your brain exerts a powerful influence over your body, there is much more to the mind-body connection than a master-slave relationship. The belief that mind powers and levels of consciousness belong to the brain alone is a belief of the past.
The mind body spirit connection is more than just an abstraction or a way to get what you want. It is who you are as a wondrous whole being. When you see yourself as a whole being instead of conglomerate of parts, the philosophy of holistic healing and health make perfect sense. The need to support and care for your whole self becomes as obvious as the need to feed, clothe and wash your body. When you love and care for mind, body and spirit, your whole self will benefit. Others benefit as well.
The more capacity one has for an experience, the more tolerable the experience is, and the easier it is to remain a witness to it in a steady manner.
Raja Selvam
I want to ask you a question, so simple that you may have overlooked asking it yourself: How do you experience negative emotions? Do you get curious about them? Do you make time to sit and process the emotions? Or do you distract yourself with activities such as scrolling through social media, socializing, binge watching TV shows, etc.?
Now, you might think: Who wants to process negative emotions? After all, you’re likely to experience many of them throughout the day, and it’s a waste of time to process them. I completely understand your concern; however, if you don’t make the time to make peace with your negative emotions, you are rejecting yourself. Allow me to expand on this further. Until you develop the wisdom to process your difficult emotions, your life will be fuelled by the suppression of negative energies within you. For example, when a negative experience or person inflames the suppressed feelings, you believe they are the source of your pain, when in fact they are the trigger for the pain. Expressed differently, the pain is already present within you, but the energy devoted to suppressing it leads to reexperiencing the negative emotions.
It requires becoming a witness to your emotional experience without becoming entangled in the emotions. I realize this is easier said than done because negative emotions are real and to separate yourself from them requires practice and patience. But each time you witness your negative emotions and detach from them, you lessen the discharge of negative energy stored in your subconscious mind. In effect, you are dissipating the negativity, so when a similar experience occurs, your reaction is likely to be less inflamed. Does this make sense? Can you see that becoming an observer of your emotions allows you to create a space around them? It is this act of witnessing that allows awareness to do the heavy lifting, instead of the egoic self, which forms a judgment around the negative emotion.
Acceptance Of Negative Feelings
“The remnants of pain left behind by every strong negative emotion that is not fully faced, accepted, and then let go of join together to form an energy field that lives in the very cells of your body.” — Eckhart Tolle
To put this another way: the tendency to reject yourself arises from disapproving of your negative feelings. And you are not entirely responsible for feeling this way because your primary caregivers and society inform you, it is wrong to experience anger, shame and guilt. So, you suppress these feelings, but the suppression of any negative feeling is an act of rejection of oneself. This is because the wholeness of your true nature means being comfortable with your shadow self. Namely, you accept your negative emotions and integrate them into the wholeness of your being. It is integration, not separation, that leads to wholeness. Therefore, you accept all that is because pure awareness does not judge or limit itself to only positive feelings. Mother nature has given us negative feelings for a reason. If you believe there are no accidents within this purposeful universe, it must follow that your negative feelings serve a purpose.
In other words, your positive and negative feelings are an integral part of who you are. You create separation by identifying with positive feelings and excluding negative emotions because you are judging aspects of yourself. I’m not inviting you to love your negative feelings but asking you to accept them as they arise. Remember, acceptance does not mean liking what you experience. It means dropping your resistance to what is taking place. Acceptance means negative emotions such as anger, shame, or guilt can be useful in helping you discover aspects about your true self. For example, anger can help you set boundaries on what you’re willing to accept. Shame and guilt open the door to self-love and self-acceptance because they invite you to heal and transform your past you may have misidentified with.
I hope you get the sense that acceptance, not rejection of one’s negative feelings, leads to transformation and healing. So, I ask you: Could you give yourself the gift of accepting your negative emotions instead of pushing them away? Even if it means processing them a little each time, it will go a long way in helping you to heal from negativity. You see, rejection of oneself is deeply rooted in the subconscious mind, and the more energy awarded to it can lead to a sense of hopelessness, uncertainty, and even depression. Therefore, when you distract yourself from dealing with negative emotions, you signal to your subconscious mind it is wrong to feel this way. So, the energy of rejection is kept alive throughout your Mind-Body experience.
Process Your Negative Emotions
“The way to change our bodies is to change our thoughts and feelings. We must let go of negative thoughts and belief systems and shed the stress of negative emotions that give them energy.” — David R. Hawkins
So how can you transform your negative emotions without suppressing them? As I’ve explained earlier, it requires creating time in your busy schedule to sit with your emotions and process them. There are many books that explain how to process negative emotions.
The underlying principle in processing negative emotions is to allow the emotion to complete its natural cycle. If you suppressed it when you first experienced it, it is bound to stay active in your mind and body system. Sometimes, it can lead to physiological dysfunction and may cause illness or disease. For instance, the neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor suggests it takes 2 ½ minutes for an emotion to move through your nervous system. So, if the emotion remains stuck and not allowed expression, the energy of repressing it may cause stress in your mind and body.
Considering this, I invite you to write a list of the negative emotions you experience often. Is it fear, anger, shame, guilt, or other emotions? Write each emotion on the left-hand side and see if you can work through what the emotion is inviting you to learn about yourself. Is it patience, kindness, setting boundaries, compassion, or something else? Once you have completed this exercise, carve out time throughout the week to sit with these negative feelings and process them thoughtfully. Feel them through your body because each time you do, you are releasing a layer of negative conditioning from your mind and body. Ultimately, when you reject or make wrong your negative feelings, you are rejecting yourself. This is something you have the power to shift by greeting your negative emotions with openness, self-compassion, and curiosity.
