Grief, Fishtanks and Upgrades

Grief, Fishtanks and Upgrades  ©2014 Joan M. Newcomb, CPC

It's been a tough week, two people we knew died on Monday besides Robin Williams.  With the other celebrity deaths, it must have been quite a welcome party in Heaven.

This isn't what I meant to talk about it but I will.  I have been suicidally depressed at times during my life.  When I was sixteen, I took a massive overdose, and ended up in a coma for three days. I wasn't trying to kill myself, but the pain had gotten so bad I didn't know how else to express it.

When I left my first marriage, the holidays were excruciating, and nothing looked better than slipping off a ferry boat into Puget Sound.

Things began turning around when my friend died.  The grief was unbearable and yet I was getting constant input from him.  I got the awareness that that we are always connected as Consciousness, and our lifetimes pass in the blink of an eye.

 The physical realm is like a big swimming pool, and dying is getting out of the pool when swim time is over.  I could have another 50+ years in the pool, so why not enjoy splashing about?

It wasn't so easy, it took several more months to realize that 90% of my thoughts were negative. During most of the day, I would tell an imaginary audience my stories of all the terrible things that were happening to me.  I had to figuratively grab myself by my ears are redirect my thoughts to positive things.  However, after only a couple of weeks I found myself lifted out of a depression that I'd been in for over a decade.

Note: I'm not saying that you can bring yourself out of depression just by changing your thoughts.  Sometimes people need help with their brain chemistry, and should talk to their naturopath or medical health specialist for recommendations.

Embrace Change

Embrace Change ©2014 Joan M. Newcomb

I started writing this talking about the tough times people are going through, then realized it was exactly like a post I started writing a month ago, and scrapped in favor of a more uplifting message.  I'm doing the same again.

Listen, I know tough times.  I've survived an overdose, abuse, betrayal, divorce, poverty, loss, death.  And I honestly can't say what kept me from jumping off a ferry at times.  But I'm glad I did. I want to give a higher perspective of what it's all about:

Seasons are changing, trees and plants are going through new cycles, it's time to move on. This planet is all about creating and destroying, and each part of the cycle is equally creative, from the perspective of Consciousness.

If you try to hold on to what is going away, it's going to be extraordinarily painful. Trying to stop the flow of life is like trying to stop a river with your hands.

This doesn't mean you can't change your reality. You can reverse a fatal illness, you can get out of a soul destroying job, you can thrive after abuse. But change comes with letting go, you don't fight what isn't working.

Sometimes your Universal Self helps you change by creating circumstances that are "straws that break the camel's back". Situations from which there is no turning back. Forcing you to hit bottom so there's no way to go but up.

Things happen that shatter your sense of self, and you have to reinvent your life. It's like not remodeling your house until there's a fire or earthquake.

Consciousness (your Universal Self) views all this with amusement and neutrality.  This world is Your playground, Your whole purpose is to create. Nothing is ever truly lost, nothing ever truly dies, energy transforms.

Beings leave their bodies, but they still exist as Essence. At a greater level, as Consciousness, there is no separation, we're all still connected.

At some point, I realized that in order to live to a ripe old age, I'll have to get used to loss.  So here's my greater perspective on that:

Embrace change, welcome the new, open your arms to what is out there.  You are your own parent and midwife, birthing you into a new experience with each breath.

You ARE Consciousness, this is your playground, go out there and play!














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Confusing Personality for Consciousness

This week on our Radio Show Janet and I discussed a topic send in by a listener.  She wondered how much of life was consciously created, and how much was that 'sh*t happens'.   Two people she knew had died recently, one had committed suicide, the other overdosed.

The suicide had been an energy worker, and was discouraged that her techniques seemed to no longer be working.  She said her Higher Self had planned for her to 'leave early'.

The overdose may have been accidental, but an aunt had foreseen when she was a child that there was a 'dark cloud in her future'.

I've long said that nothing is pre-determined in that nothing is set in stone.  We create our future through our choses and actions.  We have free will to change lanes on the freeway of life.  If that's so, how could the aunt see a dark cloud ten or twenty years into a child's future?

It's like a long term weather forecast.  Meteorologists can see a weather pattern happening in Guam and know that there will probably be snow in Oregon six weeks later.  When looking at futures, you're looking at possibilities.  You may be seeing some influence by family patterns, just as a Meteorlogist knows weather currents and storm seasons.

And within that, an individual can make shifts, go into recovery, turn from 'bad' to 'good' simply by changing their beliefs about themselves.

However, there's still weather.  It still may rain or snow.  And within that weather, there are choices how to respond.

Now an energy worker can fall into the belief that they can (and must) control their reality.  That if something is happening that they don't like, there's something wrong.  That thought alone, that something is 'wrong', is personality based.  Consciousness in neutral, amused, and non-judgemental.  Nothing is every wrong.  All is very, very well.

That bodies get sick, and bodies age, is fascinating to Consciousness, which is eternal and ever joyous.
If you're viewing something with black-and-white, life-or-death thinking, it's your personality lens you're looking through.

Jerry Hicks, husband of Esther who channels "Abraham-Hicks", developed cancer and died.  Why did he do that, aren't they so enlightened that they'll live forever?  Well, yes, and he is living forever.  But it was time to trade in the old body.

The energy worker committed suicide, that was another way to go.  But she could have also stuck around to see what else would unfold.  Old techniques stop working when you're transforming into a new state, opening to new possibilities.

I used to say that we signed up for life lessons before we were born.  The more capable we are (I'd say) the harder lessons we'd take on.  We'd enroll in 8 honors classes, two afternoon clubs, varsity sports, and a weekend job and when we incarnated discover that it was college, not high school.  Or I'd use the example of actors in movies.  The more talented actor takes on the most dramatic and painful role.

Now I realize it's not so linear. We're simultaneously Consciousness and personality-form.  Embodiment, incarnation, is continuously happening.  We're bringing in Awareness, and releasing unconscious patterns.  We inhale a new experience with each breath.

Higher Self is not separate from Us, unless you're viewing it through your personalities eyes.  You Are Essence moving into form.

When you shift to that awareness, you make different choices, you relax into whatever is happening.  And if storm clouds are brewing, you put on your yellow slicker and rubber boots and jump up and down with excitement, waiting for it to come!