The Year of the Ox: The History, Meaning & Power

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The Year of the Ox: The History, Meaning & Power

Every 12 years, we experience a Year of the Ox in the Chinese Zodiac. Most recently, we rode the rollercoaster of the year 2021, and the next time we see the Ox will be in 2033. You might have heard about years marked by animals in the past, but what does it all mean?

Coming to understand the history, symbolism, and ultimate power of the animals that stretch across the 12-year cycle of the Chinese Zodiac can help you come to understand yourself and the Universe so much better. Armed with this new tool and information, you can better delve into self-reflection, spiritual development, and rebirth!

The Origin Of The Chinese Zodiac

As early as the 14th century, the Chinese used a celestial calendar and celebrated the New Year. The Chinese lunar calendar is the oldest structured example of the zodiac animals used in conjunction with years passing. However, the Chinese Zodiac itself is so ancient that we can’t pinpoint its origin exactly!

However, there is a legend of the Great Race, which tells the story of the Chinese Zodiac’s beginnings. The Jade Emperor commanded all the animals to race across a river in the story.

The first 12 animals to make it to the other side would have years named after them, and they would appear in the order that they placed in the race. According to the legend, the Ox would have been first if it weren’t for the cunning of the Rat, which hid in the Ox’s ear and jumped out across the finish line as soon as the Ox made it to the other side.

When it comes to archeological evidence, signs of the 12 animals in the zodiac first appeared around the 5th century B.C. during the Zhan Guo period. It wasn’t until the Han Dynasty between 206 B.C. and 9 A.D. that the zodiac was officially identified. It was not until the late 500s A.D. that the animals were used to identify people born in their corresponding years. The North Zhou Dynasty was officially in power when the zodiac animals became popular!

We now know that Chinese Zodiac uses animals and elements to mark time passing. Partnered with the lunar calendar, the Zodiac uses animals to mark years, days, and hours in 12 segments each.

Overall, the Zodiac spans 60-year cycles with different combinations of animals and elements to uniquely identify them.

Why An Ox?

The Chinese Zodiac consists of animals significant to China’s culture and history. Each animal was chosen intentionally as being helpful, majestic, and powerful in the people’s eyes.

The animals are always cycled through in the same order, starting with the Rat. Following are the Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and finally, the Pig.

As a result, if your birth year lands within the second year of the Chinese lunar calendar cycle, you are marked by the Ox.

So why did the Chinese choose to honor the Ox so highly? Oxen have been an essential part of the Chinese’s ability to farm, transport go

ods, and build a powerful military throughout history. For farming, they are strong, sturdy animals that can move heavy materials, graze and provide milk.

They are low-maintenance, providing great help without needing rewards or anything in return.

On the back of the Ox, Chinese agricultural success and history stand tall. As a result, the Ox is highly revered and often used to compliment others, such as “You are very like an Ox!”

What Happens in the Year of the Ox?

Many predictions are told by seers using the elements and animals, including the year ahead, the people born in those years, and guidance such as for relationships and financial success. Though highly revering each animal in their zodiac calendar, the Chinese have never denied the existence of negative forces and flaws.

Each animal in the zodiac has positive and negative traits that help those born in their years better understand themselves and what awaits them.

One might guess being an Ox in the current year of the Ox (also known as your natal year) is a great thing, but it’s quite the opposite! Chinese astrology says that Tai Sui, otherwise known as the “God of the Year,” works to make the natal year of that person unlucky for them.

Tai Sui can be found as a constellation connected in opposition with the planet Jupiter and draws on the unstable energy of the planet.

Using the knowledge of Tai Sui and the characteristics of the Ox, fortune tellers have formulated horoscopes. For those born an Ox, seers have predicted turmoil and strain in love and finances during natal years. Each year has exceptions, however.

In 2021, for example, those marked by the Ox might find some good fortune in their career even if the overall situation was still mainly negative. Which element is combined with the animal during that year can help bring insights to the nuances of those lucky and unlucky events.

If you are born in the Year of the Ox and are entering your natal year, fortune tellers warn that attempts at success beyond self-development are risky. Rejection in love and missteps in your career can lead to turmoil for you. Instead, focus on your wellbeing and take steps to balance your inner self.

What Are The Chinese Zodiac Elements?

Each year, the animals also cycle through five elements. The Chinese Zodiac includes water, metal, earth, fire, and wood. In 2021, the Year of the Ox was also metal, giving the personality of the Ox nuances of popularity among friends and hardworking, active work ethics.

If you are Wood Ox, you’re probably restless and headstrong. If you’re a Fire Ox, you might be practical but narrow-minded.

If you’re an Earth Ox, you could be honest and responsible. If you’re a Water Ox, you might be ambitious and have excellent observational skills.

Using both your animal and water signs, you can begin to explore yourself further and better respond to relationships and situations in the future!

What Does It Mean to Be Born in the Year of the Ox?

Born in the Year of the Ox? A few set things according to the Chinese Zodiac are good and bad luck for you. Your lucky numbers, for example, are 1 and 4, and your lucky colors are white, yellow, and green. You can also have particular affinities to tulips and peach blossoms and to north and south directions.

You also have compatible and incompatible signs! You should stick close to people with Rat, Snake, and Rooster signs, as they are most likely to work well with you.

Lesser compatible signs are the Tiger, Horse, Goat, and Monkey, so you might want to proceed with caution when entering relationships with these signs.

Like the Ox, those with the Ox sign usually enjoy a long and healthy life. They are also best suited for hard work requiring close attention to detail, like agriculture, engineering, carpentry, or politics.

The Chinese recommend wearing red throughout your natal year to avoid some of the bad luck that might come!

REMEMBER!

In all things astrological, please realize that these aspects are only suggestions to help you better delve into self-reflection and ease some stress. You are far more powerful than you realize.

The blueprints that astrology suggests are not hard and fast rules. It might also be that you have other influences in your life that might greatly enhance your ability to receive what you desire.

To improve your vibration, luck, and happiness, spend time chanting Sanskrit mantras and love-filled sutras.

Pray for others and the Universe prays for you.

If you’re looking for more tools to delve into self-reflection, you can try out my personality cards or look into my FREE YOURSELF course. It’s wonderful.

YOU ARE LOVE!

You are a beautiful Living Being filled with light and love, born from stardust. You are unlimited potential in every direction. With a focus on discipline, virtue, and your own goodness, you can become as expanded and liberated as you desire. 

BLESSINGS TO YOU!

There is no “Other.” There is only you experiencing yourself.

The Nature Of Spirits: What Are They And How Do They Function?

Spirits are everywhere in the world around us

Spirits are everywhere in the world around us

 

SPIRITS ARE EVERYWHERE! YAY!

Maybe you’ve been visited by a spirit from another realm. It might be that you feel there is an entity attaching to you somehow. Or maybe you’re just curious as to the nature of spirits: what they do, why they appear, where do they reside, and how can they be in both the spirit world and this physical reality?

The veils between here and there are thin. While our lives might appear to be one solid experience with clearly defined forms and boundaries, the truth is far more complex and bizarre.

As we relate with people in our daily lives, we must remember that they comprise a tiny subset of a much larger group of relationships with whom we relate on a regular basis.

When we awake in the morning, we might feel as though we are alone. We might even love our solitude. The reality is that we are never 100% alone. There are always spirits wandering about. They might not be sitting on our beds as we sip our morning java, but you can be certain that some are hovering or meandering somewhere near your home.

Spirits are everywhere. They come and go within this realm and on this planet, and throughout many others. Spacetime is not limited in any way. And neither are spirits.

Spirits Pop In And Out

Like you and me, each spirit has its own electromagnetic signature and vibration. This means it will magnetize aspects of itself – to itself – just like you and I would attract situations, relationships, and learning in our physical lives here on planet earth.

Whether they know it or not, spirits can dematerialize and reappear at will. They might not even know when they are appearing and disappearing. Their electromagnetic signatures have a life of their own.

Most spirits aren’t fully conscious of their skills or the nature of their form. Most often, they behave like children playing Hide-n-Go-Seek or lost puppies who lost track of how to get home.

We are each a collection of particles continuously moving from one reality to another. It’s the same with spirits and it’s the same with every physical object in our lives – the chair, the computer, the couch. Everything is moving within itself and outside itself without any limiting boundaries. The only limiting boundaries are form, assumption, intention, and vibration – all of which are changeable.

And now the super complex part….

What Is Infused In A Spirit’s Vibration?

While you, me, and any spirit might appear to be a very specific thing, there’s a lot going on under the hood. It might look like an old fucked-up truck, but it may have been built in a way to make you think it’s got no teeth. It might appear to be a GMC Pacer or Toyota Prius in the picture, but once you get a look at the engine,  you’ll know the nature of the beast.

Each of us has lived thousands of lives. We live, we get excited, we do stuff, then we die. At the moment of our death, we imagine where we are headed, and since we don’t usually clean our palettes at death, we don’t die very well. We leave our bodies, feel confused, get a sense that we have some unfinished business and juicy desires, choose another mom or dad, then, within 6 months of Earth-time, we end up birthing into a similar form doing similar things.

YAY! REINCARNATION! WOOHOOO!

No thanks.

The idea here would be to meditate, pray, have boundaries, learn lessons, and inch toward the simultaneous death of our egos and bodies. Since our egos carry the agendas, if we diminish them over time (reducing our vasanas,  desires, etc), we can die and exit our bodies and truly complete.

If we don’t achieve enlightenment in this lifetime, through a great deal of effort, we can certainly achieve a higher level of consciousness. That said, if we’re not careful while we are dying and exiting this body, we could easily trick ourselves (or be tricked) into doing all the same crap all over again.

Yeah, let’s not do that.

When we are born, built into our fabrics, deeply infused into our natures, is the unfinished business of prior lives. Ahh! There’s the rub! Yes. We are not necessarily what we appear to be. This is why when you date someone and it feels all warm-fuzzy and then all of a sudden, it’s holy-moly, this person is NUTZO, it’s because they are working through their stuff – just like you – which is why you attracted them in the first place.

There you are all pretty and wonderful, but you know that something else is going on. You have anger, struggles, concerns, confusion, and more. You might be continuously attracting knuckleheads into your life and losing limbs at every turn. You might be happy on one particular day and then feeling like death on another.

This is all because we have unresolved desires (vasanas), each of which takes quite a bit of effort to dissolve. Each vasana has been with us for many lifetimes. We might dissolve one and then grow another – until we stop growing desires and refuse them all. That’s called LIBERATION.

We might not even know the half of what we’re carrying in terms of karma and vasanas. Our cute little lives might not be able to handle all of them. We birth, have vasanas, and work through as much as possible. What mostly happens though is that we enter this life excited and we continue to be excited about all of it, including the vasanas. We tend to forget that we were mostly in pain during our life. We forget that the pain can be avoided by releasing the vasanas. Therein lies the challenge: we love the emotional roller coasters of karma. We love to own and achieve, even though neither what we own or what we achieve can be carried forward from life to life. Yup, we’re not that bright.

This is why I highly recommend having spiritual masters and gurus in this life. They can help us expedite the burning of karma and vasanas.  As a devotee of Amma (Amma.com), The Hugging Saint, I am continuously uplifted. In many ways, I feel Amma has my back. If not Amma, there’s Jesus, Yogananda, Mother Meera, or a host of other loving, enlightened Beings who are either living or recently lived here on Earth.

Keep reading, but enjoy this other article I wrote about what happens when we die. JUICY!

How Do We Burn Through Karma

The more we pray, the more we love, the more we meditate, the more we can release the negative aspects of ourselves, including the twisty, tenacious twirls of karma. We can also do rituals, pujas, and ceremonies that help us forgive ourselves, forgive others, and dissolve the attachments and burdens that inhibit us. It’s all about forgiveness. It’s all about letting go.

Remember, this is all an illusion.

I subscribe to and pay Amma’s temple to do pujas for each aspect of my soul and life. Meanwhile, I do rituals that I’ve learned from Native American and other teachers. These rituals are powerful. They’ll change your life. I also pray, chant mantras, chant sutras, and do lots of giveaways. All of these things help me enrich my soul and connect with higher vibrations.

Why Is This Spirit Following Me?

This is one my favorite questions.

One of the more probable answers is that the spirit is someone you knew from this life or a prior life. This spirit might feel unresolved about prior life interactions with you or they’ve come to tell you they love you. This might even just want to hang out with you. Why? They might be bored or they might need to watch you for a while so they can learn something specific from you.

The spirit might also be someone who wants to know you, but hasn’t met you within a physical life experience yet.

And yes, some spirits just want to cuddle. I know that sounds a bit scary, but it’s really no big deal. It’s like when a puppy nuzzles up to you. Just relax and ask them to follow the light and go elsewhere.

While some people like me tend to sensationalize this idea of detached spirits and all the dangers – that’s so rare, it’s not even worth mentioning. They are as open boundaries and a nudge to leave as all the positive and peaceful spirits. They just might need a little more love for a moment. You can also just chant your mantra or a sutra and hold the intention that they find the light.

From a spiritual-lesson perspective, here’s another answer: If you attracted it, it’s you! You are the Universe. You are everything! No matter what is in front of you or within you, you must deal with it as if it were an aspect of YOU. Because it is. You are what you seek. You are what you see. You are what you attract. You are what you project. You are what you experience. Own it all, forgive it all, and release it all. In truth, it’s all nothing.

When we have negative energies and spirits attaching to us, it’s a really GOOD SIGN. It’s a wake-up call. Just like in real life when a crazy person tries to hurt you in some way, it’s God saying, “Hey, you might want to look at this part of yourself.”

I see spirits all time time. Some of them scare the heck out of me. Others are so sweet that I can barely handle it. Here’s the thing – all of these spirits are the same. They are a little lost and they need love. For each spirit who engages me, I might scream at first LOL, but then I immediately tell them I love them. I say things like:

“You are so beautiful and so loved. I am with you and I want you to be happy. God loves you. The light is waiting for you. Follow the light, follow your heart, and seek your highest Self. You are love, my dear. Go toward love and become it! Follow that light and you’ll feel better. I LOVE YOU!”

 

If you attracted them, they are either interested in your Lightbody or they recognize their shadows as being the same ones within you. It doesn’t really matter why or how they appeared. What matters is that you love them and you want them to be happy. Doing so, you might also see and feel things within yourself that require forgiving.

Look at every aspect of yourself and your life and forgive it all. Go piece by piece, person by person, circumstance by circumstance, and forgive everything about everything, forever backward and forward.

 

Dissolving it all, we can Be Here Now.

Loving it all, We Can Be Without Fear.

 

Fear is good because it reminds us of the unprotected parts of our lives. We can then improve those parts. Soon, most fears can become little friends who continue to remind us to protect ourselves.

Fear can also be a nasty sore. The idea here would be to look honestly at your fears and look for ways to either uplevel them into love or dissolve them into history.

The Past Does Not Exist. It Is A Canceled Check. Let It Go.

 

After doing rituals and forgiving, it’s important that we get back to the present moment. That’s because we only have the present moment. Everything else is a result of our minds and spirits seeking attachments and control.

All we can do is love.

If we know how to love, we can serve others.

If we have fear, we can meditate on love.

If we have spirits attaching to us, we can meditate on love, and we can pray for those spirits. When we pray for others, the Universe prays for us. We can also pray for ourselves. My gosh, pray for yourself as often as possible! PRAYER WORKS!

If something is bothering you or if someone is attacking you, you can set boundaries. You are powerful. We are resourceful. You are a Light-Being wrapped in light and love, born from stardust.

I already know that I love you, even if you have blocks and even if I don’t see you perfectly as you believe yourself to be. I know that I want to love you. I know that love works. It can dissolve all burdens.

Jesus was love. Jesus is love.

Buddha is nothingness wrapped in love.

You are the same. You are all of it.

 

Remember yourself. Remember how lovely and wonderful you are.

Be love. You got this!

What Happens When We Die

 

Everyone is fascinated by imagining what happens when we die. We’re entranced when we see it in movies, we anticipate it when thinking of our elders, and we wonder what might become of us, upon our demise. 

When I learned to consciously exit my body long ago, I remember feeling a subtle death upon every exit. Perhaps this was my body and soul remembering what souls do – they enter, interact for a time, and eventually leave. 

Exiting my body and moving through walls, wandering into other rooms, or jetting across the city, I would be conscious of the living, physical body that I had left behind. While in the midst of these out-of-body journeys, I would often crave my body and wonder if it was safe from harm. 

I eventually came to realize that our souls are incredibly pure and they love our bodies. After some experiences with other out-of-body spirits, I would understand that our bodies can easily be inhabited and controlled by other spirits. Our job is to protect our souls AND our bodies.

After sensing shadowy souls in my midst, I chose to stop exiting my body for sport and came to respect this life as a miracle. After many exits and journeys, I choose to never exit my body again. 

Going forward and through to today, I am fascinated by the notion of a physical form (my body) and a spirit (my soul) coming together, merging, and having experiences together. This is absolutely amazing to me. When putting these experiences into the hopper labeled Death, I am even more entranced by the notion. 

 

“The soul is unborn and eternal, everlasting and primeval. It is not slain by the slaying of the body.”

— Bhagavad Gita 2.20

 

While some of us think about what happens when we die all the time (heck, I certainly do!), others wait until their physical bodies are failing them or moments prior to their final breath. 

You might be devoted to a specific religion because you fear death or hope your deity will protect you when you are thrust from your physical body. You might see death as a joke or a new beginning. You might view the life-death event as something that concludes when we die or you might imagine the life-death cycle to continue ad Infinitum. 

Regardless of how you might imagine death or contemplate the temporary nature of your current, physical existence, passing beyond this life is inevitable. In some cases, it might even be enviable. And while death has a mystique that appears evasive and elusive, it is certainly something you can come to understand. 

Every major religion makes attempts at defining the course of activities and realities we’ll experience upon our deaths, but Hinduism seems to approximate death better than all other religions and ideologies. With no inherent judgment in the lingo or proposed persecution, like we might find in the world’s other most popular religions, and delivered in such a matter-of-fact manner, much of these writings appear more plausible and based on real-world experience. I love that about Hinduism. 

What Is Brahman?

Hindu scriptures teach us that Brahman is the ultimate and sole reality. It is the singular, undivided, living consciousness, embodying all aspects within and without, above and beyond, physical and non-physical, material and non-material, breathing and non-breathing, and throughout all realities and realms, inclusive of and far beyond spacetime. There is no “other,” there is only Brahman. 

The Journey Of Jivas.

A jiva is a soul, like you and me, and the embodiment of a distinct aspect within the eternal nature of Brahman. Brahman is pure and unchanging. Jivas diverge upon every birth. They are cloaked in Maya or earthly desires, and their derivatives, which means they are ignorant, or varying degrees thereof. 

The state of a Jiva or soul is such that each is generally unable to recognize its oneness with the All-That-Is or Brahman, yet they act within their realities like chaotic particles in three-dimensional space. Brahman is foundational to reality, as it IS reality. Jivas most often experience Brahman as a sideshow, an idea, rather than the ultimate expansiveness inherent within them. 

While liberated souls like Amma and other enlightened Beings will merge with All-Consciousness upon passing from this life, the rest of us will most likely have a different path. That said, anything is possible!

Amma, The Hugging Saint, found at Amma.org, says this about death: “There is a very subtle sheath covering our gross, physical bodies. All of our thoughts are imprinted in this layer. Like a tape recorder, this covering records all acts which we do mentally, verbally, and physically while we are alive. This forms a covering of thoughts.”

This cloak is durable and it’s energetically magnetized to our spirit, soul, or jiva. When we exit our bodies, this Maya or layer comes with us. As we rise out of our bodies and into the non-physical eternal planes of existence, we are still connected to and can interact with the physical planes. This means that, upon our deaths, we can choose to become traveling ghosts, off to seek adventures throughout the realms! I can imagine flying through the skies across eternity!

This might sound more positive than it is. If we’re wandering around like ghosts, we’re probably missing a well-formed, congruent, or elevated intention. Without this type of intention, we might continue to wander aimlessly and indefinitely. The same can be said for our real-world lives in this three-dimensional reality, here on Earth. This is why the Hindu and Buddhist texts encourage deep contemplation and spiritual exercises near to and just prior to our deaths. 

When we die to this physical body, rather than wandering, we might rise to a particular plane of existence that is akin to our actions during our lifetimes or in line with the vibration of our focus at the moment of our deaths. Wherever we might arrive in the other realms and planes, the soul, or jiva has no physical form. It is not recognizable to having recently lived a life in a physical body. While the outer layers of thought and Maya might appear in human-shaped forms, these forms are temporary and do not represent the nature of the jiva or soul. 

As a jiva, and regardless of whether or not we are cloaked in memorable forms, we still might feel thirst and hunger. This is due to the tendencies of our most recent lives. These can dissipate over time. 

“Perhaps the deepest reason why we are afraid of death is because we do not know who we are. We believe in a personal, unique, and separate identity — but if we dare to examine it, we find that this identity depends entirely on an endless collection of things to prop it up: our name, our “biography,” our partners, family, home, job, friends, credit cards… 

It is on their fragile and transient support that we rely for our security. So when they are all taken away, will we have any idea of who we really are?

Without our familiar props, we are faced with just ourselves, a person we do not know, an unnerving stranger with whom we have been living all the time but we never really wanted to meet. Isn’t that why we have tried to fill every moment of time with noise and activity, however boring or trivial, to ensure that we are never left in silence with this stranger on our own?”

― Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying 

If we have lived a spiritually-focused life and released many of our desires prior to our deaths, we might rise to beautiful realms where other souls equal to or more expanded than our natures might exist. 

In most cases though, when we are traversing from this life to the next, we tend to carry some of our unfulfilled desires with us. Since desires are imaginary and born from mind and ego (both temporary structures), the magnetic natures of our desires will attract and pull emptiness into our spheres. 

This emptiness will feel like a mid-ocean, where nothing feels real or possible. It’s in this space that we might feel direction- and purposeless. Given our spiritual tendencies from prior lives, we can move beyond these oceans. If we have been devotional to a master or guru, we will have better chances at evolving our souls when existing within or visiting the mid-oceans.

These jivas or souls are not innocents. They might even carry intentions and demands akin to our noisy neighbors and imagined enemies. To appease and exercise their desires and attitudes, they might attack other living Beings and people. They do this by moving within the breath of other individuals and life-forms. 

As the living Being breathes, the jiva-entities can move into and throughout soul’s that physical body or the soul itself. By doing so, disembodied jivas have the ability to destroy a weak-minded jiva’s consciousness. They might even push them to eat and act according to their wills. This type of attack is only possible when the living Being has no boundaries, awareness, or mental ability to protect themselves. 

“Two birds sitting in the tree (the body). One bird, the jiva is enjoying the fruits of the tree and the other the Paramatma is watching the jiva.” 

— Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad (4.7)

The Soul’s Options When We Die

Jivas (you and me when we die) have options when we are living in the other realms and planes. Soon after our physical deaths, we might immediately choose another body to enter, thereby starting a brand new life. Upon entry into the new life form, we will adopt unique and new layers of thoughts, intentions, attitudes, and personalities. As we are born into and experience the cultural aspects of that body’s existence, our minds, hearts, and identities morph to appease the attributes of those cultural, societal, religious, and family-story projections.

Jivas do not often enter the bodies while the physical forms (babies) are within the womb. It is most often just prior to birth that the soul (jiva) infuses itself into the meat of the body. The jiva does this through the baby’s breath or the child’s first meals. 

In all, a jiva’s post-death journey, spiritual up-leveling, and new-birth potential will be dependent upon the karma they have yet to resolve during all of their prior lifetimes. A soul will continue birthing and rebirthing until all desires and energetic, karmic attachments are dissolved or eliminated. This notion should inspire us to live according to dharmic ideologies, whereby we remain unattached and unimpeded by life’s conditions. 

When we die, we can be uplifted, and our jivas can be healed through the rituals and prayers of those we left behind. By chanting certain mantras throughout our lifetimes and with the help of others chanting mantras after our deaths, we can receive higher levels of birth and more expanded planes of existence. Mostly, rituals, mantras, and prayers will help our jivas to stop their wandering – in this life and in the afterlife. 

“If the tip of the hair were to be divided into one hundred parts and each part was divided into 100 more parts, that would be the dimension of the Jiva (soul)”. 

— Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad (5.9)

Catholicism & Christianity On Death

In Catholicism and many factions of Christianity, it’s less about the laws of nature and spirit, and more about judgment. Since consciousness is pervasive and comprises God (and all eternal Beings), the idea of judgment is obsolete. Nevertheless, many Catholics believe they are judged upon their death, all according to how they lived. Based on a life’s merit, a soul is then sent to either Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory. 

When souls live according to “God’s plan” or the “bible,” then they go to Heaven. If they were dark and lived antithetical to God’s law, then they will go to Hell. Anybody sitting in the middle of the spectrum will be awarded Purgatory, a place where they can go so prayers and their own revised intentions can help them up-level or downlevel. 

While these teachings have remnants of the organic truths of spirit, they define God and Consciousness as predominantly judgmental, rather than loving. That said, even Hinduism notes that our actions and intentions will result in various forms of karma, all of which must be dissolved to achieve higher states of consciousness. 

Osho, Chogyam Trungpa, Yogi Bhajan, and today’s Amma all encourage people to express themselves through art and creativity. The reason they do this is twofold: to bring more bliss into the world and to express desires so they will eventually dissolve. It is absolutely true that all desires eventually dissolve. 

Unfortunately, there are so many desires to accrue, we might never work through all of them. This is why the goal is to reach beyond desire and into the bosom of the Divine. This is where we will experience our most expanded and liberated natures. 

“Neither fire, nor wind, birth, or death can erase our good deeds.”

— The Buddha

How Do Thoughts Form Layers That Surround Our Jivas (Souls)?

Every thought, intention, and action that we allow ourselves to participate in has an energetic footprint. This footprint is magnetic in nature and it actually carries some weight. Yes, it has mass. This mass is something that we birth each time we conjure a thought and every time we engage in an action. 

We’re all young wizards and witches trying to embody brews that lean toward positive vibrations. We can be sneaky and egoistic. Most of us, even amid our prayers are hopeful that the recent dirty deed we performed had gone unnoticed. We love to ‘get away with it’ or get our way with things. It’s a lovely dream, but it’s an illusion. 

We can’t get away with anything. The challenge is that our minds are so adept at creating confusion, projections, selfish desires, and a variety of sugary, soul-numbing sweets, we might continue like this for generations, if not, eons. 

The trick is to be mindful of every thought and then release it. Watch the thoughts bubble upward and then disappear. We need not take action on every little fart that homesteads in our tired, narcissistic noggins. We can just allow our minds to create and allow our spirits to watch these creations dissolve into nothingness. 

After all, we are nothing. We are conjured little movies that reside nowhere. While the Akashic Records can record details, once they occur, they no longer exist. Yet, while the past is like a canceled check, the remnants of our past, if mired in karma, will be seated at our dinner tables for lifetimes to come. 

What Can We Do To Continually And Lovingly Clear Our Souls In Preparation For  Spiritual Life & Eventual Conscious Death?

While we are here on earth to participate in activities and exhaust our desires, we are also here to have a little bit of fun. The challenge is to embody bliss and love while also never hurting ourselves or others throughout the process. 

Through the courses of human interactions, it becomes quite probable that you’ll fuck up. You might mess up so badly that you can’t imagine clearing that from your “permanent record.” 

Luckily, it’s all purgeable. Every thought, intention, action, relationships, and projection is extinguishable through prayer, meditation, devotion to the divine, and conscious action. All of these things will offset your bad deeds. 

You might say something horrible to someone, burn a bridge in technicolor, or perseverate on vengeance throughout multiple lifetimes. 

While living our wonderful lives, we might prepare for when we die in subtle and spiritual ways. We have many options when it comes to modalities that lead to liberation.  

     — Meditate for 10 minutes in the morning and evening

     — Pray for others. When we do this, the universe prays for us.

     — Invite Light-Beings & Masters to help you with your evolution.

     — Choose a living Master, a guru, to help you evolve during this lifetime. 

     — Do Kundalini Yoga, alone at home, and with focused attention.

     — Forgive everything as quickly as possible. 

     — Pray for your soul and ask others to do the same.

     — Remember God in everything you do. 

I know this list is a tall order, but it’s a lovely set of activities to invite into your life. Even a little effort will spark God’s reach to penetrate your heart and life with divine light. Allow Her/Him/Them to merge with you in your every thought and action. 

You Are A Limitless And Expanded Soul!

Once you realize your limitlessness, you can formulate the correct levels of hope. From there, you can create game-plans to up-level your jiva’s vibration. With every positive deed and intention comes an improved set of magnets. 

Reach to the divine, be devotional in every way, and afford yourself the forgiveness  you deserve. Afford the same forgiveness to others and release the details of events gone by. If you can move more fluidly throughout your reality, your life will become more effortless and your karma will dissolve according to that lovely, lightness of Being. 

 

God Bless You! Be Strong! Be Wild! Find Clarity! And Enjoy This Life With Love!

 

When Love Is Difficult To Find

Love Is Difficult to Find Until We Open Our Eyes

We are always looking for experiences outside ourselves. We use these experiences to help us decide whether or not to be happy in any given moment. We continuously seek relationships, with the hope that each one will give us a missing part of ourselves. We buy cars, take trips, cut our hair, and work out. We run from place to place, hoping for at least one moment on this day, we will have a moment of unfettered joy. We might not even care about the joy at this point in our lives. We might simply be yearning for flashes of feeling free. 

Why are these moments of feeling joy and freedom so rare? Why does love and freedom escape us? Why can’t we find love and freedom – right now, right here? What is wrong with me?

First of all, there is nothing wrong with you. Love is the most difficult action we can take in this world. The problem is that we believe love to be a feeling. It’s not. Love is an action. Some of us believe love to involve romance. It doesn’t. There is nothing loving about romance. Romance is a projection that does not involve the other person. It involves what you are projecting onto the other person. It also requires that the other person give you something very specific. When this specific gift is no longer available, neither is the romance. Love is not romance. Romance is not love.

Romance involves neediness, demands, projection, desire, enabling, and passive aggression. Love is simply an action whereby we choose to serve and honor another person. Love is not demanding, needy, or hurtful. And while it’s never complicated, we often complicate it. Instead of looking for love within ourselves, we expect to only experience love from others. We might become so unreasonable that we’ll shame the other person into becoming the exact image of our unreasonable and unconscious idea of love. 

We prefer to objectify our lovers, manipulating them into servitude, rather than educating them by becoming an example of love. As we imprison others, we become imprisoned. 

So, where is all the love that’s available to me? 

Love is difficult to find only when we don’t realize that it’s exclusively available from the source. You are connected to the source. Once you become love, you’ll basque in it, which in turn will reflect onto the other people in your life. They still might not meet your secret expectations, but those expectations will pale in comparison to your embodiment of love. As you live in love, you’ll want to serve others – and all the details will fade away. You’ll obsess less, project less, and demand less. You’ll live in the moment more and more, and you’ll be satisfied. When you seek love from within, you achieve a durable, lasting love. It’s a river of love that continues to give – if you allow it. No matter who comes and goes in your life, this love can never be taken away from you. 

Some people believe that God is love. I believe that God is love. I believe that the whole Universe, and all the realms and Universes throughout our ever-expanding creation are one Being, all born from love. We were love long before our physical birth in this life. Some of us might bring former life memories and attitudes into this life, and potentially corrupt it. We might learn bad habits in this life and disconnect from love. Regardless, we can always return to our birthright – LOVE. It’s a choice in every moment of every day. 

When love is difficult to find, free yourself! Check out the Free Yourself Mini Audio Course to get a taste of what it’s like to find freedom and embrace love everywhere.

What Does It Mean When We Say “No Excuses”?

Throughout our lives, we see many people succeed and many who fail. We might workshop those who reach the tops of mountains, and we might dismiss those who suffer defeat. As we wander the planet pursuing our passions and interests, we might secretly worship one of the world’s “winners” in our mind’s eye, hoping that one day we’ll achieve a status equal to theirs. Amid our own victories and failures, we learn what works and what doesn’t. We either improve, pivot, or die. If we’re honest with ourselves, we might admit that we rarely learn from our mistakes. Because we might be a little stubborn or addicted to behaviors, beliefs, or emotions like anger, and we might never free ourselves from bad habits and misconceptions. It all comes down to our excuses. 

The idea of “no excuses” is simple. You either want to grow and improve your conditions, or you do not. You might want to expand your horizons or keep everything the way it is. If you want to truly change and advance your position in the world, it won’t be easy. It will not only require self-sacrifice and hard work, it will require you moving beyond your temporary self-identity and ego, and into a state of humility, honest, and wonder. If you’re too enthused with your identity and ego, you’ll continue to defend the notion that excuses are real. They are not. 

An excuse is a statement that we use to justify our inability to find pathways to improved conditions. It’s often contrived out of thin air and presented within ourselves in such a way that it brings us shame and lowers our electric vibration. When we have 4 or 5 excuses, we believe we have a legal, defensible case against ourselves and our potential. We then use our minds to take ourselves to spiritual court. Even with the best intentions and most innovative slights of hand, we’ll lose this battle every time. We are too smart for our own good. 

Here are a few reasons why your excuses are contrived fantasies that you’re using to defeat yourself and defend laziness:

1: You have skin, bones, a brain, a heart, and passion. With these elements, you can accomplish nearly anything. What most often happens is that we get distracted and depressed, and we refuse to shift our behaviors toward a more enlightening feeling or position. When you add our addictions to social media to the mix, you have a stew that can only breed mediocrity and complaints. 

2: Your ideas and passions are not that complicated. It’s not like your goal is to fly to a distant nebula on a magical, nuclear, cocktail napkin. Your desires are most likely based in reality, which gives you a fighting chance at bringing them to life. 

3: You have already tried sitting around, complaining, and building a case against yourself.

4: You already know which of the people in your life you no longer value. You’ve been keeping them around so you can feel validated. Its within this codependent model that we grow mental and emotional infections that can prevent us from ever evolving. 

5: You have made mistakes and you have created some unique, winning scenarios. Even with a predominance of failures, you still have enough data to thrust you forward with confidence. 

6: You’re sick of your attitude, so why not try something else?

Whether you believe in reincarnation or not, this life of yours is happening. It’s ON. It’s moving forward with or without you. Why not get over yourself, admit you’re blocked, and choose to change your daily routine so you can advance your life to the next level? Whether you’re in a wheelchair, convalescent home, army barracks, or depressing job, I would guess that all of your excuses are fabrications to justify your incorrect beliefs about yourself. 

Change your beliefs and you change your life. Go get em! Check out my Free Yourself Mini Audio Course for a taste of freedom from your excuses!

How To Set Boundaries & Sometimes Say Goodbye

 

We’ve all been there – stuck in a relationship with someone who drives us nuts or seeks to harm us. We don’t know how to free ourselves from the chains and bondage. We can’t seem to fathom a life without them, even though they impede our happiness. It’s a serious problem in the world today. With family constructs built upon foundations based on guilt and codependency, we all find it difficult to push back, draw the line, and break ties. But, haven’t you had enough? Aren’t you ready to reconstruct how to think about and enact these things? Do you want a change?

For those of us with big hearts and never-ending pools of energy, setting boundaries can be difficult. We might be in the midst of experiencing something deeply inspiring and truly wonderful, yet somehow we’ll allow an old flame, sibling, or arch-nemesis to mess us up. It’s an old story: “Life was going along so well – until ding-dong came along and hurt me again!” 

It doesn’t have to be this way. 

 

 

How To Set Boundaries With Confidence

1: When the other person is not around, write down how you feel now that you are separate from them. Continue to imagine other scenarios where they are not around and note how you feel. 

2: Make a list of the people who enable this relationship to continue. You know who I’m talking about: the tangential people who appear to be invested in you and the other person being connected. Write down their names and what you believe they continue to receive from you having this relationship.

3: Make a list of how your life would change if this harmful person was no longer in your life.

4: Make a list of the types of people you would prefer to have in your life. You can also list their attributes. 

5: Write an email, letter, or text to the person with whom you want to set boundaries. Share a clear list with them, nothing what the boundaries are, and what life will be like with these new boundaries in place. Ask that they respect your request. If the person is dangerous, send a copy of the communication to your lawyer and best friend. Send the communication and move on. If they have follow-up questions, that’s okay, but set a 24-hour time limit, then hold firm and move on.

6: Write and send emails, letters or texts and tell these people about the new boundaries you’ve set up. Ask them to either support you in this endeavor or remain detached and out of your way. 

7: Remain clear, firm, and positive. Stick to your plan. Release anyone from your life who is not supportive of this pursuit. They don’t deserve you and they might find other ways to trip-you-up in the future. 

Remember: Setting boundaries is about protecting yourself. It is not about offending the other person. While the other person might want to feel offended, it is their illusion to relish or release.

How To Say Goodbye To Someone (maybe forever)

1: Be very clear about how you feel about this person. Make sure that your decision to remove them from your life has come after a long series of events or over many years. 

2: Forget whether or not they deserve one more chance. They probably don’t. 

  1. Write an email, letter, or text to this person outlining (as briefly as possible) why you need to move on without them. In your communication, share what you learned and what you still have not learned. If you can sincerely say “thank you” for something they gave you, do that with an open heart. Don’t gush, just state something positive. Send the communication and move on. If they have follow-up questions, that’s okay, but set a 72-hour time limit, then silence. 
  2. Notify the people whom you both know in common. Ask that they respect your decision. If you need to cite a few reasons, that’s okay. Just don’t vomit all over the page when communicating with these people. Keep it simple and move on.

5: Honor how you feel, release our emotions, and pray for everyone involved. 

It’s difficult to make drastic changes to the relationships in our lives. As we get older, we realize that having 20 friends can be exhausting, but having 1, 2, or 3 best friends can be energizing and freeing. It’s all about freeing yourself so that you can attract and choose positive experiences that bring you clarity, joy, love, and happiness. You can do this. Be clear, honor your feelings, and move on. It’s time.

Check out the Free Yourself Mini Audio Course to begin your journey towards setting healthy boundaries!

Is Anger Your Enemy Or Your Friend?

The human mind is so complex, it’s a wonder that we can feel anything at all. When an event occurs in our life, it doesn’t pass through us, it lingers, sometimes for decades. When we experience challenges, we spend more time obsessing over how bad we feel, rather than creating a plan and acting upon that plan. When our relationships change, we carry the related emotional fodder for far too long. For some reason, we’re not adept at having an experience, freeing ourselves, and then moving on. The same can be said for our lingering feelings of anger.

First of all, it’s 100% okay to feel mad, even celebrate it. You might want to throw a party for your anger or use it to fuel the birth of a new business. Anger can be extremely inspiring, provoking, and transformative. It’s like carrying a forest fire in your pants. 

If you’re feeling anger, it’s your friend. If, because of your anger, you’re acting outrageously or putting others in danger, the anger is truly your enemy. Keep in mind that your anger didn’t ask to become the enemy. It just came up. Like a bubble in a can of soda, it emerged as real, moved upward, and then rested at the top for a moment. What you might not realize is that anger has an expiry date – if you permit it. 

If anger is bubbling up inside of you, see it as bubbles of nothingness. Consider this: The anger was born from a prior experience, and provoked into existence. Since the event that angered you is longer happening, why hold onto the emotion that stemmed from it? Even positive emotions can restrict us and enslave us to the past.

Your anger was useful for a time. It helped you make some decisions. It assisted you in the evolution of your ability to discern. Your anger was an ally – until it began interrupting your experiences around happiness, connectedness, and love. 

If your anger is still causing you to disconnect from your goodness and heart, you’re giving it too much power. You might need to venture into the woods and pound the earth for a time. You might need to do a ritual or religious ceremony where you call upon your higher Being to heal and help you. You might simply need to find the tears beneath your anger so that you can soften your heart and reconnect with all the goodness around you. 

Don’t let your anger manage you. Don’t allow it to maneuver you into being someone you are not. Don’t invest in it or plan to use it for too long. Let your anger have its day – and then set yourself free from it. You’ll be happier and more successful if focus on the positive aspects in your life. Doing so, your anger will naturally dismiss itself from your field of view. 

Remember to be grateful. You are alive on a planet filled with beautiful trees, flowers, rivers, lakes, and creatures. You have enough health to be able to function in this world and experience some of its joys. You can communicate with other living Beings. You most likely have a place to life and have food in your fridge. You were also born with an unlimited capacity to think, feel, and experience. You are a miracle. Never forget that. 

If you have yet to forgive someone or own your part in a series of difficult events, it might be time to forgive yourself and everyone involved. This will put your anger in service to your evolution.

Check out the Free Yourself Mini Audio Course to explore your anger in a healthy way!

7 Simple Ways To Open Your Mind And Move Forward

Open Your Mind with 7 Simple Methods
Open Your Mind with 7 Simple Methods
A Shutterstock Licensed Image.

 

It all sounds cliche: “Let’s free ourselves!” “Be Happy Now!” “There are no excuses – just do it!” It’s true, these ideas are now very popular. Almost everyone on the planet has heard these taglines from somewhere. They’re so popular that we’ve become immune to them. We’ve given up on ourselves and we too often accept defeat before our prime. What isn’t so popular is taking action to open your mind and embody these positive ideas. What isn’t popular is understanding who we were, who we want to be, and the disparity in-between. What isn’t popular is absolute positivity, especially in how we think about ourselves. 

We’re so busy living in the past, we haven’t space within our minds and hearts to imagine something miraculously positive for ourselves in the future. You can change all that!

Here’s the reality: You can free yourself from limiting beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and habits. You can be happy when you choose to be happy. It all depends on how much you are willing to release your current intentions, attitudes, and addictions. When I say addiction, I’m not referring to substances, which are also problematic. I’m referring to the chemicals that arise from specific self-negating thoughts and behaviors

To open your mind and excel at being free, clear, and positive, there are many things we can do. Here is a list of 7 ideas that many people have incorporated into their lives. Each one of them is powerful all by itself. If you can invite all 7 of these things into your life as habits, you’ll be further along than 99% of Planet Earth. 

Let’s get to it!

1: Continually forgive yourself and others. Allow yourself to think lovingly of the people who have hurt you. Remember that it’s okay to make mistakes, even huge ones. There is no other way to truly embody a new piece of knowledge. We must allow ourselves to make mistakes. Acknowledge them, endeavor to do better next time, and move on! Everybody will adjust.

2: Understand and embrace your most endearing and empowering attributes. If you cannot claim your gifts, beauty, and magic, who else will? Yes, our moms love us, but they love us because they want us to love ourselves. When we appreciate our best attributes, we love ourselves, we honor our births in this world, and we pay tribute to our mothers. Doing all this, we reduce the barriers that prevent our futures from unfolding.

3: Stop obsessing over the past. It does not exist, except in the dark corners of your mind. We love to think about the things that occurred in the past, even things that never happened. Truth be told, no matter what the memory is, our minds have already polluted it. After 5 years, most of our memories contain only 20-50% of the actual events. During those 5 years, our little brains conjure ideas to validate our contrived self-concepts. If our memories were stocks, they’d never produce any dividends. Let them go. Be here, right now, in the present moment.

4: Celebrate small victories until victory is a staple in your life. If we cannot get a solid handle on how wonderful you are, it’s vital that you create a plan and celebrate every small step. By doing this, you’ll get in the habit of appreciating yourself, which is required to move forward and free yourself.

5: Meditate and pray often. By meditating we release self-limiting thoughts and feelings. When we clear our minds and hearts of energy and activity, we create more space for ourselves to grow. Khalil Gibran said, “Out of the well our sorrows dig, flows joy.” Breathe in white light, exhale. Focus on your inhale and exhale. Do this for 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes at night. It’s as simple on that.

6: Find ways to selflessly serve others with zero expectations. Whether it’s volunteering at a charity event, taking care of your aging family members, serving a local homeless shelter, or donating to a Native American community: giving works! It will help you get over yourself for a moment, and it can fill your heart with love and joy. Selfless service is the highest calling on Planet Earth. 

7: Live in gratitude, every minute of every day. Too many people complain about every little thing in their lives. From how their mail is placed in their mailboxes to bad customer service, too many people get caught up in the details rather than the gratitude. It’s petty and small-minded. When we consider the remarkable number of wonderful things and people in our lives, we release our negativity. When we release negativity and embrace gratitude, you’ll open your mind and it’s remarkable what the Universe will bring to us. Stay humble. Be grateful. Always!

Remember that millions of people have less than you. Millions. Remember that you are the embodiment of light. If you didn’t know it, let me tell you: you are made of stardust and you are part of an ever-expanding Universe. Don’t play the small game. Play the big game. Get out of your own way, practice the 7 steps, and decide to free yourself from the past. It’s time to open your mind and grow!

Looking for more guidance in opening your mind? Let’s talk about signing you up for coaching!

 

The Free Yourself Mini Audio Course





ARE YOU READY FOR A WONDERFUL FREE YOURSELF AUDIO COURSE? 

Are you feeling like you need a little jump-start? Are you ready for a simple sojourn into your core nature so that you can feel strong again? Need some love & encouragement?

You’ll love this easy audio course: The Free Yourself Mini Audio Course

Lesson 1: Who Are You?

Lesson 2: Forgive Everything

Lesson 3: Authentic Living

Lesson 4: Responsibilities & Desires

Lesson 5: Selfish Self-Care

Lesson 6: Your Operational Life-Plan

Lesson 7: Love & Honor Key Relationships

 

GET THE FREE YOURSELF MINI AUDIO COURSE NOW

 

My hope is that this free course will bring you light and clarity in your life. I made these with love I pray they truly serve you.  If you’re ready for a more serious course – a super-spiritual jump-start, check out THE FULL, AMAZING FREE YOURSELF VIDEO COURSE: HERE.

 


TIPS FOR LIVING A FULFILLING LIFE

 

Rituals & Declarations can inspire rebirth and give you momentum.

Paul’s Courses are empowering and enlightening.

You’ll love THE PERSONALITY CARDS – a new tarot for liberation.

You are the embodiment of LOVE & LIGHT!

Forgive everything, learn how to say goodbye and set boundaries, stand strong in the face of challenges, and remain drenched in gratitude!

GO TO LESSON 1: WHO ARE YOU?