Depression: Is Your Soul Trying To Send You A Message?

We hear the word depression and think it's a negative, it's a bad thing, it's something to run from. We, society, has labeled it as such. The overall consensus is that when we feel bad something is wrong and we must fix it, at once! We are embarrassed by it, we feel we have somehow failed and we are ashamed. There is so much stigma attached to depression that it creates feelings of alienation from others. 

There are more people experiencing depression than we realize, in fact, according to the World Health Organization, 300 million people worldwide suffer from it. It is not so much a thing to push away, repress, or ignore, as anyone who has suffered from depression knows it doesn't go away like that. Instead of deciding that depression is negative, let's entertain the idea that it might be something more. Depression is a strong emotion, it is actually a combination of emotions, they are fed by your thoughts, these thoughts create an emotional response and this response becomes over time a pattern, this then becomes a belief. 

Now let us consider all of this in a different light. To do so let's get a better look at you. You are here, having an incarnation, we know that much, you have a physical body and you are living in physical reality. Yet, there is more to you than this. You also have an eternal soul, that part of you that will go on after this life and has lived many, many lives before this one. That part of you is here with you in this present moment. It is seeing and feeling everything that you are. You are a projection of your own soul. Which means there is never any separation from your soul, or higher self, ever. Your soul has a plan for this lifetime, it has to do with your life purpose, life lessons, soul contracts and the like. It has a path in mind for you to walk here and the choices you make either put you on that path or deviate you from it. The path is intricate, it's anticipated that you will make many choices that enrich it, even ones we might call mistakes, which can be our greatest teachers. However, the path can be stalled, ignored or even downright lost. This is when our soul comes to us and loudly starts sending us messages when these messages are ignored long enough, we can feel depressed or anxious. We sense something is wrong, we just think it's something other than what it truly is. 

We blame our relationship, job, the town we live in, the family we were born into, it's not that these things aren't factoring in, but it's more than that. It is often that we are failing to check in with ourselves and feeling what we need to. To hear ourselves out, through feeling, knowing or any other type of connection to our inner self is critical to staying on our soul path. We are here for the purpose of living our soul's plan, in order to do this, we must listen to our higher self. 

Start today, ask yourself, what do I truly want? When is the last time you asked yourself that? Find the answer through feeling, knowing, trust what you get. Build from there step by step and become authentic in your choices, in your beliefs, and in your actions. You are your soul, right now, today, in this moment, you are your soul, know yourself and you will walk a happy path. Not only that, you will walk a meaningful and authentic path each and every day.

Do You Have A Copy Of Your Life Map?

We all come in with a plan. We choose our life purpose, our life lessons and we have soul contracts, or agreements that we must honor.  We have karmic obligations and we have our path of destiny. All of this is contained in a comprehensive life plan which is like a road map of your life.

For example you might have a life purpose of Caretaker, and your life lesson may be Patience. There might be a soul contract with your spouse that involves Forgiveness. Now let's see how these elements might play out.

As a caretaker you want to help and care for others, this is a natural drive. However, the danger is to give too much and not balance it by giving to yourself. Due to the life lesson of patience there is a sense of impatience about much of life, this may manifest in terms of annoyance with small things such as long lines, paying bills, traffic. Without working on this annoyance it can increase and turn into anger and frustration. Finally, with the Forgiveness contract in place chances are at some point your spouse is going to hurt you, or may have hurt you in a past lifetime.

Without the knowledge of your life map this all seems rather unfair and hard to understand. Here is what you would need to know. Your habit of annoyance is caused by the need to slow down, to become patient with life and learn to apply this patience in every situation in your life, then you will be working through your lesson. Your need to forgive your spouse is why you feel difficult emotions around this partner. Above all else there is a strong drive to care for others the universe will bring in opportunities for you to live this life purpose, it always has but once issues such as patience and forgiveness are resolved these opportunities will be more apparent.

Knowing our life maps makes everything fall into place, we know why we are going through what has happened and is happening and we have a clear picture of where we are going, our destiny.

Namaste,

Joy

Joy's Readings

Soul Contracts, We All Have Them But What Are They?

We have life charts, life purposes, soul mates, life lessons, past lives, karma but we also have soul contracts. Agreements made between us and other souls about our work together. We have several contracts with different people, parents, siblings, romantic partners, children, friends, I have seen agreements between people with their pets as well. 

These agreements can involve karma, what we did or didn't do in a past life when we lived with these people before. The agreements will often have themes, such as family, marriage, support, love, helper, role model, teacher and so on. If for some reason a soul contract is not honored the agreement is generally realized in a future lifetime. It is always best to complete them within this lifetime 

How do we know if we have a soul contact with someone? There will be a feeling of fate between you. You are drawn together, the universe opens a pathway for this to happen. Soul contracts are agreements so sometimes they can be negative such as when two people are caught in a destructive power struggle. Yet, typically I see them as positive and important to carry out agreements that two souls make for the betterment of their time here in this lifetime,

We go through a complex series of agreements, planning, mapping and coordinating before coming here. These plans involve all the people we will meet while here, the karma, lessons, contracts and everything in between. Free will fills in the rest, there are still plenty of choices to make and we can even steer off of our path, entirely going against our souls wishes, although it feels like we are swimming against the current if we do. The best approach is to follow the urges of your soul, when you know someone is right or something is right go with it. When you know that you need to be doing something else, change it. Our main goal here is to to be loving and supportive to one another. The soul contracts we have are just one of the many ways in which we do this.

Namaste,
Joy Thomas

Nature Spirits

If answers are what you seek, go to nature to find them. Anyone can do this but it does take a certain willingness and openness to receive the answers. The first requirement is solitude, to break away from the busy world and go where things are slower, more simple. Find the right space and allow yourself to let go.

Signs in nature vary and they will be different from person to person. To you a crow may be a sign of warning to me a crow or a raven is a sign of manifestation. They are black, like the dark night when all the world is asleep and dreams dominate the land. This is the time for manifestation, this is the time when mystery reigns. That is why so many ceremonies are held at night, under the sacred moon it is a fertile time. Crow and raven remind me of this.

Perhaps you will see a hawk, and this can represent seeing with a keen eye, it may be mean to search within and to do so leaving no stone unturned. Other times seeing a hawk can mean to watch the people and events around you closely, that there is more than meets the eye. If hawk is a totem animal it is likely a sign to remember this and to pay close attention to your dreams as well as your ideas and inspirations, for often these are placed on your path for you by your totem.

Nature itself holds many signs wind, snow, rain, clouds all of these can carry a certain vibration that you can pick up on. Tune into the sound of the wind, what does it make you feel like? Watch the falling snow, see how it glistens on the ground, what does it inspire? The idea is to get back to your core and to let go of the reactions you may have regarding your life circumstances, let these slip away, focus on the signs of nature and allow yourself to re-group and begin again.

To help you along this path I offer a Nature Spirits Reading  to connect you with your nature spirits and pass along their messages to you.

Namaste
Joy

New Year Magic

NEW YEAR READING

Each new year we get an opportunity to start fresh, change what we don't like and bring in what we desire. Yet, for many of us these new years resolutions do not last. The reason is simple, if you don't clear out a space for the new, it won't be able to fit. If you buy a new car but don't move the old one out of the garage first, there won't be any room for the new car, new behaviors are the same.

For example, you may want to quit smoking, and you have very good reasons for it, it is unhealthy and expensive, yet unless you get to the root of your reason for smoking you will be battling yourself and often you won't win. Even if you do actually quit keeping yourself from taking up smoking again can be difficult when you don't deal with your underlying issues.

To get to the root of any problem the fastest way is to sit with the problem, and ask yourself how it makes you feel. What emotions comes up? Why do I smoke? What feelings arise when you ask yourself this....to feel calm, so stress is the issue. Stress has more than one emotion so you would want to track it further...anxiety, worry, the need to take a time out. There, now you have unraveled the problem. You come to see there are several causes and the emotional responses for these causes are creating a trigger to your smoking. The next step is to ask yourself what can I do instead of smoking that can satisfy me, in this case calm me down?  Exercise, walking, yoga, breathing, meditating, being creative, playing music or writing, painting, making jewelry all of these can be used to deal with the stress that leads to your smoking. There are likely more layers of issues such as why you started in the first place and how you feel about smoking. All can be explored to help you better understand why this arrived in your life and how to work through it. 

Addiction is a complex issue, it has a physical component that is at first the hardest to deal with. In the case of smoking you might consider nicotine gum or patches to help deal with urges. Yet, if you really want to work through an addiction understanding the cause helps in letting go of this old habit and moving forward into a fresh, open space in the present where you are free from the addition, the habit and the guilt and stress that it creates by being in your life. You see the stress that leads you to smoke also creates more stress of its own kind so that it is really a vicious circle and nothing is really made better. The only way to make it better is to rid yourself of the damaging pattern once and for all.

Harness the New Year energy, while many others are doing the same thing you can ride the collective energetic wave and it will be that much easier.

Let 2015 be your year to shine!

Do You Believe In Miracles?

So there I was living my life, trying to maintain a spiritual ground but really freaking out on the inside on a daily basis because of several dramas that were playing out in my life. When, suddenly a miracle happened to me. It doesn't matter what my miracles is, truly there are several if I think about them. What matters is that I clearly saw how everything is in perfect order. The only thing that stops us, is us. If we are in a place of lack, for example, we can block out miracles. Then again, if we are allowing for life to show up and bring us new avenues to explore and new pathways to walk then we never know what we might find.

The joy is in discovery, the wisdom is in the joy.

What is it that blocks us from miracles? So many people are wounded, it seems we are born even with wounds. Then we live our lives and more wounds occur. After a time life becomes heavy and it is hard to remain upbeat. This is like the teaching of the Buddha, life is suffering. Then, we start to question who is having this experience? Am I the dreamer or the dream? We start to ask and when we do we begin to open our eyes. We begin our exploration, we take to our spiritual path.

Yet, the old ways are habits made hard to break. This is where we need miracles. We need them in the form of solutions and answers, we find them through others and we experience them in gratitude.

What is a miracle? Anything that spontaneously and completely changes your perspective for the better. Want a miracle? Ask. It is as simple as that. If you find it not being simple you are getting in your own way.

For anyone who is a sports fan, you know what I mean by believing in miracles. There is something magical about your team going to the playoffs and advancing. It is a collective miracle experience These can happen in our individual lives as well. Invite miracles into your life and you will be amazed at what shows up.

What Are You Doing Now?

I was in the middle of another multi tasking whirlwind not long ago and it hit me, I asked myself why are you doing this in this manner? I noticed how each thing I had to do felt like a chore, something to hurry and get through. I realized that this is how I live my life. I am always in the future moment, busily planning my actions and robbing myself of the present moment. When I study, I do it to get it done, when I clean, cook, eat, work, walk my dog, all of it is done so that I can get it over with and do...what? A few things come to mind, relax, unplug, write, listen to music, meditate. Yet, so often my state of mind is in such a frantic pace that I am too wound up to really enjoy these things. I know I am not alone.

Our culture praises the over achiever, it worships the workaholic, time out for yourself, slowing down your pace, reflection, these are things to do when you retire. Our culture is so work based that it has lost an integral part of what it means to be alive. We are alive but we are not living. We are working, working, working. It feels good to work we are productive, it validates us, makes us redeemable and qualifies us as one of the norm. This includes stay at home moms, the underemployed, self employed and so on. Work is work. Yet I ask, where is the rest? We are multi-tasking ourselves into the ground and I don't know if has occurred to anyone to hit the panic button.

Here in America our puritan based culture is a young one, we haven't really evolved into the philosophic nature of our American souls yet. If the early settlers had had the intelligence to embrace rather than to obliterate the indigenous cultures that existed here in our country for centuries before European arrival this entire topic would likely not be necessary. For the philosophies of the American Indian are exactly the ones we need to adopt into mainstream society. That, sadly, tragically did not happen. We are left then with the notion that it is always best to forge ahead (exploit), to discover the next thing (conquer), to work until you drop (for the man). Is it any wonder then that we do not slow down or pause and reflect? To do so isn't even encouraged, if you do people will ask, "what's the matter with you?"

What the matter is, what this all has to do with, is soul loss. Disconnection with your soul. We are as a culture suffering from it. We cannot go on the way we have been, it is bound to create a crisis within. It manifests in various forms, as physical illness, a business failing, losing your job, a marriage breaking up. We think these events are just fate, coincidence, bad luck, unfortunate yes but things that happen to everyone in one way or another. To some extent this is true, but in the larger sense what is going on is simply put a disconnect between your mind and your soul.

How to fix such a thing is both easy and yet challenging. First, we stop and reflect. No more of this racing through to get things done business, It is not working. For a time now the old belief systems that held together the world worked, they could only bring us so far though, now we are as a species evolving. American or not we are all coming out of a long sleep and the old ways of thinking are no longer enough. We search for something, we know to do so instinctively, we are calling back our souls.

I remember reading Eckert Tolle's, The Power of Now in the late 90's, new to my spiritual path I understood it conceptually, but I had a very hard time living it. To live in the moment means to let go of the past, and to not project out into the future. To just be here now. This is the opposite of what we have been taught for it fosters inner peace not drive and ambition. Drive and ambition are in no way negative we all need these qualities but is it best for these feelings to be the dominant ones within your inner landscape? Would it not be more conducive to overall well being to have peace at your inner core?

Being present means to be content with wherever you are at right now. Let's talk about that for a moment, where you are now is exactly where you need to be. Don't like it, change it. Look within and guess what, you can only do so in the present moment. You can't look inward when you are dwelling in the past or planning for tomorrow. We only have this moment now, be in it. Stop letting the moments that make up your life pass by. We do so by projecting into the past or future and before we know it years and even our entire lifetime has passed us by. Think of it, where were you ten years ago? What were your thoughts? What were your days made out of? How fast has the ten years gone by? When we are trapped in the illusion of time we always feel we do not have enough of it. Time seems to speed by and our perception of lack of it grows. This doesn't happen in the present moment why the reason is because in that space you have stepped outside of time. Try it, for just a few seconds, be fully present, notice the stillness, let go, close your eyes. How do you feel? Try opening your eyes and looking around you, see your surroundings with present eyes, don't send your thoughts into the future or past. Everything your eyes rest upon is given meaning by you, the clock means what it means because of your thoughts associated with it. The window and the tree outside, the fence beyond, the sky beyond that, the soft wind it is all given meaning by your observation, by you witnessing it and defining it as you have. We do this all day long subconsciously now try to do it consciously. What is the tree really? A life force, energy, or whatever you perceive it to be. This is an undoing of the way you see things, to notice them as they are not as you would define them, To understand too that we define everything. This means that everything you see, indeed all the things you perceive are able to be altered, to perceived in a new way. This way of thinking can transform your life and all the things in it including you.

What are you doing now? Why are you doing it? Most importantly how are you doing it? These are the questions to stop and ask yourself next time you catch yourself in a busy blur of not so meaningful activity.