Life Coach in Your Pocket

Positive Changes

Imagine (or remember) yourself looking fantastic... healing puts that in your reach.

as you shift emotional baggage, weight often goes along with it. As do most of the self esteem issues about your body.

You will get more comfortable with all your body's processes, and you will come to respect and listen to your system.

Your diet will naturally evolve towards more healthy and nutritious fare, and you will find that you hardly ever get sick or require medication.

You will be able to alleviate most short and long term symptoms of physical discomfort, pain, and/or illness, and you will experience a dramatic improvement, in well-being, flexibility and vitality.

You will sleep better and feel more energized, and you will require less sleep. You will also require significantly less food to sustain yourself.

Common Symptoms

Basically all the physical responses to shifting are short term, and will pass naturally within 24 to 72 hours.

If it's ongoing longer than a week, then there is usually something else that needs to be shifted, or you're feeling the cumulative effect of a series of shifts.

What helps here is to keep a journal, and date- and time-stamp realizations you are having. Literally just scribble the thought down with the date and time. Then, when you experience symptoms, you can flip back and see where you are on the integration timelines of 24, 48 and 72 hours, and 1, 2, 3 and 6 weeks.

As your body releases old energies, and they finally pass through your physical body, you will find that passing gas (farting), belching (burping), frequent urination and frequent bowel evacuations are common.

In addition, you may experience or hear your tummy 'bubbling'. This is a good sign! Bubbling means that you are releasing from your diaphragm to small intestine for evacuation.

The sound of the bubbling, and the discomfort and gas that come with it, are signs of your lymphatic system working to cleanse and clear your body. Occasionally, especially in the beginning, you will find yourself suddenly throwing up (vomiting) as your body abruptly evacuates an energy it is able to let go of.

You can massively alleviate these kinds of symptoms by deeply massaging your stomach area, looking for the little hard nodules and any sore areas; massaging them until you feel relief and hear bubbling noises. Or better yet, massaging until all the bubbling stops (which can take an hour or more!).

If you have never massaged lymph, or haven't for a while, then it will take TWO to THREE DAYS until the pain disappears. You have to persist to see results, and keep massaging the area.

Moderate to Severe

Most commonly, you will experience Ascension Flu and Shifting Flu.

Ascension Flu is about your body integrating lessons that you have already had, usually within the previous six weeks, or because something has come to the surface to be healed.

You're tired, fatigued, run down, and have a sore body. Headaches (mental confusion and don't want to deal, this is painful) and sinus issues (internal crying) are commonplace too.

Shifting Flu, on the other hand, is more like a stomach flu, and is about what you are shifting right now.

This flu is much more vicious, but luckily usually short lived (24 to 72 hours).

Typical of a stomach flu, it will both start and end suddenly, you will have vicious cramping and heartburn, usually accompanied by throwing up and a very runny tummy.

The best advice here is stay hydrated. Even if you throw up every single sip you take, keep taking sips or water or an electrolyte mixture. A tepid, watered down electrolyte mixture is something you will be able to handle throwing up if it carries on for a few days.

I have seen (and experienced) a few of these land up in hospital because of near kidney failure, but as long as you stay hydrated, you should be able to ride the worst of it.

It's okay to get medication for the symptoms if you need to, but do NOT go to a doctor, or get antibiotics. Over time, your body starts to resist that kind of medication, especially if your path is spiritual.

Taking medication that is any stronger than Over The Counter, will often make you MORE sick than what you already are.

Medication is not the only thing you'll develop physical symptoms around - body products, including tampons, food stuffs, what you drink, what you put against your skin - all of those will change as you begin to tune into your body more and are able to hear it better above the noise of your emotions.

Worst Case Scenario

If you keep piling healing work on, and working on yourself daily, without taking the occasional break, and doing the necessary system support, then you will go into shifting overload.

Shifting overload can knock you for a six completely - your whole system will break down for a while, until you've had enough rest.

In the absolute worst cases, shifting overload will lead to illness, fatigue, depression, suicidal tendencies, and even complete breakdowns - both physical and mental.

You can't avoid breakdowns completely - some of them are necessary ego deaths on your journey; but you can choose your battles wisely and maintain a good, steady, and fast pace of shifting, if you take regular breaks and manage the daily energy plumbing with tools like Butterfly Release.

Positive Changes

Most notably, you will develop a foundation of peace: a calm that underpins everything you do, as you grow in the knowledge that you can weather any emotional storm - without losing your footing.

The spirit animal of the flamingo empowers people with the ability to stand firm in turbulent and muddy waters, without losing their footing... comfortable enough to perch on one leg, in fact!

You will become like the flamingo, able to weather any emotional storm or turmoil, without losing your balance, knowing that 'this too, shall pass'.

Over the years, as you integrate that ability, and begin to operate from it, you will become able to face any fear, pain, doubt, shame, or any other negative emotion, head on, knowing that you have the ability to overcome whatever is presented to you - or die trying.

You will truly become the cool, calm, self-assured, level-headed, mature and brave person you always knew you could be.

Common Symptoms

If it's an emotion you're going to feel it at some point on this journey. From hate to doubt to wrath to jealousy - you'll experience them all.

It's actually kind of part of the basic course - knowing the emotions and how to navigate them is one of the requirements for the Ascension level.

So you can expect to laugh and cry, to hate, to be angry, to be hateful, to be hated, to be powerless, jealous, scared, lonely, rejected, shamed, doubtful, embarrassed, humiliated... and so much more. Experiencing them at least once is a requirement to know what they are.

It's like watching a TV show - you have to watch every episode in order to say you've watched it all. This is one episode of your life, and you will have to feel it and go through it for an allocated amount of time, in order for it to be done and part of your experience.

That's all it is: in most cases the emotion only exists so that you can feel and experience it, and add it to the catalogue of emotion and experience that makes up you - your knowledge and understanding.

It's hard to see the evolutionary path for most people, but over time, this knowledge will translate into the knowledge of the universe, the knowledge of enlightenment, of ALL. You've just got to stick it out for a few decades lol ;) Maybe a lifetime!

Moderate to Severe

No matter how well you are doing, there are going to be at least two weekends a year where you feel like emotional poo.

The energy is just present in the field, and for a day or two, you just have to feel your share of the load until it passes. Luckily it's often accompanied by the rain and inclement weather, and become a good reason to stay at home and bundle up.

And just like we have energies that are common to all of us, we also have stages of the journey that are common to all of us. In this case though, they are harder to navigate emotional periods.

One of the first that you experience is when your ego deaths really start ramping themselves up, both in intensity and frequency. The pure pace of the experience can leave you drained and fatigued, weepy, scared, tired and just plain finished. Most often what you need here is a bit of a break from shifting - a few 'human days' to rest and recuperate with some good food and normal world stuff.

Eventually though, if you don't deal with it, you will go into shifting overload, and start heading into the realms of depression, anxiety and mental illness.

One of the things about these common stages of the developmental journey, is that they take a bit of time to play out - sometimes a few years, depending on how fast you are able to traverse that particular issue.

During this time, part of the lesson IS the actual experience of living through that emotion - often for no other reason than it gives you compassion for someone experiencing something similar, and so that you can add it to your repertoire of experience, so that you are fully trained.

Thinking that you can go without that emotional lesson, is kind of like thinking it's safe to cut a tenth of all your classes.

Yes you might only be skipping one class here and there, so little it doesn't even get noticed, but you can never be sure WHICH class is okay to skip, because you don't know the curriculum yet, or the intended knowledge that is expected to be obtained through the curriculum.

So you might choose to skip a class, but that class could set the foundation for your entire year's work, or tie together a number of threads to form a coherent picture that finally makes everything fall into place.

In addition, it helps so much to remember that experience is entirely immersive... when you're jealous, you're ONLY jealous: you're not also happy that your ex found new love.

If you experience the security of faith, then you cannot truly experience doubt, because doubt is the LACK of that security of faith. The presence of one overwrites the other one. They are mutually exclusive in other words.

So in order to understand 'the emotions,' you will have to experience each individual one, one at a time, over a period of time. Through knowing each emotion individually, you come to understand the collective of 'emotionS' over time.

There are a lot of ugly emotions in the world, and, in order to get a complete education, you have to experience them all, at least once, one at a time, so that neither of them precludes the other.

You will experience loneliness because people aren't around when you want them there. This will have to happen to you if you are to KNOW what loneliness is.

You will experience abandonment and rejection. In order to be rejected you have to want something that does not want you back. In order to be abandoned, you have to be left behind by someone who matters to you.

Until you've been abandoned, you have no idea what abandonment means. So you have to live through it, in order to get a complete and well-rounded education.

This applies to every emotion we think of as negative - you have to understand them ALL to know ALL.

Worst Case Scenario

Speaking of negative emotions, possibly one of the most heinous emotions (energy, or collection of thoughts, that moves you to act in certain ways) present on our planet today, is pedophilia, or the sexual abuse of children.

Pedophilia, despite your strong adverse reaction right now, is a fantastic example to use for the neutrality of energy.

Pedophilia, or the sexual abuse of children by an older adult who takes away their free will choice, is an idea of a potential action that CAN occur.

When a narcissist or psychopath experiences the thought, they view it through a filter of self gratification (sexual pleasure), dominance, superiority, and a lack of compassion for what the other person wants. So the natural personalization of the energy is for that person to become a perpetrator.

However, an empath, or empathic person, may identify with the victims of abuse, and go on to form a support facility for these victims. Or they may begin a program that helps perpetrators heal so that they don't further the atrocities.

The energy itself is neutral - it is a potential action that CAN happen IF someone CHOOSES to act it out that way. And you always have a choice about HOW you want to play the energy out.

Continuing our example of narcissists and psychopaths, imagine one of these, with their tendency to lash out and hurt for fun, hearing voices and messages from God, or the other side? This person would become grandiose, believing themselves to be God, which has been the case with many of the religious cults over the years, where pedophilia is an energy and story that often rears its ugly head.

The reason for this is the scary side of shadow work, or facing your dark.

At the higher levels, this literally means that you will exposed to all of these energies, in order to test you, and see HOW you CHOOSE to respond to these energies. If you pass your dark tests, it is because you have faced these truths and stood firm.

In mental illness, suicide and depression, you see a similar thing: narcissists and psychopaths are more likely to display schizophrenic and aggressive tendencies; submissive personalities are more likely to come down with epilepsy, which is attacking yourself and short-circuiting your own electrical system to shut the messages down.

Bipolar is interesting, as is anything classified as a 'mood disorder'.

Basically a mood disorder means that your emotions change too frequently for other people's comfort, or for you to operate within the confines of societal limits.

However, the process of personal development is about learning to master your emotions, until you are at the point where you are able to face any emotion, and process it IMMEDIATELY, so that it does not impact your decision making or performance in certain situations.

Humanity, for the most part, is mystified by emotions. Most people can't see how anybody can even begin to deal with emotions, let alone move through them quickly. So they've labeled the ability to move through emotional ups and downs, quickly, a disorder.

But if you're going to deal immediately, then you are going to have to practice first - and there's no way you get it right for the first few years - or even decades.

What it looks like from the outside is you having a major series of emotional ups and downs, because those on the outside miss the emotional breakthroughs and relief you are experiencing.

At a higher level, as the joy surges slip away so that your learning and lessons can accelerate, many journeyers complain of going numb. At this juncture, you will start creating dram in your life in order to experience excitement. This is where the reckless and impulsive decisions on the journey come in.

If you find yourself suddenly (within six months) wanting to make a major life change, ask yourself, HONESTLY, if you are bored, and what you can get busy with in order to stimulate your mind.

As humans, we get lazy quickly. You will have to light a fire under your own bum at least two or three times a year to get out of lazy mode, especially if we are trying to minimize the emotional drama in our lives.

Positive Changes

Clearer, more confident, more productive, more innovative and more creative... just some of the skills you can expect as your mind sharpens as you grow.

Your inner voice will get a lot quieter... until the first day you realize you are sitting there with no racing thoughts at all.

You will become calmer, more self assured and more confident, finding yourself thinking with new clarity and insight.

You will more easily be able to absorb and comprehend information you glean, sorting and categorizing it, while using past experience in other areas to be able to speed up your learning curve.

You will get a lot more comfortable making mistakes, and a lot less worried about what other people think of you. Eventually you will find yourself living a life of your own creation, no longer confined by the norms and dictates of a society that has long outlived its usefulness.

Common Symptoms

The most common mental complaint you will have is lack of practical functionality.

Practical functionality is productivity and efficiency; the ability to be able to function on a practical level, getting the stuff done that you need to get done.

I'm sure you know from past experience how badly that usually goes when your mind is full of other stuff, like why you're angry at your partner or family member.

Inability to think, lack of focus, and their hard-t0-budge cousin, procrastination, are usually regular bedfellows when your practical functionality is out of whack. Luckily the Butterfly Release is designed to mitigate exactly this problem.

Before it starts getting better, and at certain times, your inner voice is going to go INSANE. It's like over-thinking to the nth degree... the worst ever song soundtrack stuck in your head.

The shortcut here is to know that this is a lesson of self discipline, and the inner voice gets better when you learn to take control of it and corral it, retraining every thought, in every second, until you start thinking in a different way.

There's no other solution for that - no magic wand or pill that fixes it. So start now and get good at controlling your moment-to-moment thoughts.

Dreams are likewise going to go nuts - you will dream almost constantly. At first you will try to remember them, but there's just way too much detail. Eventually you'll learn not to focus too much on them: the important ones will jump out at you, don't worry about that.

The worst part about the dreaming is not being able to rest properly - you wake up being so tired you need a sleep to recuperate from your dreams.

I have found that during busy dreaming periods, taking an afternoon or early evening nap can help. Or even a lunchtime nap. You seem to dream less at that time of the day.

When you're dreaming a lot, it's often because your mind is using the extra processing power, made available because it has to do less with your body during that time, to help you shift and grow even faster. It's the same idea as running downloads at night when the Internet is quieter.

Moderate to Severe

Rebellion is the key word you have to watch out for here, as it's one of the strongest mental disruptions you experience on the journey.

If you think about it, it makes sense - if you're going to be a leader, to be first, to be a pioneer, you have to be someone who pushes against the norm and wants to go it on their own; do things their way.

The rebellion energy does not subside as you get further along though, it will actually increase dramatically over time on the journey.

Each time the rebel steps up again, they will step out against another cause, something bigger, more societal and global. But at first it will be pushing back at home, then in larger communities, until eventually it cycles up to the cosmic levels.

One of the reasons behind this is that issues have to be personally relevant to us, for us to want to take them up. So it always starts as a public pushing back.

What you don't realize until you're at this point though, is that people are what hold the system in place, and they don't like disruption to the system... like Morpheus says to Neo: the very people we're trying to free are the very people we're fighting. If you're not one of us and free, then you're one of them and an agent.

So you begin to experience people pushing back against you, disliking you, not approving of you - and it creates tension and friction in a number of situations in your life.

This is going to create internal conflict in you, as you are beginning to see through the system, and into reality, and you know that you are in the right, that your understanding is greater. This makes it very hard to bite your tongue sometimes... which tends to get you into more trouble again!

Worst Case Scenario

People who honestly pursue a spiritual or personal development journey are, for the most part, empaths.

You may get other types of people who pursue the results it's possible to attain for their own selfish purposes, but they don't usually have the staying power required to stick with it in the long term.

One of the reasons that they don't is that the core requirement to START the conscious part of your journey is accepting the fact that it's ALL your fault. You are in the wrong and to blame for everything that's happening in your life.

This stage of development happens at 200 on the Human Consciousness Scale, and the lesson here is 'responsibility = power'.

When I take responsibility for the fact that I have created this, then I realize that I already have all the power I need to change it - just by choosing different behaviors and actions.

So when you're responsible for the things that are happening, it tends to come out in statements like "it's all my fault" and "I am to blame" and "I need to change".

This is one of the reasons why empaths are quicker to adopt the journey - it's easier for us to personalize an energy and direct it at ourselves. We're used to beating ourselves up and taking blame.

While there are 7Ps of ego, and we all show characteristics of all 7 of them, it's fair to say that we're divided into two kinds of ego groups: those who project and those who personalize.

Read more on the 7Ps of ego - external links here and here and here.

It's easy to see personalization in the explanation of empaths above, and if the flipside is people who project their energies onto others, then you can see how the projection prohibits the narcissist from taking the responsibility they need to pursue the journey properly and with intent.

The thing about taking responsibility for everything - so that you can learn the lessons available in that situation - is that you REALLY start to believe you're all sorts of a horrible person after a few years.

You get so used to taking the blame for everything that it actually becomes your pattern - so much so that you start beating yourself up before situations even take place.

This is responsible for driving many of the thoughts and feelings of inadequacy that journeyers experience, and is also partly why you see such high rates of depression and suicide on the journey, along with minds that snap with mental illness.

There comes a point on the journey where it becomes necessary to stop taking the blame for everything, and detach from outcomes and those around you. If you don't, you will literally go nuts, and/or land up killing yourself because you believe you are the world's most revolting person.

The defining line for success on the journey is do you go insane or make it through with your mind intact - can you grow from what you face, or will it kill you?

And the reward for making it through those tests? You get a harder one next time.

You will keep being exposed to darker and darker thoughts and energies to see where you are, where you stand, what you choose and what you are capable of.

Positive Changes

The process of faith is two-fold: first you develop faith that you are receiving messages from God, then you trust yourself that you are interpreting those messages correctly.

The trust-in-yourself part of faith is actually what takes the longest to develop.

Your faith is going to grow by leaps and bounds on the journey - and every single experience you have will validate your faith even more, making it easier for you to believe what is happening to you, and what you are learning and experiencing.

Your life and tastes will simplify, as will your expectations, desires, wants and needs.

You will become more naturally in tune with your body and environment, able to pick up signals about yourself, others and situations. It will take you a few years to begin trusting those signals though.

You will become calmer and more patient, and your perception of time will change.

You will become significantly smarter and wiser with every new learning you gain, and if you exercise the skills, you will be able to parlay that knowledge into other areas of life, learning just about everything you focus on at high speed.

Common Symptoms

Alienation, rejection and ridicule are hallmarks of the spiritual experience, and they can be summed up in one phrase: external validation.

When you look at religious and spiritual figures throughout history, we remember only those who reached a level of celebrity, and we view them through a lens of begin loved NOW.

But that doesn't mean that they were loved back then; in fact, Jesus was so hated that they nailed him to a cross to make a public example of him. You don't do that to people you like; you do that to people you want to get rid of.

But, the idea of this celebrity savior is present in our reality, and so this is a common trap that every journeyer falls into.

How it plays out is interesting... you start beating yourself up, and doubting your spiritual reality, BECAUSE you expect people to flock to you and recognize your greatness.

The truth however, is that most spiritual types are widely rejected, because they're too much, too weird, their ideas are too out here, they over-think, they're too serious, too controversial, too disruptive, too rebellious, grandiose, delusional and insane.

But, because of the celebrity Messiah complex, they're expecting recognition and celebrity to come with their increased growth.

So when they don't get it, they see it as lack of validation of their faith, and they begin to doubt the journey.

In the roughly 16-billion lives that have been, or are being, lived on Earth, only a handful have ever risen to the spiritual levels - so if you're pursuing a spiritual journey right now, you ARE a pioneer and front-runner.

What it means to be a pioneer is that you are first: you are achieving this and will be remembered BECAUSE you did it when no one else had been able to get it right.

We see this with pioneers and innovators; they are often so far ahead of the game that they even widely eclipse the second in line. The chasm between the two positions is huge, and number 2 in line often can't even keep up with the front-runner.

In a nutshell, what this means is that NO ONE ELSE UNDERSTANDS WHAT YOU ARE DOING~ OR HOW YOU ARE DOING IT - and that is exactly what makes you special.

People don't like special before it's a celebrity however; so until you reach the point of acclaim, all you will ever be is that weird person in the corner that no one really wants to be around.

People will NOT automatically recognize the greatness, wisdom, advancement and more in you - because people can only recognize what they contain in themselves.

So people will assume that your knowledge makes you believe you are superior to them, because that is how they perceive the experience of having a superior knowledge. Likewise they'll assume your detachment is disinterest and aloofness, and your lack of interest in the secular world will be personalized to lack of interest in them.

Additionally, you piss them off every time you open your mouth: you are always speaking about stuff that is new to them, introducing new ideas that force them to think, that make them feel stupid, because they can't understand what you're saying - or even half the words you're using to explain. It's literally like you're speaking Greek to them.

So not only do we make people feel stupid just by existing; we also force them to learn, grow and change every time we open our mouths around them. We constantly challenge their beliefs, just like we challenge our own, and we take them to places that are so uncomfortable for them, because we've had years to get used to the idea of breaking privacy.

People won't like you if you make them feel like idiots, and that happens simply because people feel inferior to the knowledge we contain.

But it will still hurt you every single time people do reject you - and there will be many times, because you naturally start looking to teach, because we learn by teaching.

The energy of external validation will knock you for a six every time you encounter it - and it comes around at least twice a year. Just suddenly you'll start down the road of 'no one likes me or approves of me and so therefore all this must be a lie because they would see my greatness if I was truly developing'. And then it will pass after a few days.

It is the most common ego trap and it's one that will trip you up time and again. There are tons to learn in those layers though, so the lessons are very worth it.

Moderate to Severe

The next major ego trap on the spiritual level is the ego trap of special relationships.

You have to remember that your spiritual journey is literally ego fighting for it's life - ego is the dragon you must slay. Dragons are wily, conniving, mean, angry, nasty, scary and dangerous. They shoot fire from their mouths, they can fly or run, they are reptilian in appearance, they have sharp teeth and claws, and they're known to imprison and eat people.

That's your ego. That's what you're fighting.

You can bet your bottom dollar that something like that is going to fight hard to stay alive. And it's favorite weapon to wield is the ego trap of special relationships.

In order to get to this point on your journey, you will have had to overcome certain energies and emotions, like fear. So ego can't attack on the level of fear here.

Instead the attacks become more subtle - and as always, ego targets your desires. It either does this by dangling a carrot in front of you (potential of a relationship), or beating you with a stick (no one wants you and you aren't really spiritual because you aren't a celebrity and no one even can be in a romantic love bond with you.)

At this stage of the fight, it will have become obvious that your primary desire is to move closer to God or ALL. So ego jumps in and confuses that emotion by reinforcing your belief in the body.

Because we have oblivion when we're born, the first part of our identity that develops is the belief that we are the body we inhabit. People interact with our bodies and all we have is our bodies.

This makes us believe the body is real. This is also why the identification with the body is the last to go on the ascension journey- it's the most entrenched part our identity. Also, if we stopped believing in the body as real we would cease to exist; the body requires us to believe in it.

So when the DESIRE to MOVE CLOSER^{(to God)} does arise in us, the ego diverts that to become MOVE CLOSER to ANOTHER BODY, i.e. be as close as you can physically because physical reality is real.

The ONLY thing that differentiates a romantic liaison from other types is sex. So in order to cement that bond, and achieve the closeness, sex has to take place.

Every touch that gives you shivers, every emotional up and down you feel on the relationship, every orgasm, reminds you to think about your body. So the entire relationship does nothing BUT reinforce the idea that YOUR BODY is real.

The more you believe in the reality of your body, the further away you are from ascension.

So you go into the bond, and at first, your entire inner voice is taken up with thoughts of the person - leaving no time for God, you or your growth. The growth only happens when it's triggered by the pain of speed-bump in the relationship, or it ending.

Whether it continues or ends though, it takes up all your thinking time - thoughts that trigger emotions that remind you that your body is real. Thousands of times every single day.

So by getting you to engage in a special relationship, ego wins a major boost on it's strongest front: physical reality is real.

The worst is you can't even begin undoing the damage of a relationship until it's over and you've healed from it. All it does is keep stuck in the same layers, unable to move forward and grow, because if you grow, your identity changes, and your identity must be intact to keep the relationship intact.

Ironically, AT THE SAME TIME, you will be wanting a more hermetic lifestyle - to be more of a hermit.

Like the special relationship only serves to delay you, so does time with other people and going out into the world.

It looks like this: if you stay at home and stay away from people, then you are in an isolated morphic field that you have complete control over.

This means you can experience uninterrupted growth, because society respects the privacy boundary of the walls of your house, and so allows you to be isolated into a morphic field of your own choosing.

When step outside the door and past those walls though, you enter a SHARED reality or morphic field - an energetic reality comprised of ALL the thoughts of everyone in the geographic reason.

For me personally, I notice it when I get thirsty within a few minutes of driving out the gate; it's like I lack spiritual nourishment in the shared experience field. My body responds immediately by craving water.

So the first thing that happens when you leave home is that your energy field is disrupted - and obviously this will take a minute or two to rectify when you get home again.

How long that minute or two lasts will also depend on what you encounter on your trip out.

Maybe you encounter someone with negative energy who disrupts you even further, or treats you badly for no reason. Maybe you run into a friend or family member who judges you for your aloofness (detachment) and superiority (knowledge and wisdom).

Maybe you get particularly frustrated at the admin, bureaucracy and senseless rules of the system while you're out, or maybe you get rejected by someone, for once again being 'too much'.

Any of these is going to add a few more minutes (days) to how long it takes you to recover and START growing again - so the more time you spend in isolation, living a hermetic lifestyle, the faster you will grow.

Every time you step out the door it just means you're pausing your spiritual journey - and so you will come to resent having to leave the house, even for work or simple stuff, like grocery shopping.

Looking at the two illustrations above, you can see how they conflict: you constantly vacillate between wanting to isolate more and wanting to find a relationship, or at least students and a following. It's like the world's worst see-saw.

Worst Case Scenario

You're dancing on the edge of insanity with a spiritual journey, because it's a personal experience that happens inside of you, and no one can validate for you.

When I first meet clients, no matter their level of advancement on the spiritual stuff, they're all battling the same thing - a desperate need for validation that what is happening to them is real.

It's such a big deal that I spend on average two to six months with each client getting past this section. It looks like we're doing and learning other stuff, but it's really about the process of validating the experience of the client.

Once we get past this, the tone and structure of the sessions change dramatically, from curiosity to active work and pushing forward.

The way the validation happens is by sharing; we both share experiences from our side. Once the client sees the similarities and commonalities, it becomes easier for them to believe in what has happened to them.

At a point one day, the client will suddenly have their faith and trust intact, and they won't NEED the validation in order to support their faith anymore. At this stage they have usually retrospectively accepted all previous experiences that were there to grow faith.

But, until a period of validation happens for a journeyer, the doubt of 'am I going insane?!' will always be there.

Teaching is usually the method for validation when no mentor or teacher can be found - by sharing your learning and seeing others take it on and gain relief and understanding, and by seeing others come to the same realizations (often in the same order), you get to retrospectively validate your experiences.

But the conflict lies in the fact that you often need the validation boost in order to become brave enough to step out as a teacher.

For me personally, I kind of painted myself into a corner with my choices over a few years, and it was the only real avenue left open to me. I'm grateful for it now, but for a long time I felt very limited and trapped by having to teach and do all this publicly.

In addition, as you're growing, your belief systems are shifting rapidly, and they begin to conflict with the world around you. This is what creates the energy that makes people uncomfortable around so many of us.

The tension between what you believe inside, and the mask you put on for the world - that is cognitive dissonance.

You're going to keep growing - and that cognitive dissonance is only going to get worse and worse and worse. Eventually you'll want to avoid people altogether, because you will want the reality that is inside you, instead of the lie people are living.

This triggers the lessons of loneliness, and this a tough series of lessons.

I am not wanted, I am not worthy - these are the themes you will tackle here.

You cannot avoid this series of lessons, so don't even try. They are crucial to your growth - a core module in your degree, if you will.

The lessons of loneliness are they key to unlocking the mysteries of the universe. You don't want to miss that episode :)

The final thing that's worth a mention here is going numb.

As you exercise more and more conscious choice over your emotional state, you are less at the mercy of your emotional experience. This means that when an emotion arises, it doesn't impact you the same way it used to - you don't 'feel' it as much anymore.

This lack of emotional impact means far fewer ups and downs, and so you feel numb. No lows mean no highs, because high is a contrast experience.

As this unfolds, you will come to realize that emotion IS the human experience. People experience everything through how they FEEL about it.

We don't, for example, say that a place was fantastic, we lead by saying we had so much fun if people ask us how something was. If they ask about a person, first thing we say is whether or not we like that person.

When you're not feeling those kinds of emotions anymore, you don't respond in ways that people expect, and it starts making situations very uncomfortable to be in.

You also realize that you're not really 'alive' anymore, because you don't care about the things of life the way you used to, or the way others do.

The more you accept this about yourself, the less interested you get in life and people, and the worse the symptoms get. So there's more to accept.

It becomes an endless spiral of caring less and less about things of the world, wanting to participate in it less and less, and becoming more hermited and isolated.

This is why the hermit archetype is so often associated with the spiritual realm; we do need to be removed from the world eventually if we are going to cross the finish line of this journey.

However, most of us did not have the chance to avoid the trappings of the world, and weren't shuttled off into monasteries and convents early, and so we have families and spouses.

So it becomes this back-and-forth push-and-pull between our secular world obligations and the life we really want to lead with God. There's no middle ground here and you will vacillate from one side to the other on this issue.

You will consider divorce, leaving your kids behind, moving into a spiritual or off-grid community, and then be conflicted by decision like vaccines and education: what education do you give the child for their best future? How will you afford that if you live the lief you want?

And you're really going to start to dislike and resent financial obligations, and education and keeping a child alive is expensive...

Sex is also going to become infinitely more difficult for you as you start to disidentify with your body, and it's here that many modern relationships, built on romance (where sex is the only differentiator), are failing over in droves.

When sex is a requirement for maintaining the love bond, what happens when the desire for sexual, or any form of physical stimulation, completely disappears?

Shifting Overload

I mention shifting overload a few times... if you've read the whole page, that is ;)

Shifting overload is worth mentioning a few times though, because not a lot of people know about it, and so it isn't considered as a cause when healers are looking at you.

It is possible to shift too much, and too quickly. And that's exactly what shifting overload is.

When you shift or release something, there is a six week delay between where you aligned with the energy (had the aha moment or insight), and when you are completely operating from that new level.

We don't really experience the second part... except maybe when we've made an 'out-of-character' decision, a few months down the line, and we're surprised to see something like that come from us.

So the part you notice, and think of as 'the shift', is the energetic alignment change that you feel right at the beginning of the process.

If you[re holding a tool like mirrors in your hands, then chances are you aren't one of the slowpokes; you're someone who rushes into shifting. So you do what we all do - chase the next energetic realignment.

So for us, we experience the process of shifting as moving from one energetic realignment to the next, with the occasional retrospective view of how we've changed.

But the truth is that, with EVERY SINGLE realization or breakthrough, we kick off another six-week integration period where our body has to catch up.

There are people who are reaching HUNDREDS of statements of realization a day already - this means you increasing your body's catch up work by hundreds. Every. Single. Day.

This is what shifting overload is.. the overlap of all these periods of integration, and eventually your system overloads.

It's like when you use a computer to do something: you can open a whole bunch of windows and programs, and it will keep going well for a while, but then you'll open one more, and suddenly every program that is open slows down.

At first shifting overload creeps up on you; you feel tired and run down, fatigued and probably get a fair amount of ascension flu.

You don't tend to think of the repeated illness as ascension flu though, because you're usually going to the doctor to get a note to skip work - so it often looks like getting sick; a lot.

Ups and downs on this journey are normal; so if you're getting sick and then feel better in between, then it's probably just the roller coaster.

If however you are constantly tired for a few months on end, and you can't seem to shake it, and don't really have good days, then you might need a break from shifting - even if you're in something like a Dark Night of the Soul.

Put down your chores and responsibilities, they'll be there tomorrow. Get yourself out into the sun for a little bit of fun and rest & relaxation. Visit an old friend or some family.

Get out, get moving, and do something very worldly for yourself, like watch comedy, or eat your favorite foods.

Even if you are flat broke, debt counselors will allocate a bit of your income to entertainment and relaxation. That's how necessary it is.

If you get a little bit of space, and get away a bit, then you will be able to think more clearly, see the bigger picture and be excited to climb back in.

Sometimes it only takes a day, and sometimes it takes a weekend, and sometimes it takes a week - there are no hard and fast rules as to what your body needs to recover.

The desire to throw yourself back into your journey will arise naturally, and you will learn some very powerful lessons on the importance and necessity of rest. That's also part of your lessons on this journey.

Leonardo Da Vinci puts it well:

'Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.'

Mental Illness

When you take the personal development far enough, it will always become spiritual.

Once the journey becomes spiritual, you really begin the dance of the edge of insanity.

You've had hear it said by Oscar Wilde: 'There's fine line between genius and insanity.'

And just think about that for a minute... genius is bringing ideas that nobody else ever thought of; ideas that are brilliant in their application, and often simplicity. Ideas that rethink what already exists, re-purposing it to much better use.

If you look back across the span of history, the names we remember when it comes to journeys, are people we're still trying to understand - thousands of years after they've already left. People like Jesus and Buddha and Muhammad.

When you start going deep into shifting, development and healing work, you are often still reaching areas of the human mind that minimally few have ever explored.

And because so few have ever explored those areas, there is not a lot of information available out there yet, or enough people to mirror your level of experience. So you land up thinking you're going nuts.

LOL... it honestly isn't a spiritual journey until you've thought that AT LEAST a few times ;)

It's also the defining characteristic that sets the big souls apart - can you make it through this, and everything else that is coming to test you, without letting your mind snap?

Can your mind go through these extremes of being expanded, while you maintain your faculties?

Every single one of the names I mentioned previously are names that made it within a SINGLE lifetime - so it is possible for you to reach that level within a single lifetime.

What it means though, is that your mind is going to have to expand at an extraordinary rate, to accommodate the volume of information, and the content of information.

The content of the info is really what gets us - you have to be open-minded on a level you can't even begin to fathom to be allowed access to certain bits of knowledge.

So, in case you are one of those who will get there in this lifetime, the process of expanding your mind, in order to make you more open-minded, will begin early on your journey.

If your mind is buckling under the strain of that expansion process, you will experience symptoms of mental illness, the nature of which will be determined by your particular combination of ego expressions and communication habits.

Wanting to Give Up & Die

Being suicidal and chronic depression also fit in under this section.

Outside of Christianity, most religions in the world actually place enormous importance on death, the moment of death, and rituals and preparations around death.

In Bhagavad-Gita, Brahma (the Hindu creator God) says that if you hold God firmly in your mind at the moment of death, you are guaranteed to cross to God after death.

Buddhists basically prepare their whole lives for the moment of death, and it is said that many Masters only show themselves and their mastery in those final moments.

The reason you have to know this, is that, in reality, the whole of life is nothing but a preparation for death, and it's a major part of any development journey.

One of the ways you get prepared is going through experiences like wanting to die, or getting a death premonition, or feeling suicidal, or having a near death experience, or a brush with a fatal illness.

The point of all these experiences is to give you a chance to deal with the energy of death in small doses, so that, over the course of a lifetime, you can prepare yourself for the moment of death.

This natural attraction towards death, combined with how heavy many spiritual journeyers find being alive on Earth plane, can combine in horrible ways - and as a result, suicide often comes up with personal development journeys.

It's normal to feel all these things once in a while - but it's not normal for an energy like this to stick around, without a break, for longer than a few days, or a week, at a time.

If you have consistently been feeling like you want to give and die, then you really need to find someone to help you.

If you aren't sure if it's been consistent, then start a journal logging your moods on a daily basis.

If you remember to update it daily, then you will be able to go back and reference how long this has been going on for.

You HAVE TO journal at some stage on your journey - for a few years. There are patterns you are only going to see when you can take those kinds of big picture views of your journey.

So start journaling and logging your moods and insights now - before you need the material to go back and reference.

It's a habit you will be very grateful that you developed.