Soul Answer

Find Real Peace and Happiness!

CEASE-FIRE Aug. 19, 2014   Haven’t things been a bit pressurized and scary recently?  There is so much worrisome news on the TV and internet—domestic and across the world.  We ponder, we judge, we say “Why can’t THEY get it together?”  We get mentally and emotionally involved and it takes over our minds and hearts. Then, of course, there is our personal life.  That is “my job, my pocketbook, my family, my friends, my job, those who treat me unkindly and thoughtlessly, those who hurt others in vile ways, those who are bullies to us and others.”  Of course, you know the list goes on and on! Well the Truth is that this world is where we come to find obstacles to bombard us so that we may “pay our karmas” as we change our attitudes about THEM and start deeply looking at “I”.  These difficulties—whether they are great or small, whether the other guy is the bad guy, or maybe I am if I really look at it impartially, or perhaps everyone is totally entrenched in their own lies told as truth, or it is all a big misunderstanding—or whatever. The very real situation is that there will be no peace in the world until there is peace within each of us—which is the really hard work that starts at home—within.  That conversion from really ratty emotions and judgments to true peace of mind only comes from living in Soul.  And that demands many huge healing transformations—and maybe even little tweaks of healing, such as re-arranging our vantage point, so to speak!  Haven’t you found that? Our changes to peace within not only help us but they also have a huge effect on our world!  On the one hand, our actual vibrations go out along the whole vibratory web of creation on this Earth to other people’s consciousness.  Do you want that to be “fighting mode,” or do you want that to be uplifting, caring, loving, surrendering to Soul’s guidance with conscious vibrations?  There is no longer a THEY when you look at it this way.  There is only the all-pervasive “I” of active creation. Now there is the actual, practical side of healing this “I”.  It starts with, “Do I choose the pain, retaliation, fear, revenge, getting back at, being squashed and staying in this muddle, in this ridicule, in this prison of opinion, with the torment of blaming, with this hurt, shame or fear?  Yes, these are huge terrors to carry around.  Our own experience is our real world.  It is our mental and emotional experience that is our reality.  So what do we want our immediate world to be?  Even if we are being put to death, if we have healed ourselves, if we have made excellent use of our time in this world healing ourselves and continually allowing our grounding and neutrality, the character that we have developed will lead us to Truth, calmness and peace.   This is not just a tiny little idea at all.  No, Brothers and Sisters, healing our pain and developing our character as we fully surrender to the guidance of our very Soul is what Life is actually all about.  Anything else will take us to the dungeon of repeating pain. So, how can we surrender totally to the God within and in total expansiveness so that we are no longer victims of our own terror reactions, no matter how much we feel that “others” or outside circumstances are tormenting us. GETTING A BETTER HANDLE ON OUR VICTIM STORIES First off, we can open our awareness to understand our own part in persistent pain.  To do that, please read the articles at www.SoulAnswer.com/peace.html . HEAL YOUR EMOTIONS GuruMeher Singh has discovered an extraordinary program that is based on the premise that our difficult emotions are actually our Soul’s way of telling us what we need to truly support us.  It is called “EMOTIONS: Senses of the Soul!”  I have seen this process work miracles of cure on folks!  Check it out at www.SoulAnswer.com/sos.html . FORGIVE DEEPLY I know that can sound outrageously cruel for people who, for instance may have suffered great abuse as an innocent child.  But, my Dear, if you don’t want that same pain and visage of your perpetrator popping up in your face all the time and kidnapping your outlook and emotions, there doesn’t seem to be any other way to cure that.  In fact, I was taught this process by the Soul of a lady whose own father had repeatedly sexually abused her as a small child.  Now this forgiving is not, I repeat NOT on the mental level.  But it is much, much deeper on the meditative level.  That is to use your heart breath www.SoulAnswer.com/heart_breath.html , and go down deep where your breath lives.  Then in that “place”, deeply forgive that situation, the perpetrator, and even yourself on some mysterious Soul level for participating in that scenario.  This forgiving doesn’t say that the perpetrator is getting away scot-free.  On the contrary, you are letting the great Karmic law take care of that.  In this deep forgiving, you are simply dissolving the etheric cords that attach you to this pain, that person and so on.  FIND THE MANTRA, MEDITATION, KRIYAS, BANIS AND SO ON THAT WILL TRANSFORM YOUR EMOTIONS AND OUTLOOKS FROM PAIN TO PEACE. I found that doing this Tratakam Meditation on Yogi Bhajan, staring into his eyes that is introduced by Amandeep Singh is so very powerful that in one session it changed my hurt and pain to buoyant peace!  http://youtu.be/VhRhyobFcWQ  So, you bet I am doing it for 40 days!  Why would I want to pass up that treasure? Also check out www.SoulAnswer.com/kriyas.html for a great list of these keys to unlocking personal peace. HEAL THOSE AROUND YOU BY GROUNDING YOURSELF AND DOING YOUR OWN HEALING. It is a fact that as you ground your energy into the depth of Mother Earth, breathe with it and feel her there; then begin healing heart breath www.SoulAnswer.com/heart_breath.html , great changes for the best occur.  When your spouse yells at you, when the project that you have worked on so hard flops, when you feel like those around you are blocking you—and so much more, please do ground into Mother and begin heart breath.  In fact as the breath comes out of your heart center, you are actually emitting healing energy that heals you and those around you, just by your own “heart-active” presence! Here is a little comment with big ramifications by Yogi Bhajan: "Instead of drawing the attention of another person by a tantrum, you could win their heart by a service (seva)."   ALLOW YOURSELF TO BECOME A LEADER OF PEACE. Can you imagine if we didn’t have those great people of strong and firm character, who held their own stalwart self in the midst of both great character assassination as well as sometimes assassination by bullet-fire, but who held to the great Truth of humanity, no matter what?  Martin Luther King, Jr., both of the Kennedy brothers, Yogi Bhajan, and so many others who held the Truth for all, but suffered the great painful blows to themselves, where would we be now? On this spiritual path, let’s not be content to wear a turban and let our hair grow long, then not stand fully grounded in the grace, Truth and strength that Soul wants to pour through us all the time.  Why stay smothered in the difficulties that we all face daily in our own unique ways without taking the hard path of uncovering our hidden unconscious greatness of the God that lives within and yearns to express Itself as our real and full Being at every moment?  This dedication to constant change for our personal expansion and healing is not an easy journey, rest assured.  But I know no other way to Peace and Happiness whatever the circumstances. After all, isn’t this the way that we have chosen as Light Workers to move into the Aquarian Age?  Leaders and teachers are needed.  BE that one whom we need and we have been waiting for.  Totally surrender to Soul, and Soul will guide you to be the Light House for those around you. BE CREATIVE TO DISCERN YET MORE WAYS TO PERSONAL PEACE! As you most humbly live this life dedicated to peace within, you will find that your caliber changes for the better!  You will find Light or brightness flowing from you.  Down deep, you will begin to have the satisfaction of humbly living your own special Destiny which flows from living directly and completely from your very own Soul, your God-Self!  Relax into your Soul and become an authentic vessel and leader of Peace! “Oh, Lord, make me an instrument of Thy Peace!”  Prayer of St. Frances You can actually learn how to hear your own Divine Soul and live Its guidance for incredible Peace and Healing in my upcoming tele-course, INTUTION TRAINING, The Art of Soul Listening.  Mondays, Aug. 25 to Sept. 29, 40 day meditation starts Aug. 21. Register for this foundation course at the bottom of the page at www.SoulAnswer.com/intuition.html .  Yep!  It’s not hard to hear Soul if you know how to Listen! Hail, Hail Guru Ram Das!  Heal the world.  Yogi Bhajan Lots of Love, Siri-Gian Kaur www.SoulAnswer.com   Copyright:  Siri-Gian Kaur Khalsa, www.SoulAnswer.com/peace.html , 2014. You have permission to reproduce this article either online or in print as long as you keep this copyright large and closely associated with the article. To easily print out this article, please go to www.SoulAnswer.com/peace.html And to check out hundreds of our articles in our archives, please go to www.SoulAnswer.com/wisdom_marketplace.html .

Who Me?  Passive-Aggressive? November 26, 2013   How elusive is this? You know when all those pressures build up?  When you just get annoyed with someone but don’t want to face the other person with your real feelings, which may stem from things like: ·         Not wanting to look like a small and petty person. ·         Fear of unintentionally unleashing your whole hate, anger and personal chaos. ·         Some way-down feeling that you might be punished or something might be taken away such as your job if you “talk-back”. ·         Feeling totally insecure about what might happen if you are really upfront with the other person. ·         Reaction against what you think is an authority figure, so you feel that you must keep your real feelings under wraps. ·         And more! MORE SYMPTOMS So, do you ever find that you or other folks you meet just seem to delay or put off actually engaging with you or your joined activity in some way?  And yet you/they always defend their postponing/non-connecting behavior by saying they just don’t have enough time, money, resources, etc. or they simply “forget” or just seem to shine off their agreements or promises without really thinking about it?  How about the frustrating or seething feeling that you can do nothing but “shut up” and allow another person to be really annoying or overlook you, your ideas, needs, recognition, and so on.  You allow that by not speaking up for yourself, or lay out your safe boundaries and needs because, just because…..  Well, that’s how you have always “dealt” with these things. Perhaps you don’t want to unleash your volcanic anger because the other person might find your “demands” to be really weird or asking too much.  Or you don’t want to be impolite, and therefore not acceptable, or you don’t want them to not love or respect you.  So, you just do your best to bury all your frustrations and anger.  The result being that you accept things that you don’t really want which makes you feel even worse, or you find yourself inadvertently plotting against the other person, or you begin hating yourself and/or the other person, or denying the other person what you have promised them. As you allow the stress of not calmly or humorously expressing your grievances or needs to another, your emotions of resentment, anger, self-belittling and more can build up over time.  Consequently a silent, repeating litany of terrible things that the other person has done to you may run in your mind without intermission.  As a result, you cannot look the other person in the eye and truly connect with them; your remarks to them take on a snide, blaming, or undermining tone; you subconsciously—accidently on-purpose make the other person’s life miserable or undercut their happiness, confidence or success with well-placed zingers or perhaps with “innocent” gossip in just the “right” places that will ultimately damage that other person’s respect or effectiveness within their community, workplace, family, etc.  As we discussed last week, complaining and blaming are a really efficient way to do that.  www.SoulAnswer.com/right_side_up.html . You may find yourself going into subconscious competition with the other person, counting every fortunate thing that they get as a very personal affront to you—creating really gooey-green jealousy that can eat you up.  And then you automatically find all sorts of undercover ways to trip them up.  On the other hand, maybe you secretly relish their hurt or unhappiness and even gloat in it. Or perhaps you attempt to control others by all kinds of undercover “tricks” to create the appearance your own “superior” abilities, security and popularity to cover for your own lack of very real and dependable security and self-worth. Judging yourself and others in so many big and small ways is integral to this Passive-Aggressive thing.  Beating yourself up, not feeling even worthy of love, being uncomfortable in your skin, always expecting that you will be rejected—either overtly or covertly, blaming and complaining about others, these are all sure signs of this bedeviling habit of victimization. Perhaps you “inadvertently forget” the original agreements you made with another person such as your life partner, so you then counter with your own skewed version or expanded expectations that bring havoc to your relationship.  Or perhaps you promise something to another, such as to your child, but then add more and more unreasonable requirements to their attaining that boon from you so that you never actually have to acknowledge or reward the child—perhaps just as your parents did to you.  And yet there is a kind of seething justification or “rightness” to your practice of these actions, or more correctly to these non-actions, resulting from your parents—those unquestioned “perfect gods” of your childhood inflicting them on you. Yes, this Passive-Aggressive stuff really is a very hidden phenomenon, certainly by the doer.  It is truly a subconscious habit, usually learned as a child from parents and teachers who taught their little ones to always be “nice,” but really never listened closely to the child’s very real need of truly being listened to.  The child never got real support, acknowledgement or recognition as a bona fide human being who is totally welcome and necessary here on Earth.  They never really got that they are worth anything, and subconsciously learned that the only way to interact with others is to be surreptitious.  You can see how all that leads to these screwed up feelings of rejection, loss and not even being worthy of being accepted as a human being—which is really, really backwards.  And of course, this is such a well-worn system of reaction that is so very often handed down through the generations. These folks have been denied the clear recognition that they are truly God/Soul living beautifully here on this Earth by just being and accepting themselves, whoever you are and whatever you have done.   What could be more worthy?  And since their consciousness has been deeply imprinted against their own worth and intrinsic value, usually from an early age, they have developed this habit of self-deprecation and self-denial that explosively projects out to others in all kinds of “secret” ways.  The reason is that they have been carefully trained to not recognize and not accept love from their very own Soul which is always pouring this real support and coziness into them, if they would only open to accept it.  That love arrives with only kindness and no judgment of any kind because simply BEING HERE de facto means you are unique, most precious and worthy of the greatest self/Self love and respect, no matter what—even with all your mistakes.  Oh,yes! And did you know that folks actually pick friends and partners who play this game with each other over and over again?  That would be called a “co-dependant” relationship.  As you heal yourself, you will either find that others that you normally interact with will change with you, or you will drift apart.  Therefore, please have courage on all fronts as you progress.  REMEDIES So, my Dears, here are a few things that can really solve those very hurtful habits of Passive-Aggression.  But let me say that you can’t lay a trip on someone else to change.  Instead, use these for yourself and then only pass them along as another person is ready to hear them. ·         In deep meditation, deeply forgive those who imprinted these habits of self-rejection in you, and also deeply forgive yourself for accepting these intrinsically false concepts.  This is not to say that what happened is OK.  Rather you leave judgment with all that entails to the great law of Karma.  With this very deep forgiveness you are dissolving those energy cords that keep you tied up in this repeating, automatic perception and behavior. ·         Do the meditation “Breaking the Mask” http://soulanswer.com/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/breaking_the_mask.pdf everyday for 40 days, 90 days or 1,000 days without stopping.  It is extremely powerful and effective, believe me! ·         Catch yourself in these shenanigans and then immediately do Heart Breath www.SoulAnswer.com/heart_breath.html to move yourself out of the “downward” energy to true Neutrality.  If you really do this, all your awareness and interaction will change—both in yourself and with the other person. ·         When in Neutral, kindly talk over what you are really feeling and understanding with the other person.  You may be funny, or sincere, or strong, or soft, according to how your interior Voice leads you.  Put safe boundaries in place so that you are not intentionally or unintentionally overrun by the other person and vice versa.  You begin by honoring who you are and what you need or don’t need.  This way, you also honor the other person, no matter what their stance is. ·         Let go of judgment of what you think is happening.  Instead, really RELAX in your neutrality to find out what is actually happening right in front of your face, without the fiery cloud of triggered animosity, and also by not fading away. ·         Take real responsibility for yourself.  Find your real integrity.  You are NO LONGER A VICTIM!  Catch yourself every time you find that you are blaming someone else, or that you are “forgetting” to uphold an agreement—because way down deep you believe that you really don’t matter to anyone.  Or perhaps you thrive on “inadvertently” getting others mad at you to subconsciously prove or reinforce your own lack of worth. ·         Be really, really grateful and happy every time you notice that this habit is changing for the best in you.  A real “Attitude of Gratitude” has a way of strengthening your new habits to make them truly functional in you. ·         Love your Soul and allow yourself to actually feel Soul’s love for you at every turn.  Then you will find your amazing worthiness on all levels, even for no special reason!  www.SoulAnswer.com/soul.html ·         Train yourself to become truly happy for others’ happiness or success because their happiness can only make you happy.  True!  Nothing is taken from you, only added.  But it takes real, life-saving humility to do this. ·         As you do these things, make a very close study of this Passive-Aggressive phenomenon.  What revelations you will find for your own precious life, I assure you! “Keep up and you will be kept up!”  That is Yogi Bhajan’s promise.  We all have habits and obstacles to transform on this amazing Path.  And as you transform, you will find peace, love, kindness, and true connection—guaranteed!  But don’t forget that it takes committed awareness and work on yourself to get there, bit by bit. Lots of Love, Siri-Gian Kaur www.SoulAnswer.com  Copyright:  Siri-Gian Kaur Khalsa, www.SoulAnswer.com/peace.html , 2013.You have permission to reproduce this article either in print or online as long as you keep this copyright large and closely associated with the article.To easily print out this article, please go to www.SoulAnswer.com/peace.html .

Are You Drowning? October 29, 2013 Are you stumbling under the weight of things going wrong—out of your control?  Is more being asked of you than you can produce or handle, no matter how hard you are trying?  With every step are you losing confidence in yourself?  Does it feel that the “sharks” are out to get you at every turn?  Does confidence and money seem to be slipping out of your fingers like flowing sand?  Has any real control over your life flown to the winds, leaving you groundless and lost?  And there is no end in sight!  Yikes! And guess where all this is coming from.  Well, check into your mind.  I know that it seems that all this is the result of objective “facts” that are giving you all this trouble.  After all, that is REALITY, right?  It’s right in front of your face.  And yes, it is undeniable that things are happening all around you that assault YOU!  Yes, but let’s just take a little tour of our mind.  You have definitely seen those trick images that ask you if the glass is half full or half empty, right?  Or how about this great old image at the top of this page—two faces or an ornamental drinking glass?  Notice that your mind sees from its own viewpoint, taking that viewpoint for true REALITY!  The truth of it all is, “How does my mind perceive those neutral ‘facts,’ and how will it respond?”  That takes some mental loosening up to parse it all out, doesn’t it? You see, your mind is an amazing instrument that is sourced either in the habits of your childhood, your ancestors, your environment and culture, this life and other lifetimes, or it is sourced in the most amazing creativity, care and love from your own Soul.  The choice of your mind’s operative viewpoint is yours at every moment.  But it takes a whole lot of self-examination to discover what is really happening in your own sweet or scary mind, and how you want to deal with it—at every moment.  Oh, yes!  Now, I know that all sounds really distracting and heavy to have to watch your mind ALL the time.  “Can’t we just get on with it?”  But if you are not aware of what is happening “upstairs,” you may be using your interpretive powers to either construct the most scary House of Horrors that you could possibly imagine—complete with attackers and thieves flying at you from everywhere!  Or you could be training that rambunctious puppy of your mind to not poop and pee all over your house while it tears up all your furniture and knock over all your friends and family.  You could actually be discovering that every creepy, hairy monster and event that comes socking at you is actually a construct of that wizard (your subconscious) behind the curtain that is trying to scare the bejeebers out of you, thinking that he is actually keeping you safe by warding you away from this and that.  The problem is that you are being scared away from loving yourself, habitually facing “apparent” trauma at every turn, allowing joy to be knocked out of your mind and emotions by the hammer of fear and judging.  Oh, the list goes on and on! On the other hand, as you clean and shine up that potentially beautiful instrument of your mind by moving closer and closer to your truly best chum and Lover, your very Soul, your mind calms down.  Your perceptions cool down as the ghosts are seen for who they are—phantoms from the past that just want your attention, love and Light.  Once they have been vetted as you lovingly face them—just as courageously as Harry Potter faced any huge and unrelenting monster; even while you feel those angry, fearsome, squashing blows as those old-time subconscious specters move out of you on their way to the Light of your Soul, you simply and heroically allow yourself to be held by your precious Soul.  That is a true dimension or “space” that you can actually feel.  It is more REAL than those states of fear, depression and panic.  As you consciously relax in Soul’s arms especially through those heavy monster attacks, that is when you are finally left with only the pure Freedom of not being bound from the inside by those ogres that had captured you from behind your eyes and your heart. You see, your Soul is the very core of you, your most authentic Self, the part of you that generates great healing, and has Its own pathway and pure Destiny for you if you but commit to following Its direction at every moment.  The experience of Soul is that “space” of coziness, of completeness, of trust that Soul is in charge and will do every amazing thing on your behalf to sculpt you into the Great Being that is hidden inside—rather like Michelangelo’s chisel liberating those masterful beings frozen inside blocks of raw marble.  You know from the get-go that Soul will not fulfill your expectations that you wholeheartedly believe will keep you safe from your dragons, but will in fact move you to release their hold over you so that you can finally be FREE!  That is free to love and be loved.  To enjoy your life and feel secure no matter what!  To wait and watch with curiosity and patience as Soul takes care of your apparent troubles.  Such a sweet, Light-filled, cozy, powerful and dynamic Life as you allow Soul the unquestioning lead in your Life--as you serve every little sweet or big and challenging direction from Soul. Give the all the horrors and crap to Soul.  That is what Soul craves as Its raw material so that It may miraculously transform you from a lump of coal to a beautiful clear, sparkling and precious diamond!  Frankly, I find this is the very easiest way through the “trials and tribulations” of Life.  No, it is not a cop-out, but a most effective stairway to heaven on Earth.  Oh, yes! To learn how to listen to your Soul, please go to www.SoulAnswer.com/soul.html . Lots of Love, Siri-Gian Kaur Copyright:  Siri-Gian Kaur Khalsa, www.SoulAnswer.com/peace.html  , 2013. You have permission to reproduce this article either online or in print as long as you keep the copyright large and closely associated with the article. You can easily print out this article at www.SoulAnswer.com/peace.html , 2013.

Your Stories are Killing You! July 16, 2013 What is your frame of mind in this moment?  Stop now, take stock of your breathing, how your mind and body are feeling.  How have you been feeling earlier today and all day yesterday? Now I am not talking about physical pain right now.  I am talking about your mental and emotional state.  Are you feeling calm, cozy, breezy and cared for no matter what kind of turmoil or pressure is going on around you?  Well, you must have done a great sadhana (daily spiritual practice) this morning! But if you are feeling tight, confused, annoyed, scared, angry and frustrated or anything else in this category, then that bright and calm feeling that is truly sourced in your Soul is having a hard time poking through!  Believe me, your Soul is there to provide every sort of loving kindness and guidance if only we could feel it through the layers of our ongoing stories, our mental machinations that keep access to our Soul’s support, love and wisdom blocked.  Oh, yeah! Hmmm.  Well as my dad always used to ask me, “What’s your story, Hot Rock, Honey Child?” Take a moment to peruse your mind’s ongoing stories over the last 24 hours.  Is your story about blaming someone for not caring for you, for telling you lies, for being mean to you, for being overcome by fear—perhaps concerning money, time pressure, fear for your child, and so on?  Really get to know your own personal story.  You might even like to write it out and be sure to get in every juicy detail.  These are the stories that haunt us day and night, and usually for years, even from our childhood.  These story lines keep churning in our minds.  The characters and circumstances may change, but the underlying story line stays the same, even though it may take some really deep Soul searching to see how each rendition is the same story reincarnate. For instance, “My mom was not emotionally available.  Since I very literally needed her to care for me so I could survive, I would sustain her and take care of her for as long as I can remember—from the time I was tiny.  I still take care of her and everyone else, but why don’t I feel loved?” Or, “My dad had no clue on how to relate to me.  He was actually an alcoholic.  He always put me down, which I now know was because he had no self-esteem or self-love.  But maybe I learned his lesson well and now when I honestly take a deep look in the mirror, I find that I lack joy and abundance in my life.  I feel bad about not having attained more in my life, but “Oh, well.”  I get angry when I don’t have enough money, support, back-up and so on, or when my friends desert me.  The only thing left is to get more angry and more worried.” Or, “My family spent so much time disagreeing that I learned early on that if I didn’t jump into the fray, I would be totally left out.  At least negative attention was better than no attention.  Oh, by the way, every relationship that I have had ends up in huge quarrels until the whole thing finally blows up.  No one has ever given me what I really want—that is any sign that they even recognize who I really am.  They are so self-centered that they never help me even when I have the direst need.  I am so pissed, pissed, pissed. “ Aren’t these wonderful stories?  What creative author could have put these grand story themes together? The thing is that: Number One—we miss the point that these are recurring stories.  We just live in the constant, recurring story so fully and completely that we take what is happening as the absolute Truth!  We blame others for our depressions, our misgivings, making us angry, not supporting us and at the root of it all, NOT LOVING US!  Yikes! We deflect any notion that perhaps we are living out our own poop.  Because of our wind-up toy mind’s habits, we very subtly and very powerfully draw people and situations to us with whom we can replay these stories!  We are geniuses when it comes to creating these perfect matches!  We grasp every incident, every relationship that will enable us to continue our “sad sack,” “angry hulk” story line.  This is a course of victim/victimizer relationships in which we are actually seeking love and recognition, but are creating circumstances in which those kindnesses are de facto denied to us, or are perceived to be denied.  And yet we blame the “other person,” never deeply, deeply examining our own perceptions of reality!  Do you keep a mental log of all the things that the “other person” did to you or didn’t do for you?  Do you recite that list like a sacred litany of wrongs?  Do you wail that list to anyone who will listen?  Or perhaps you just recite it to yourself to keep your mind concentrated on how unloved and how wronged you really are.  You are creating your own identity, your own person truth.  And you have a deep need to keep reinforcing it with every new instance you can grab onto.  Do you recognize any bits of this habit in your life?  We all do it or have done it.  This victim thing is so very human and so very hurtful as we continue to self-inflict these mind wounds—no matter what anyone else is actually doing or not doing. So, here we are at the cross roads.  Do you have the courage to look way beyond what anyone else in your life is doing or has done?  Go limp and neutral in your judgment of them, and especially do this if you are the wife-beater’s wife, or the grown-up abused child. This practice of YOU personally, responsibly disengaging your foaming fist-a-cuffs takes enormous mental and emotional strength of RELAXATION to finally just let that frantic energy between you and your chosen perpetrator drop…   Yes, I mean DROP!  Heart Breath, please!   www.SoulAnswer.com/heart_breath.html . Now please put on a mantra CD www.SpiritVoyage.com or do a pertinent meditation www.SoulAnswer.com/kriyas.html .  Have a pencil and paper by your side, and just sit most meditatively with this whole thing.  Then let your mind begin its dark litany as you “watch” if from afar.  Don’t get hooked into it, just be the neutral observer. Then ever so conscientiously, like a marvelous Sherlock Holmes, watch all the clues that come up!  You can identify them by your BLAMING of someone or a situation for your unhappiness.  Use your long deep breath www.SoulAnswer.com/long_deep_breath.html to go neutral in your meditative mind so that you can actually watch this process as though you are at the movie theater and not living your own story.  It is a most amazing game to catch how many times we blame and judge others, or even blame ourselves!  Neutrally catching the blaming is the clue.  And write down every instance that you come across.  Be sure that you catch each incident of blaming and record it. Now the abstract thought of catching your blaming can be evasive if you haven’t tried this before.  For example, you may just say that this situation is killing you.  Anyone can see that.  You are not blaming anyone, but just looking at the facts in front of your face without blaming anyone.  Wouldn’t anyone feel this way under these circumstances? But, my Dear, look deep inside.  If you feel that anger, or fuming, or loss, etc. in relationship to this situation, then we have a blame situation.  Or perhaps we are going numb so that we can’t feel that nastiness within at the moment so that we can deny our blame and claim our self-righteousness. On the other hand, if when you explore that situation deep within you, and you can only feel lightness and gratitude to your “perp” for having brought you a huge opportunity to heal yourself and find that great neutrality and Self/self-love within that your Soul has to share with you, then this is not a blame situation.  This particular response is the result of intense, honest and hard-won deep self healing.  That warriorship of self-healing is the very process that releases your own magnetic programs of recurring self-pain as you give up all phases of victimization.  And it may involve a life-time of self-discovery.   The foundation of self-victimization is your own persistent blaming thoughts or subconsciously engaging others to hurt you—whether they actually do so, or you just assign them that role in your mind.  Conversely, your great self-healing unlocks simple, powerful wisdom as the pieces of your experiences come back together in ways that serve your contentment and happiness.  That may be your new ability to see the “sequences that lead to the consequences” as Yogi Bhajan used to say, so that you can create appropriate boundaries, or bless the other person rather than engaging them on the fuming battlefield of resentment and dearly held pain, etc. So, become extremely astute in your search within for the embedded thought culprits who have caused you hurt and pain.  Life is a game of learning that begins with forgiving.  Yes, forgiving! Now if you are really attached to fantasizing that you are fiercely holding onto those self-destroying thoughts to hurt and ridicule your object of disdain, then know that you have it backwards.  You are only continuing to hurt yourself.  Your mind decays under such pressure, your relationships, work and joys can only be broken by your repetitive story of hurt.  Then finally, this long standing dark cess pool of energy that is part and parcel of these destructive thoughts continually becomes lower and lower on the energy spectrum until it actually creates a cess pool in your physical body, inviting difficult disease or perhaps accident. Remember, if you hold onto your dark mind games, you are asking for the whole mental + physical distructo package!  Healing your mind and emotions brings back health on all levels—mental, emotional, physical and energetic.  And by the same token, never blame anyone who has a dire disease or accident!  Wouldn’t that demonstrate your own broken mental process more clearly than that of the challenged one?  So, our next step in our warrior’s healing process is to go deep into meditative mind to forgive—forgive your Soul and yourself from coming up with this karmic plan, forgive your perpetrator, forgive yourself for possibly hurting anyone along the way, and so on.  This forgiving on this meditative level (not off the top of the head) certainly does not say that all that happened is OK, and now we can go on like happy blind fairies.  On the contrary, this kind of forgiving happens to be an incredible tool that the mind and energy system uses to actually dissolve all of those energetic ties that keep us locked into those same old destructive stories!  And you leave Justice for any real wrongs committed up to the great Karmic Order.  You are not in charge of their punishment where you would incur yet more karma—more problems for yourself.   (But of course if that person is still hurting others, say as a pedophile, please do see that they are put in jail to keep them away from other innocents.) And when those stories are neutralized, that is when true healing occurs.  You become FREE!  You are free of constantly stabbing yourself in the eye with those wicked feelings that were enmeshed in your psyche’s basic story line. You can then allow yourself to feel the genuine Light and love that is totally present for you from Soul all the time!  And you can choose to ACCEPT this miraculous transformation!  This may possibly be the hardest thing to do because your identity changes from having been the victim—a role that you know so well, to being free and clear without problems in that category.  You understand it all to be the process of the Karmic Wheel and so you can drop blame, guilt, etc. in favor of gratitude for the magnificent opportunity to grow into your True Self.  Formerly, you may have used your most compelling story line of betrayal, anguish, injustice, insult, etc. to get attention and sympathy, but now there is nothing left but neutral kindness if you are willing to engage in it.  That can be a very scary and tenuous place if you don’t relax and just neutrally watch what happens as you get used to your new identity and consequent flowing life as it emerges. So, you see, changing your identity can be your final challenge!  And there can be grief around changing to finally become a contented person.  True!  So, let the adventure happen. But, my Dear.  Please don’t fool yourself anymore by saying that the only thing that you want is to be happy, while you are stomping out the very real path of healing yourself, your hurtful story line that would allow your own beautiful happiness to emerge.  Commit to discovering and actualizing the Real You that is way beyond that old falderal of the crazy victim story.  Be GREAT!  Be the healing WARRIOR to liberate the great pure coziness of YOU! Lots of Love, Siri-Gian Kaur Copyright:  Siri-Gian Kaur Khalsa, www.SoulAnswer.com/peace.html , 2013. You have my permission to reproduce this article either in print or online as long as you keep this copyright large and next to the article. You can easily print out this article by going to www.SoulAnswer.com/peace.html .  There are even more articles around this self-victimization theme on that same page.

Locking Ourselves Out of Peace!  An Introduction. December 18, 2012   When I hear people describe themselves as poor, decrepit, depressed and lost, my heart goes out to them, but not for the obvious reasons. It is because their expression of their continued belief in their sadness, their deep and ongoing belief in their own hurt, shame, loss and so much more is so very, very heart-breaking. Those people who have become the greatest Lights of history, those who have transformed out of incessant recounting of their pain to develop the very real gems and jewels of their life-- www.SoulAnswer.com/karma.html --tp become that compassion, love, Warriors of Truth and kindness--they have taken up the “sword of healing” to deeply unearth the very real riches of their  own sacred Life. Our own Souls pick out the karmas that we will be faced with in each life, so it is up to us in our “everyday form” to decide how we will deal with those dreadful situations. Will we heal deeply and fully through them, no matter how very scary they are? Or will we hold onto that victim identity, that most hurtful story line that tells us and others that we are worthless and beyond repair. Will we recount it with an eerie pride, like a badge of suffering that we expect others to honor and serve? Does that very difficult story somehow give us a kind of strange security in its horror and the horror that it continues to draw to us? It is my opinion that if we are truly serious about being happy, then we will use every tool at our disposal to truly realize that every misfortune is a gateway to opportunity where we can delve deeply into the refuge of our very Soul, our God Self and find the most incredible, satisfying happiness there.   That healing process takes tons of attention and continues over our whole life time. But without committing ourselves to that mind-altering  and life-changing path, we continue to bind ourselves to our endless plight. This monumental healing is a path of non-judgment, either of ourselves or of others. It is a walk of forgiveness, not saying that what happened is OK, but rather deep, meditative forgiveness is what loosens the incredibly tight bonds of hurt that finally give you actual freedom. To help bring forward your own vital happiness, my Dears, Soul has charged me with creating a several part series on this subject so that you can catch that victim habit as it rears up in your own mind and emotions.   It is most amazing to watch how that victim habit can pervade our consciousness. Then we can actually heal that automatic victim story line that seemed to be our entire foundation.  That is how we  find genuine happiness and gratitude as we move to the intelligence and pure safety of the actual Light of our own Soul where our grace and greatness actually become known to us, inside and out.   Constant vigilance and remediation of our mind’s habitual victimization of ourselves and unconscious victimization of others, along with our dogged commitment to self-healing, and our courageous handing over of our woes to our Soul bring us what we pray for in this Season of the return of the Light! That is genuine Peace, Coziness, Acceptance, Brilliance, Self-Worth, Safety and being fully at Home within our own bodies and Being. This is how our life truly changes. This is our prayer for each other in this great Season!   So, my Dears, here is our first installment. Just start off as though this were a game, or a questionnaire in a popular magazine. Be sure to laugh at what you find in your own life. And by all means, don’t use it to find more ways to blame yourself, but look at it as a most enlightening game or as a brilliant detective finding amazing clues to lead you to the very greatest resolutions.  This is our first step on our path to Joy.  It is Awareness! A Few Signs of Victim Consciousness: Now most of us have at least some of these victim characteristics.  It is normal.  And our goal is to heal bit by bit the brokenness that creates our pain.  So, being kind and forgiving to ourselves, while keeping a steady commitment to our healing process is all important.  Here are some of the characteristics of Victim Consciousness to be aware of, but not to judge: • Victims believe that the world or people around them are against them.  Victims amazingly find people to abuse them, and they stay in repeating cycles of being abused by superficially forgiving the abuser and then continuing in the same destructive relationship with them.  Or even when some good-hearted person does try to help them, the victim will at some point turn on the helper and accuse the helper of hurting them in some way.  The Victim may even retaliate for that imagined wrong.  When two victims are in this kind of relationship, it may be called co-victim. • Victims abuse others while believing that they are the real victims.  They may sexually abuse, carry nasty stories about others, whether real or imagined, and so on.  The victim may find ways to make another person mad, and then identify that person as their abuser because they got mad or when they leave.   • Victims may be aggressive or passive-aggressive.  They are often sneaky, clueless, blaming, complaining, or judgmental.  And they may be quite jealous of other people’s “apparently” good lives, gifts or situations. • For a victim, everything is a burden or difficult to bear, or new traumas come as a great surprise.  They are unconscious of the “sequences that lead to the consequences” as Yogi Bhajan would say, and are often in a trauma condition, which may include being out of their body.  Their lives revolve around trauma, and their minds engage in constant worry, pain, blaming, physical damage, and mental chaos.  That state of mind is actually a kind of backwards comfort to them, simply because it is the only thing that they know.   It supports their identity.  So they are often reluctant to give up that mental torture in order to change and heal. • Victims’ lives are often in chaos.  They believe that is because of outside pressures, but in fact it is their habit of being a victim in challenging situations that causes the personal chaos or overwhelm. • Victims may talk incessantly about, or re-live situations that now or have in the past gone against them, or that do not support them.  They often have harrowing stories to tell.  Or they may constantly re-tell every little challenging detail to demonstrate their hardships.   Victims usually find themselves in very difficult situations or environments because they either energetically draw those things to themselves, or they create them by their words and actions, or they simply get uptight about every detail instead of easily flowing with it all.  Victims can be masterful in finding people and situations to hurt them. • Victims may self-medicate with drugs, alcohol or other addictions to cover their pain. • Victims don’t have healthy boundaries, so they can demand or expect more than is offered or more than the social norm would usually afford.  Without those boundaries, a Victim can easily put themselves in harm’s way and actually invite it. •  Victims also have difficulty making or keeping schedules and deadlines—another kind of boundary.  Procrastination or getting side-tracked so that what may have been promised does not ever happen, although there may be an illusion in the mind of the victim that it is getting done and they effectively use this idea as yet another stressor.  • Victims can overwork or overdo to put themselves in a hole.  They may also be over-generous to create the same end, but they give so much they put themselves in a hole but feel bad or complain about not having enough for themselves.  (Generosity in itself is not a victim trait.)  However, their work may sometimes amount to spinning wheels without actually accomplishing too much, or which may not fulfill the goal for the work.  And they may complain or stress over what they have given. • A Victim might engage in conversational competition as to who has the greatest hardship or the most difficult life.  And they may not tell the truth or become evasive, while not even being aware of what they are of doing. • A victim may engage in self-sabotage, wanting or projecting something, but subconsciously finding ways to NOT allow that to happen, and then feeling bad that they have overscheduled, or that they never have or accomplish what they want. • A victim may put guilt-trips on another in order to get their way, or to squeeze out of promises that they have made.  Basically, a victim’s promises are not to be depended upon. • “Why me?” or “If only something else had happened then I would have been better off,” may be a constant theme of conversation.  Also, victims can be big dreamers without real substance to support their dreams, and then continue to be surprised and hurt when their dreams don’t work out. • Victims may feel that they are complete masters of their world—purely knowledgeable and capable, while believing that everyone else needs to change to their standards, which are utterly changeable from minute to minute.  (Being in Soul is living as the real master of your world.) Copyright Siri-Gian Kaur Khalsa, www.SoulAnswer.com/peace.html, 2012 You may reproduce this article online or in print as long as you keep this copyright large and associated with it.

Get Real! The 6th article in our series, “Finding Peace!” January 22, 2013 When the poop hits the fan, what happens?  Usually we go into a tail spin because things are not working out the way that we want, or what we think make us secure.  We drop into our habitual snarl of mind and emotional, taking us anywhere from being uncomfortable to becoming totally disheveled or even destroyed. We may blame someone else, or some circumstances, or even the Universe for our distress!  Remember our first article about playing the Victim’s role?  Well, this is it. Our own feelings of security and safety may be totally annihilated.  We may pray, pray, pray that things “go our way,” or even get better according to our own dream, expectations or plan. But somehow that never really pans out just the way we may beg for it or dictate that to the Universe.  We may get lost in dreams or fantasies of what we want instead of facing what is real—that which is right in front of our nose.  When we choose non-reality, then we are only left with our remorse, our disappointments, our dissolution, confusion, and deep disconnection. Well, Dear One, I am so sorry to relate that that is just the way that your own beatific, beautiful and all caring Soul/your very God Self planned it all for you.  No, your Soul is not ultimately sadistic.  Far from it. On the contrary, your own Divine Soul is trying Its best to invite you to heal your consciousness of pain and separation to the point that you live in True Reality.  That’s where you change your mind and emotional habits so that you constantly follow your Soul’s direction in every way instead of getting caught up your old painful patterns that just take you down.  Taming your mind and emotions is your path to relaxing into the recognition that all is God, and that you are actually the Infinite God Self that is operating here on the finite Planet Earth plane.  And the purpose of this life is to emerge from this all-absorbing illusion of loss and gain into absolute Union of All that Is—finally absolute Peace and Happiness. So, when things appear to go off the tracks, we actually have two very different choices—we have free will, you know! CHOICE 1:  Continue relying on our untamed mind and emotions’ same unending road of disappointment and unhappiness--being smashed to and fro by the events of our life as true Victims.  We hold onto the falsehood that those habits present as truth.  Woops!  No way, Jose. As long as we are “paying-back karma,” which generally encompasses every event and situation that we encounter in our life, we will continually run into that “stuff” that we can either rail against in any number of ways, and which ultimately brings us down and keeps us locked in our fantasies of good, bad and victim.  Unfortunately those terrified victim mind/emotional habits keep us separated from even our short-changed idea of earthly happiness.  For instance, we want someone to love us to keep us safe, secure and fulfilled.  Yet, that habit of longing from an habitual place of lack and insecurity actually brings us more of the same due to our habits of perception.   They are organized to cause rejection rather than acceptance—starting with not fully accepting yourself and the actual reality of any situation.  In that state of defeated mind and emotions, we cannot actually let go and accept love on every level.  What a paradox!  CHOICE 2:  Regard every situation, event or action as that of our Divine Soul which at every moment is giving us the impeccable opportunity to solve the mystery of our own separation and unhappiness to come into the greatest ease, coziness and wisdom!  That course is called “healing” or “transformation.” Using all of our yogic tools and honed awareness, we train our unruly minds to shift into shuniya, i.e. neutrality where Soul “lives” and becomes available.  In that eye of the storm, we actually turn the steering wheel over to Soul.  www.SoulAnswer.com/soul.html .  And again, we use our yogic tools to sustain us in Xtreme Trust!  www.SoulAnswer.com/kriyas.html .  Usually Soul tells us to be patient, to be calm.  That is our signal to truly remain in Soul’s Space as we heal the pain of those deadening chains of hurt as well as our current culture’s false picture of the way things “should be!”  We thoroughly relax in Soul’s love and guidance for us. That, my Dears releases you to pure freedom, expansion and the ability to receive the most trustworthy, simple wisdom, peace and stability.  No kidding!  That is so very true!  As we do that, we are opting out of the “War of separation” by our small self against our real SELF.  This achievable happiness and Union is where Soul is taking each one of us if we “play along.”  If we resist, then “Yikes!”  Instead of our consciousness growing bit by bit into the amazing prosperity of peace, we choose our same relationship with our habitual plague of unhappiness and being distraught. True Happiness is actually pure, unfettered, seamless connection with our own Soul.  It is living in the great flow of Soul’s guidance and care.  So, that means transforming and healing every bit of our mind/emotional habits that keep us from seeing and experiencing that True Reality!  See how the great law of Karma actually works at www.SoulAnswer.com/karma.html   .  Healing and transformation mean switching to understanding every event in your world as an opportunity to unknot the unconscious tangles in your habits of thinking and emotions.  And what an adventure this course is because Soul will undoubtedly guide you to “places” that you have never been before! "Without pressure, carbon can never become diamond. If you think you cannot stand the pressure,   then you do not know that you are a human being.   The human body has been made to withstand extreme pressure to crystallize the consciousness."   Yogi Bhajan This is not airy, fairy or “way out there.”  This is what is described by Guru Nanak throughout Japji Sahib.  It is where Yogi Bhajan has led us—“to the gateway of our Souls.”  This is True Reality!  Being the victim of our mind’s untamed thought processes, of our emotions gone crazy rather than switching to the coziness of Soul is the real insanity.  On the other hand, the experience of dealing with your world as the adventure of change to the solid experience of Ang Sung Wahe Guru will in fact open the door to your true and very personal Happiness in ways that you could never have imagined! “Ang Sung Wahe Guru celebrates the realization that there is no piece or part of ourselves, no action, and no life that is not already the living vibration of the Infinite. It is all God. We are One.”  http://www.spiritvoyage.com/blog/index.php/mantra-chanting-ang-sung-wahe-guru .  This taming of the mind and emotions (ego non-attachment) and opening to your Sat Nam is what we’re talking about! “Get Real, Man!  Peace, Brothers and Sisters!” Lots of Love, Siri-Gian Kaur   Here is a recap of the process of Healing and Transformation: 1.       Be VIGILANT!  Immediately become aware of your complaining or excuses. 2.       Immediately and will full power, turn on your energy changing tools—Heart Breath www.SoulAnswer.com/heart_breath.html and/or Mantra. 3.       Switch your complaining to creating solutions.  Don’t judge, don’t back peddle, just DO IT! 4.       Listen to Soul for the most remarkable and doable solutions, and follow them, even if they don’t make sense to you.  Adventure time! 5.       Once you become aware of your degrading story line, do pinpoint your healing on them: a.       Deeply, meditatively forgive yourself for carrying around that negativity—no matter how “wronged” you feel.  And forgive the perpetrator if there is one.  This is not to say that what happened is OK.  Rather, it dissolves your continuous very strong energetic participation in the difficulty. b.      Deeply, meditatively ask Soul—your Inner Self what the cause of your difficulty is, and ask Soul what you need to know or do to understand what the source of this is, and how to turn it around so that your new knowledge serves you.  c.       Commit to continuing your healing for greater growth and actual happiness!  Remember, you are taking charge to actually change your very identity from that of a Victim to that of being Self-Actualized—switching from suffering your Fate to living your Destiny.                                                              i.      You are changing all of your repeating ways of thinking and feeling.  Regard them as a “third person” to get some distance, rather than as your Core Self.                                                            ii.      You can find lots of powerful yogic tools to do this at www.SoulAnswer.com/kriyas.html .  Commit to it! d.      Get help in re-writing your controlling life script as you get effective healing.  At Soul Answer, we offer GuruMeher’s incredible course and coaching  “EMOTIONS—Senses of the Soul” www.SoulAnswer.com/sos.html  ; Siri-Gian’s personal healing sessions with Baba Siri Chand on the phone www.SoulAnswer.com/bsc_healing.html  and INTUITION TRAINING: The Art of Soul Listening;  Ek Ong Kaar Kaur’s wonderful course “Unearth Your Personal Healing Map!” www.SoulAnswer.com/healing_map.html .   Copyright Siri-Gian Kaur, www.SoulAnswer.com/peace.html , 2013. You have permission to publish this article either in print or online as long as you keep this copyright large and next to the article. To easily print out this article, please go to www.SoulAnswer.com/peace.html .

Dumped and Deserted! January 15, 2013.  The fifth article in our series called “Finding Peace!” Do you ever feel that you are painfully in the wrong place, like having been dropped down a well with no possible rescue, being forgotten and abandoned?  Perhaps you have a deep down inkling that the connection, love, ease, prosperity and so much more that you crave has been ripped from you, and now some stage of dark hopelessness has become your only habitat.  In your psyche, you may howl, “Is this all there is?  Why have I been dumped here in this desolate and cold place with no possible 911 call for help?” Oh, my Dear.  These are symptoms of what I call “Original Separation.”  I know that Christians have a similar term called “Original Sin” that means that you inherit pain and suffering through your human lineage.  According to that, we all are thrown out of the blissful Garden of Eden due to the error of our first human grandparents, and this painful separation from kindness and bliss is all a dire punishment from God for trying to know more than “Him.”  We are “dumped” due to our lack of humility or obeisance to the “Eternal Knowing.” So, Original Separation has shades of that story, but in fact if you start with the primal premise that ALL IS GOD, then how could God desert Itself?  Actually, It can’t.  The opposite is true.  We actually lost humility and obeisance to Who we really are.  What happens is that we, our very God Self that is posing as a seemingly individual consciousness forgot Who we are, thus throwing our own small, unconscious self out of that Eden of connection, pure love, ease, and bliss, even though we “previously” knew our Self only as God.  However, the quest of our small, “unconscious” self over so many lifetimes is to fully re-experience that Eden and beyond when we finally remember ourselves as the All-Pervading ALL.  In Yogic terms, that endpoint of our cyclical journey through forgetting and remembering is what we call “Union”—the opposite of Original Separation, or “Self Realization”—that is realizing Who we really are! Yes, in truth we are that All Pervading God!  But we just forgot.  That is our primal problem.  We just forgot Who we are.  And remembering Who we are is the total stuff of the spiritual path.  Yogi Bhajan described the substance of this path to Unity as “changing our identity,” that is changing from believing that we are separate, cut off, unbearably responsible for every crummy thing with no help in sight, no love or deep connection anywhere.  Yet our course is to remember Who we really are and fully experience that complete and total LOVE that is pure and complete connection as ALL that is.  That is “Sat Nam,” or our True Identity! Now, why God would play such a game as creating this creation with us as Its video game Avatars is not something that has been fully shared with me, other than it is God’s “fun” or “dance,” or “yearning for Itself from the finite experience” on some sublime level.  But in fact, it is our Sublime Self that made that great sacrifice to come into Original Forgetting, or Original Separation so that our small, ego-self consciousness may evolve over lifetimes as we experience and heal those dreadful situations.  At each “healing,” we finally remember bit by bit our True origin as Pure Light, which is our absolute Reality as ALL that IS with nothing left out. So, you see the source of our feeling disconnected, rejected, unloved, unsupported, dumped and deserted is that our God Self, our Totality that is projecting as us through lifetimes makes the pact to forget Who It really is in order to play the game of Karma, which is lifetimes of giving and receiving the opposite roles of very specific situations—such as we kill others in one lifetime, then we are killed in another lifetime.  So simple, so profound.  And that is how these earlier stages of karmic progression embed in us the feeling that we are true victims with all of the many painful manifestations that we have talked about in the last weeks in these articles! So, what truly does heal us on this first karmic level is pure forgiving—not saying that what the perpetrator did was OK, but this deep, meditative forgiving actually dissolves those chains, ties, or “samskaras” that keep us repeating those painful feelings and events in our mind, emotions and body!  We talked about forgiving as the primary tool of healing in our last article #4, “Where Does This Crap Come From?”  www.SoulAnswer.com/peace.html .  As we perform this Great Forgiving that includes forgiving ourselves for accepting the boomerang of the junk we have perpetrated on others, we unravel that portion of the constantly repeating cycle of doing and receiving this particular brand of harm.  The most surprising result from this truly deep healing is when more stored-up karmic “paybacks” visit us, we don’t get hooked into the pain of victimization anymore.  Rather we are freed up to flow on the great neutral consciousness of the Light of our Soul as we see what is truly happening and not be misled by our old delusions, and so we don’t get embroiled in that old recurring dramatic scenario.  If we did, we would be creating yet more karmas that would keep us tied to our forgetting.  That forgetting is what traditional yogic scriptures call “ignorance.”  So, remembering Who we are bit by bit is our slow and steady Enlightenment!  But that uphill course demands that we engage fully in this whole healing process as described in the last weeks’ articles.  www.SoulAnswer.com/peace.html . This step by step Enlightenment calls for all the bits of knowledge gained from all those creepy karmic experiences as both the perpetrator and then as the victim to finally rearrange themselves as pieces of a grand puzzle that now becomes the engine of incredible wisdom, compassion and healing ability in your own self.  This is the process of remembering Who you are, bit by bit!  www.SoulAnswer.com/karma.html . Now, here comes the huge part.  At some point in the course of your healing, you will find that you subconsciously hold your small, “forgetful” self—your ego responsible for your Original Separation.  That is just the way that it is.  When people have hit that point, they find great anguish and self blame that seems impossible to heal.  It feels as though there is no recourse but to continue to suffer this great separation as retribution for such a great “mistake” as separating their consciousness from the All-Bliss Godhead.  Such incredible guilt! Yet when thoroughly explored, they find that it was their Soul, their God Self that made that original decision to cause a “part” of Itself to have primal amnesia so that it could live in this finite creation of illusory time and space.  But, it is this “small, unconscious self” that has actually faithfully served their Soul by evolving through lifetimes of forgetting, healing and remembering.  That was their Soul’s intended course for their small self’s lifetimes, and their Soul is so very, very grateful to this unconscious aspect of Itself for taking on this incredibly challenging job of true service to the ALL in ALL! So, as we realize this, in fact we most deeply and humbly forgive our Soul for asking our small self to create and receive the blows of lifetimes in ignorance and pain.  But as we heal, we are so grateful to both our Soul and our small self to be on the train headed for HOME, which is Final Remembering of ourselves as One Being. The most amazing thing is that as we heal from each karmic string of events over lifetimes, we become truly grateful for the whole process, and those particular kind of experiences no longer bug us—neither by capturing our consciousness nor by triggering that old pain.  We don’t hold any grudges, but are grateful for the knowledge we have developed as we see how necessary all those events have been to our growth into our most incredibly unique partnership of self as Self. When we are faced again by similar karmic events, we only feel the Light and expansion that has been created in the wake of that karmic transformation.  Ease, connection with all that is, including the genuine experience of true Love, pure expansion and freedom, strength, kindness, and prosperity are now ours!  We give over to the freedom of actually living on this Earth, but our consciousness is actually sourced from our Soul, our God Self.  That happens as our healed self is freed up to “Let go and Let God.” That is how we move into the Light bit by bit, step by step.  And we become deeply happy—not just the temporary happiness that explodes on Christmas morning, but the very deep and abiding happiness of Being Here Now.  It is an actual Dimension of Soul.  So, let your heart, mind and Being be healed! This comes from our transformation out of Original Separation to the experience of remembering Who we are—not from our head, but the actual realization of our True Self within our Total Being, which is the Light of pure Love!  Sat Nam. Lots of Love, Siri-Gian Kaur Copyright:  Siri-Gian Kaur Khalsa, www.SoulAnswer.com/peace.html , 2013. You have permission to reproduce this full article in print or online as long as you keep this copyright large, readable and next to this article. To easily print out this article and the others in this series, please go to www.SoulAnswer.com/peace.html .

THE CAUSE OF REPEATING CRAP!  Finding Peace #4. Jan. 8, 2013 I trust that you have read the first 3 articles in this series called “Finding Peace,” that take you through steps to turn around any Victimization habits that you may have lurking in your mind.  Recurring pain, etc. is actually lodged in your mind and energetic system—not in the truth of a situation.  You can change that pain to freedom!  You can see these weekly articles at www.SoulAnswer.com/peace.html . Now over the weeks of these articles, we have gone from recognizing these painful victim/victimizer situations in ourselves to healing them.  Most of us in this culture have subconsciously developed some sort of these habits over our lifetime.  They seem to be so “normal” that we don’t realize that we are actually shooting our personal peace in the foot every time we allow them to take us over!  Therefore we have talked about many ways to spot these nasty buggers when they appear in our personality and how to consciously change them.  Don’t forget that GuruMeher Singh has developed a most incredible series of courses that help you gently and effectively turn these “greasy guys” around so that they actually support you in great Light and balance, and no longer cut you off at the knees!  www.SoulAnswer.com/sos.html . So, the next question is:  WHERE DO THESE HABITS ERUPT FROM? Very generally speaking, they come from either a habit that we learned from our parents or others, or they are embedded in us by the very real FEAR that we have felt from situations long past—whether in this life time or others.  I have worked with so many folks in regressions to earlier in this life and others where they experienced the most difficult situations, and where fear or terror would be the most obvious outcome. We all have energy systems (auras, chakras, meridians, etc.) that are totally interactive with our bodies and minds, usually by way of our nervous and endocrine systems, the physical “commanders” of our bodies. So, when you have a fright, you may feel your breath either get shallow, or stop altogether—your prana or Life Force is interrupted.  Your mind may race, or freeze, or your consciousness may even jump out of your body to avoid the pain.  This habit continues to leave you numb.  Or you may have the classic “fight or flight” reactions. All of these reactions are stored in your energetic system as a kind of PTSD—Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  And those automatic reactions are triggered by similar situations in your present life.  So these reactions that seem to come out of nowhere can be stored in our energetic system over lifetimes!  Therefore, you may not even understand where your “buttons” came from, but until they are neutralized in our mind/energetic/body systems, they continue to capture our whole consciousness when triggered. For instance, a wonderful father and husband unconsciously allowed himself to have an affair.  It turns out that his mom was immensely sexually inappropriate with him, and had a number of affairs herself when he was a child.  So, that habit or reaction was embedded in his mind and energetic system, and blossomed “out of nowhere”. Or as a small child, a woman was continually raped by a family member.  She was never protected by the women, and her pain was never even acknowledged.  As she grew up, she became afraid of men, was aggressive and uncontrollable in her anger, couldn’t make any lasting relationships with either men or women, lived with constant underlying terror, and became an alcoholic that effectively numbed her pain but destroyed her life.  And yet, she doesn’t even remember what actually happened to cause all this.  This is “just the way she is.” Another woman holds back expression of her great gifts of healing and wisdom.  She shies away from even accepting them in her own mind because a great anxiety creeps all through her body and confuses her mind when this topic comes up.  In a regression she finds that in a lifetime in the middle ages where she administered healing herbs and wisdom to many who began to follow her culture of Light, she was captured by the local church establishment on trumped up charges.  This woman was unintentionally leading the people away from the churchmen’s influence.  So of course, she was burned at the stake for witchcraft.  This is actually not an unusual scenario. So, you can see how all of these people could actually be hounded by an underlying fear, or reality-numbing consciousness that seems to come from nowhere!  And of course, any of these situations can create the ever-repeating habit of victim/victimizer in one’s consciousness. Now, don’t throw up your hands as you yell, “Well, there you go!  It’s not my fault after all!”  That would be a true victim’s anthem. This is the time to take full responsibility for the whole lineage of such a pattern.  You may have heard about the actions of Karma—that great evolutionary tool of the Cosmos!  It is our Soul that signs us up for the karmas of each lifetime in which we are the victimizer, so that we may have the experience of being the victim of that kind of difficulty later on.  In other words, we have been the perverted mother, the rapist, the curchman executioner, and so on in other lifetimes.  But we don’t shroud ourselves in guilt—another victim course of action. Instead, we stay deeply, meditatively in our Soul, our God Self to address our long-time interrelated patterns that usually follow a particular category.  We have robbed, so in some lifetime, we are robbed.  But can you believe it, there is actually no “good” or “bad” karma?  Our Soul came here to experience everything, and I mean EVERYTHING!  As Yogi Bhajan said so often, “There is no good or bad, thinking makes it so.”  The idea is that as we experience both sides of the coin, so to speak, and then finally heal from that, we actually develop incredible abilities of compassion, wisdom and healing in that category.  These are what I call the “gems and jewels” of transformation or healing.  So, we might as well look on this whole process, including our own pain as an extraordinary, all-engaging adventure of healing so that we can truly progress along this Ladder of Consciousness.  You can read more detail about this process at www.SoulAnswer.com/karma.html . Now, how do we heal at this most deep energetic level where true healing actually occurs? The first thing is that we put ourselves in the hands of our own divine Soul.  We do this meditatively, surrendering all blame with the intention of healing.  This can take a lot of TRUST, but where else are you going to go if your Infinite and cozy God Self is not enough?  It simply takes letting go and letting God!  You may have heard that, but it is absolute Truth! To get you there, you can do any and all mantras and/or kriyas.  www.SoulAnswer.com/kriyas.html .  They actually reformulate the “digitized” information that is stuck in your energetic bodies so that healing, or melting of that repeating stuck energy can move again and flow out of your being.  That frees up your energy “flow” so that those “alligators” of victim energy are neutralized and gone!  That “digitized” information has been reformulated into something that is great and supportive. My favorite mantra from breaking those energetic chains is Gobinday, Mukunday… www.SoulAnswer.com/gobinde.html .  Or www.SoulAnswer.com/jumping_out_of_hell.html .  Amazing results!  Freedom, expansion, love, wisdom and ability is what you develop with this alchemical process! Now as the old pain comes up and out, you may re-experience it.  Don’t get frightened.  That is just part of the process.  Scream, yell, cry, pound your pillow as you feel it when it moves up and out through your conscious layers.  But at the same time, keep up the meditative process as described above.  You can even be playing a mantra CD in the background to keep you in this most dynamic state.  www.SpiritVoyage.com . As a matter of fact, I saw that scientists are now creating virtual reality programs that will lead a war vet back into the same trauma that was the root of their PTSD on the battlefield.  It helps them re-experience that same terror, but in an ultimately safe environment.  They have found this process so very important to the vet’s healing. Next is the most deep forgiving.  We talked about that last week.  You definitely don’t do this just off the top of your head.  You go very deeply into your meditative consciousness using your long, deep breath www.SoulAnswer.com/long_deep_breath.html or Heart Breath www.SoulAnswer.com/heart_breath.html to do this.  It powerfully moves your healing prana or energy.  And this is how you actually soften those very real energetic ties that have held those pains, anger, depression within you for so very long.  As we said, forgiving those who caused you pain does not say that what they did is OK, and it is not so much for them, but for you so that you don’t have to be chained to them and that hurt any more.  And don’t forget to forgive yourself as well for accepting that pain in some huge Universal way.  Remember, it is your Soul—your Real Self that wants to live all aspects of Life as you.  And as you do, this healing transformation brings you step by step closer to True Realization to Who you really are.  That is the process of actual Union with the Infinite Mind/Consciousness, also called Yoga. Finally as you go through all this, please relax in the very beautiful, subtle, freeing Light that is available to you now! Allow pure gratitude for what you have been through and where you are now as a healed consciousness—no matter where you have been! Then once you have experienced how this whole process works, you can TRUST, TRUST, TRUST that it will work over and over again.  As this new paradigm becomes the foundation of your own awareness, your very Consciousness, you will find that your life becomes one of flow, freedom, love and expansion on all levels.  The synchronicities that occur, just when you need them become your actual way of life.  You engage in your Life, trusting that all that happens is just the way that it should! Remember, intentions made with pure neutrality will bring the creative solutions, although usually not in the way that you “think” they should happen.  “Expectations will Kill You!”  Yes?  We already talked about that last week.  The challenge is to constantly maintain this outlook of trust, confidence, and continual healing of each “alligator” that arises.  You can do.  I know that you can! So, please do your sweet and rigorous daily spiritual practices that we call “sadhana.”  That is such a constant support for elevating your mind, and moving the hurt ideas and stuck energy through your system. “Keep Up and You will be Kept Up!”  This is Yogi Bhajan’s motto, and believe me, it really does work!  I know this from personal experience and from that of others who have also followed this road conscientiously. You are the Breath, the Being, the Love of the all in ALL Universal Being.  As you stay dedicated to this most dynamic path, you will certainly realize Who you are by degrees over time.  That, my Dear is the Blessing of the Life Well-Lived. Lots of Love, Siri-Gian Kaur Next week:  “Dumped and Deserted!” Copyright:  Siri-Gian Khalsa, www.SoulAnswer.com , 2013. You can get these newsletters weekly when you sign up for our Soul Answer Community at www.SoulAnswer.com . See this whole series and easily print it out at www.SoulAnswer.com/peace.html .

Clearing the Habitual Darkness. Part #3 of the series “Finding Peace!” Jan. 1, 2013 In the past two weeks, we have explored the first two aspects of finding PEACE!  That is to change our mind and our “being” from Victim Consciousness to Soul Consciousness.  You can check out each one in the series as we publish it at www.SoulAnswer.com/peace.html . In the first article in this series, we took a look at what Victim Consciousness is, and what it might sound like coming out of our own mouths.  We also found that a victim will find others to victimize them, and they will also victimize others.  Odd how it works, eh?  But did you find any shade of these habits in yourself?  Yay!  We are becoming Conscious! And in last week’s article, we found that if we change our broken record of repeating the story of our victimization over and over again—whether to others, or only within our own mind, we only perpetuate our anger, grief, hurt, pain, blame, depression, loss of Self love and connection with others, hopelessness, and on and on.  We discovered that first we could very consciously change our perpetuating habits of thinking/talking, first by being aware of our “self-speak,” and then reigning it in so that our stories to ourselves and others change.  We need to be quite dedicated to this practice to actually change those putrid habits, but take heart and love the path!  You will be incredibly rewarded.  So sharpen your self-observations skills, stay determined and keep up.  And if you forget, DON’T BLAME YOURSELF!  That would only smack you back to self-victimization mode.  Instead, just yelp, “Woops,” and begin again.  Correcting our mistakes is how we make progress.  And that progress is made steadily over a lifetime. Now the second part of changing your self-defeating story line--and this goes hand in hand with catching your mind racing downhill to the nearest septic tank, is when you are faced with some kind of challenge, immediately switch into neutral mind where the voice of your Soul lives, and begin accepting solutions.  www.SoulAnswer.com/soul.html and www.SoulAnswer.com/intuition.html .  Your solutions may come immediately, or they may come to you piece by piece, or they may simply develop over time.  Be sure to maintain your shuniya/neutral mind—neither judging nor going numb as pieces of your solution come together.  As Yogi Bhajan always said, “Patience Pays!”  This is a true art.  Hold yourself to the practice of shuniya if you are really serious about finding true Peace.  I promise you that the solutions will come, although be alert because they probably won’t be the ones that you expected.  You may need to change your outlook to recognize and accept those solutions.  But remember, this is how your own Divine Soul leads you through your own evolution to Union with It. And remember, we are not judging anyone who would prefer to not do this work now, but who would rather remain controlled by their dark shadows at present.  Evolution will take them to Peace in some lifetime.  We simply respect that Divine Timeline as we take care of ourselves.  But of course you can share what work you are doing if they would like to hear about it. TACTICS OF  SELF-VICTIMIZATION The first is the most simple.  Sometimes we find that people will pay attention to us, have pity on us, and give us something—sometimes even something that we want if we complain long and loud enough.  This may be a condition learned as a child, rather like creating a successful tantrum at more sophisticated levels, of course.  For instance, if I continue to tell people how very poor I am, my hook is that they will give me free stuff.  However, their advice or implied conditions for our remediation is often included in their “gift,” even though you would probably just as soon not suffer through that.  And their gift can come with lots of other strings attached as well.  But these moves are part and parcel of the Victim game.  If I proclaim how unloved I am to all, my hope is that someone will take pity on me and actually love me.  That rarely works in the long run. Firstly, when we are such an unconnected, needy pit, no one can fulfill our needs no matter how hard they try. So, that can be a real turn-off for any prospective partner.  Now listen closely.  It is only Self/self love that can truly satisfy you and Self/self love is the actual foundation for any connection to any “other” person, anywhere.  But only YOU can give Self/self love to yourself, plus openly receive that Self/self love.  Now these are the actions of the Consciousness game.  What a kick, eh?  We will talk more about how to heal such habitual impediments later on. Once you truly love yourself, only then can you love others, they can love you, and you can actually accept their love.  After all, we may have this unconscious bug in our head that says, “Anyone who could love me must not be worth much.”  Did you ever hear that one rattling around your cranium?  What a never-ending downward spiral that is! OUR SEARCH FOR PEACE IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES Now, we will attempt to understand these repeating programs that are welded into us, and which seem to get triggered from nowhere to drag us into their dark or fiery virtual reality.  They are so very “normal” to us, that we believe their expression is our True Identity—our real self.  However, if we get stuck there, we will never transform to find pure Peace.  We will hold tight to our old, hurtful ways that bring anything but Peace.  And the change to being free of that old, hurtful identity can be scary simply because when you change or transform, you have to go to someplace deep within your psyche to change your actual story of yourself, and to dissolve the actual energetic chains that hold you hostage.  It feels like you are going into the void, only because you have never been in real Peace.  Your supporting identity has not been that of Peace but of turmoil.  So, actually transforming “who” you believe yourself to be will change as you transform.  So even though the old way of operating in your world, and the way that you see yourself may be so hurtful and degrading, it actually holds some kind of perverse comfort simply because it is what we know.  Free falling into peace is totally unknown.  Since there are no known reference points that we can grab onto for our imagined safety, we balk—we get scared and hold back from this place of Peace, even though some part of us declares that it wants Peace. Most people seem to transform a little, and then run right back into the “safety” of their troubled waters over and over again until they finally get that in fact there is NO safety in turmoil, so might as well give up their old ways and actually live their Light!  This is the life-altering “trick” that you must solidly perform in order to actually live in Peace without dark tricks of your mind tripping you up. Remember, Peace doesn’t come from the actions of other people or circumstances from the outside, no matter how very much we hang onto that false belief.  That is a paradigm of our current/old culture that must be cracked wide open.  Our whole economy is built on that lie.  Just take a look at advertising—the religion of the consumer society.  “If you only had (fill in the blank), then you would have real happiness. On the contrary, real, dependable Peace comes only when your mind and energy are not swept away by fear, insecurity, blame, anger, self-loathing and so much more.  These are the emotional energies that prompt us to “get stuff,” and they are the same emotions that we use when we don’t get what we think will make us satisfied and happy.  What a dilemma!  Might as well change!  GuruMeher Singh, an exceptional teacher and life coach has developed a very simple and effective methodology to turn these emotions around to serve you, rather than trip you.  Take a look at www.SoulAnswer.com/sos.html .  EXPECTATIONS WILL KILL YOU! Remember that always.  Expectations are the projections that we make to cover our insecurities. “If I don’t make this much money…,” “If I don’t have someone love me to the point that I don’t feel this pain…,” etc., we feel we will slide down into the great, dark crack between Earth and Hell.  Or, “I have been there before, and without that (fill in the blank), I will definitely sink.  My life will be one of hyper insecurity forever—or even temporarily…,” or “If that person doesn’t speak to me…,”  “if I don’t get that promotion…,” and on and on.  We feel we are definitely hell-bound if we don’t get (fill in the blank).  Then our life will collapse.  We can powerfully, subconsciously make our life collapse if we don’t get whatever it is, just to prove what accomplished victims we are!  That painful emotional story line remains embedded as our truth. Our heartbreak, anger, loss, hurt, fear and more are actually based in our mind and its expectations!  Let’s say that again.  Our definition of life as it is, is actually based in the hard-held expectations of our mind!  So, if we could: ·         Actually “ride reality”--that is neutrally seeing what the Universe is bringing us without judgments up or down. ·         Deeply trust that the Universe/God/Creation/Soul is actually facing us with situations where we are given the great OPPORTUNITIES to heal and transform our mental and emotional junk so that we can be freed up from our mind’s traps so that we can then move forward on our journey to Peace. ·          Turn our perspective around to finally “get” that we are so beautifully and expertly taken care of as we “Let Go and Let God,” no matter how scary that is! ·         Not demand what we haughtily believe WE NEED at the moment, but pay expert attention to this gift that we are given, knowing that is precisely what we need to change for the better at this very moment. ·         Cool ourselves into pure gratitude as we do our very real work of healing and expanding out of our old belief patterns and into seeing the action of God in the unadorned, clear present.   That is the Journey to Peace well-lived!  This is where we exchange our rose colored glasses that only serve to hide the Truth of seeing this life, perceiving this world most clearly.  That is called “Truth.”  And as a result, this is where miracles of Peace are generated. FORGIVENESS So, now, what if you could put in a prayer for what you would like as an outcome, but actually stay powerfully, steadfastly in neutral and not get upset if things turned out different than what you want?  What if instead of getting wound up about what you don’t have, or suffering with what is presented to you, you could actually FORGIVE the Universe, yourself, those who have hurt or deserted you; FORGIVE the actual pain, and even yourself for having accepted all of that on some level—and even forgive all even though you may have been an innocent small child when you were victimized? Now this is not a simple forgiveness from off the top of your head.  Oh, no!  This is the actual key that dissolves those incredibly strong chains that have kept your repeating, deafening emotions tangled in turmoil.  This is TRUE HEALING!  It is deep, meditative forgiveness.  Use your long, deep breath, your Heart Breath www.SoulAnswer.com/heart_breath.html to relax really deep into your Consciousness.  And then FORGIVE from your actual depth!  As you do this, you will probably feel that stuck energy move, transform, and leave you free and Light. Now this is not to say that what the perpetrator did is OK.  Oh, no.  Unless the perpetrator needs to be put away to keep others safe, you let the action of Karma create very real justice here. No, this act of deepest forgiving is for YOU.  The very process of forgiving loosens up and actually melts those very real ties that bind us to the recurring experience of the hurt and all that that triggers.  I can’t emphasize that enough.  FORGIVING is what heals you and makes you free.  Remember, this is not lip-service forgiving, this is the most deep, energetic  process of healing.  Try it.  I bet that you will be amazed at how this very deep, most simple act of healing allows so much Light and Peace to pour in! Try it, try it, and try it some more.  Allow yourself to be free, and don’t go back to your mindsets that only gave you turmoil.  That, my Dear is how to bring Peace to your life.  Peace is not something that is given to you to fill you up.   Rather Peace is magnetized by the vacuum created by clearing up the habitual darkness. This will make better sense to you if you read WHY this whole business takes place over lifetimes.  www.SoulAnswer.com/karma.html . I send you great compassion for your Journey, Dear!  Don’t be too hard on yourself.  Just keep up!  And we will talk more about this incredible process next week. Lots of Love, Siri-Gian Kaur   Copyright Siri-Gian Khalsa, www.SoulAnswer.com , 2012 You may reproduce the article in print or online as long as you keep this copyright information large, readable and next to the article.

DEARLY HELD SELF-SABOTAGE! Finding Peace, Part 2, Dec. 25, 2012 "All sickness, all shallowness, all pain, all miseries are the outcome of one source: keeping negativity within yourself."   Siri Singh Sahib, Yogi Bhajan  Courtesy of Aquarian Wisdom  This is the second of several articles on how to turn around the hidden habit of victimization.  See past and present articles at www.SoulAnswer.com/peace.html . If you truly want happiness, kindness and brightness in your life, it will definitely mean working with and actually changing your identity, that is the way that you know yourself on a number of levels.  So, in this series, we will be working with the most mundane—that is changing your habits of thinking and your outlook on an everyday level.  In the next weeks, we will go more into the true process of healing.  That is transforming the energetic ties that may bind you to the source of those very strong alligators that reach up from the black and pull you down under. And finally, we will explore the very sublime realms of wonder, of surrender, of living in your Source and as you become fully united with your Source.  That is where true contentment lives, and it can be yours by a flip of your mind! As we discovered last week, so often we live in a mental state of victimization where we “deeply feel” that others are wounding us, that it is our lot to suffer, that there is intrinsic merit to suffering, that no one will ever truly love and support us, as our mind constantly spins old, hurtful memories that keep us in turmoil, and we subconsciously believe that being fearful will surely protect us this time.  I would like to remind you that the martyrs of old, who were TRUE martyrs lived and died as Beings of Light, people of genuine love and selfless service who did not feel sorry for themselves or felt glorified by torment.  They were simply living their Truth, not their hurt. Since it seems that most of us in our contemporary culture are prone in some way to this victim consciousness, and if we truly prize a life of satisfaction and contentment, the real call to true happiness, then let’s examine the minute to minute workings of our mind.  That is, what kind of chatter is persistently happening in your mind? I am always amazed that folks spend so much time and money beautifying their appearance, but their mind remains a pure pig sty, and they often seem so entrenched in it.  What a puzzle! When you look at your mind, do you find that it is kind of smarmy and chaotic, and that so many thoughts with their accompanying emotions bludgeon you with how very imperfect you are, how those around you don’t care for you or attack you in some way—even with an unkind glance?  Do you build cases where you see others constantly hurting you—whether in fact they objectively are or not?  The point is whether you continue to engage in the fight.  That is constantly justifying your attitude against theirs—no matter how “right” you might be.  Are you sinking into a repetitious tirade of “what I should have done to prove that I’m right or have the upper hand” long after an encounter is past.  Do you repeat your story of victimization over and over to yourself and others as a habitual form of conversation?  Do you defend your “honor” as a victim, implying that as victim you gain some worth in this world?  Or is your flavor of victimization one of self-degradation in which you are always living from the reality of past hurts and guilt rather than looking for the Light of the present?  Do you hang onto that past as your present reality?  That may be living from the recorded loop of abuse, neglect, or even very difficult torture, whether from someone else or self-inflicted.  And so much more that may bring on self-disgust or hate for yourself and others in an endless variety of manifestations to the point that you cannot free yourself to live happily.  Or maybe you have never really seen anyone model a truly happy mind, so you just don’t get what that is and how to live it. Take a look at these mind habits.  Those habits of thinking are what are really killing you, not the actions of others.  Believe it or not, this is true even if you have experienced the deepest of horrors, although we will talk more about truly healing those very difficult old emotional scars in the upcoming chapters.  But you can see more about WHY we go through these terrible situations when you read the article at www.SoulAnswer.com/karma.html . When your mind changes, then your whole life changes—guaranteed!  You see, the story that your mind tells you over and over again is the story that you continue to live.  You automatically and subconsciously take advantage of situations that help you deepen, justify and further your story.  And your very persistent energetic projection actually draws to you whatever “supportive evidence” that you are looking for—whether that be for your Light of for your darkness—no matter the actual circumstances that are right in front of you.  It is kind of like using a flashlight to highlight parts of that proverbial elephant.  One persons views its long, muscular proboscis as a threatening, poisonous snake ready to grab them and do them in.  Another person finds it an amazing work of nature that not only breathes, but doubles as arms for work, eating, and hugging their children. Now I am not talking about some kind of Polyanna kind of dissociative behavior when you don’t deal with the very real situation at hand, but you just go numb with a cheery smile on your face.  On the contrary, we are delving deeply into these situations to find what is REALLY happening and how to create solutions! CHANGE YOUR MIND So, believe it or not, the very first solution to turning your mind around is to BREATHE!  You may notice that when you are feeling mad, scared, hurt, abused, etc., either you stop breathing or your breath becomes quite shallow.  Now experiment with long-deep breathing, that is through your nose, from your belly, with very long and deep conscious breaths.  That will bring control over your nervous and endocrine system—those commanders of bodily functions and it will loosen up your mind so you can get some “space” in your mind. Then add to that this one little, most transformative technique.  On the exhale, feel as though your breath is moving out of your heart center--that is in the middle of your chest.  Just experiment with it, keep up with it.  You may find that your uptightedness or stress, even in the heaviest of situations eases out as you stay concentrated in it.  Victory!  Experiment, please! CREATE SOLUTIONS Make a game of it!  When difficult situations present themselves, instead of falling down the chutes of your subconscious that throw your mind into chaos, take stock to see if you can find ways to solve the situation.  Take delight in finding a creative “work around” to fulfill your needs, or to create a brilliant and very real new story line for yourself.  For instance, if you don’t feel that you have enough money to see you through the month, just find really inventive ways to cover yourself.  Look for amazing and delightful solutions in the same way a child would pursue an Easter egg hunt, gleeful in your pursuit!  Rely on the great creativity that can come through you, if only you gave it a chance.  Know that the solution is based in humility, attention, remaining neutral—not getting hung up in the choking attitude that “nothing works,” or that you have “already tried everything.” Or when you feel that someone is being nasty to you, instead of taking it personally as yet another occasion to be pummeled, take a good look at the other person.  Are they putting their own victimization off on you and you are more than ready to take it in?  What they may need is a bit of the Heart Breath energy that we just learned.  What actually comes out of your heart center is healing energy that has an astonishing effect on others, as you loving and humbly extend it to them.  You can do it most effectively for yourself as well. However, I have met so many folks who stick themselves in the tar of self-defeat so strongly that they staunchly defend their putrid story line against all manner of solving it.  So, is this defending the stinky pig-sty of the mind unto death?  Is it worth it?  At any rate, one may find that they need to engage themselves in those most difficult mind habits until they are ready to change.  We cannot judge a person’s timing of their own evolution.   We can only bless them and respect their own rate of progress.  “All is God!”  And if one is ready to change, then do be present to help them.  But we don’t manipulate or demand that another person heal themselves.  We only have true charge over one person, and that person is our own self.  THE SEQUENCES THAT LEAD TO THE CONSEQUENCES—A Quote by Yogi Bhajan. Do you feel that your boss has it out for you, or that office or neighborhood politics are haunting you?  Are you still living with a spouse who attacks you for the fun of it? Now you have seen that changing the way you respond to these trials makes all the difference.  If you continue to engage as a victim, you will continue to play the victim role in your own “game of Life,” and the game will continue until you change. So, try this:  Instead of getting incensed about the politics going on around you, just send all those manipulators heart breath and stay focused on that, rather than falling for their trips.  Guaranteed, if you consistently do that, your life will change!  In the short run, you may think that all is falling apart, such as some won’t want to be your “friend” anymore because you no longer encourage their gossip or judgment.  But is that what you really wanted in a loving, supportive relationship anyway? Now in cases of adult abuse, there is usually a very well defined program happening.  One partner either verbally or physically abuses the other.  Now the “other” may say they put up with it for several reasons—they may need to be financially or physically supported, or they don’t want to disturb the children, or they believe it will all work out, or the “other” feels that it is a matter of love and compassion to “stand by their man,” etc.  So, after every abusive episode, there is a time of temporary awakening for the “other,” where they may take a stand, or they may simply retreat into depression, non-connection, etc. until they feel a little better.  Finally the pair makes up, whether that is a lot or a little bit.  But then the whole cycle repeats itself. So, if you want to live constantly in that degrading cycle, you can keep up.  But if you truly want change, it is time for you to make change.  Find any way that you can truly make that change!  This is where protective “boundaries” come in.  You may spend some time making that change—such as getting a bit more education so that you can support yourself.  Or it can be quick, such as GET OUT NOW!  But in this free country, you have the choice.  Stay in the poop or get out.  It all hinges on your mind refusing to be a victim any longer. And in your other relationships, if you feel that someone is abusive, or overstepping by asserting their authority over you, or taking too much from you, or making a pest of themselves, then by all means do decide how you want to participate or not participate in the relationship.  As you do heart breath, you can kindly let that other person know how you would like to be treated.  This is called a “healthy boundary.”  And if they cannot honor that, then you move to the next step, which may be limiting or ending your association with them.  You don’t blame them.  Rather, this is just not how you would like to share space with them. APPLY THIS TO YOUR SITUATION Now, you are quite an intelligent person, so you look at these most brief stories and apply them to your own life story.  Just take a few minutes now to ruminate over how this approach would affect your own life!  Extrapolate what you have learned here to your own life circumstances and see how you can change your life from darkness to Light.  You have the power!