Certainty is knowing your big picture and having the confidence to change direction when the path alters

Once upon a time…
I have had a chronic arthritis since I was 19 years old and it is this condition that has driven me to find healing and then peace of mind for most of my adult life. I had big pain and my body deteriorated over the years, sometimes slowly and sometimes very quickly. The trauma I had, and still have lurking somewhere, is “will this be the day that I stop functioning and have to go into care.” When it was at it’s worst, waking up every morning was terrifying. When it was settled, I lived in denial land. Because my life was a combination of limited movements and time to think… 

It did not take much for the fear to overwhelm me…
The arthritis had always been bad throughout my 20’s but the worst was yet to come. It hit me just after I started my spiritual journey. I was in the middle of it all, I did not understand the process and I turned to books, teachers, healers and psychics. My spiritual awakening began in the 90’s and Louise Hay was queen. I did all the “right spiritual things.” My medical condition did not improve, it marched on. It damaged my physical self and over the years it got worse before it got better. During the formative years of my “Self Awakening” I was made to feel shame that I could not heal myself with affirmations or the New Age way. Meditation became the stability I needed and it gave me time to reflect. I began to understand the correlation between the mental, emotional and the physical Self. So, I made it my mission to connect with the Divine Power of Spirit and find my own answers, my own way. The thing is, as much as I get frustrated with the New Age ideals, I intuitively knew there was something in what they were talking about. I could feel it on every level of my being. I just had to find out what that meant for me. 

This is when I realised how my thoughts were crushing me…
I became anxious when I was found myself alone with my own thought processes. However, my Soul was showing me the way and many painful walls needed to be torn down in the process. If it sounds very dramatic and terrible…well it was. My thoughts were crushing me emotionally, mentally and physically. But I needed to be torn down to find my own Divine Spark. I’m not going to sugar coat it, the Spiritual Path was cruel and devastating and rewarding and peaceful and all the wonderful and terrible things at once. You wouldn’t have known to look at me but well worth the effort I put in.

So why am I telling you all this…
Whenever I found myself anxious, depressed, challenged by external influences, challenged by my own physical body, challenged by my own mental processes, anything that pushed me out of my comfort zone, I transformed that energy into healing. The one thing I want to emphasise is this, no-one did it for me. I wanted them to. I was angry and I wanted the teachers and healers to take it all away like they said they could. I was living as the victim and had to transform to the warrior.

I am my own healer, I have the power…
And so do you. You have the power to make the changes. You have the power to decide you want something better than what you have. You have the power to decide what is best for you. You have the power to make mistakes and amazing discoveries. 

It’s about deciding what you want, what is the Big Picture…
I’m not talking about working it out all at once. My first decision was that life has to be better than this. Because I was meditating and tapping into the power of the Spirit world when I was doing readings and healings, I used the feeling I had in those moments to focus on. That was my first Big Picture, I focused on that feeling. I knew I could make the feeling a bigger part of my life and I wanted the peace I knew was possible. 

You have to be prepared to change course…
When I started using a Big Picture as my focus I had some idea what that “should” look like. What I found was that I would get stuck along the way. I didn’t have to change my Big Picture but I did have to be prepared to alter what I thought it should look like. That is called “going with the flow.” I checked in with my feelings, I challenged my personal belief and value systems (and altered them accordingly) and I always sat in the FEELING of my Big Picture when I was confused. What it looks like might change, but the feeling has never altered. That feeling is my anchor. 

I began to heal…
It’s all about perspective, isn’t it? I did heal, I healed my Soul. I get to live my life fully and am accepting of my reality. My body still carries the arthritis. I don’t like it but I understand it’s true purpose in my life. As I write this I am still realising that my Big Picture has never changed. 

About the relationships along the way…
There are lots of teachers, healers, guru’s out there (hell, I’m one of them!), but they are there for guidance and support only. They assist you to find your own personal relationship with your body, mind and Spirit. I had loving and not so loving people along the way and each and every one of them were my support, my cheerleaders, my motivation and I would like to acknowledge them. They were, and still are, the best things that ever happened.  

Self Awareness is the greatest gift you can give to yourself. Knowing yourself and being honest with yourself is the only way to break those old patterns and begin to live your best life. Sometimes what we have built will crash, we lose people along the way and what we see in the mirror is confronting but the results are amazing.

Some tips:
Using tarot is a great tool to learn about yourself and create self awareness - I did the virtual expo on the weekend and one of the presentations was a mini tarot lesson. Because I read for myself, as an example, I realised half way during the reading that I had some issues surrounding my beliefs. I was amazed and in that moment I realised that I will never stop learning. The tarot uses all aspects of psychology, mystical, numerology, colours, symbology and intuition. It is a real one stop shop for Self Awareness. I would recommend that you forget looking for your future and use the tarot as your mirror.

Getting to know yourself helps you understand where you want to go - the more honest with yourself you can be the easier it is to map a path to your goals and Big Picture. When you have to alter your path it’s easier to make decisions when you do not have to sort through extraneous thoughts, sit in your feelings and HEAR your intuition. 

How to be prepared to alter your course - don’t get dogmatic about what your future should look like. If things are not flowing, be like a leaf on the wind, let your creative mind go and find YOUR WAY. It always has to come from you. 

With love

Vicki xx