by Lucretia | Mar 28, 2017 | create your life, empowerment, follow your dreams |
Sometimes the idea of looking too closely at ourselves can feel daunting or even a little scary. We worry about what we might find if we pull back the curtain of our soul. Will there be something there we don’t want to see? A truth we cannot un-see or avoid. Will it be something that others don’t like? Or, will there be nothing in there at all?
This last one was my biggest fear a few years ago. It was early in the psychic awakening process for me and boy oh boy, was the Universe pushing me to shift forward big-time. With awareness comes this undeniable and somewhat unavoidable arrangement with your soul and the Universe to expand your consciousness and follow your soul’s calling. In this case, I was being called to look closely at some of the crap that had been holding me back for far too long. I was being called to connect to my soul in a very real and intimate way. I was being called to go deep.
I was terrified. My good friend Samantha* was helping me through the emotional speed bumps and asked me at the time, ‘What are you afraid of?’
‘What if I ‘go there’ and there’s nothing inside?’ I said. I’m sure there was desperation dripping from every word. ‘What if there’s nothing in there?’
‘Of course there’s something in there,’ she said. ‘You’re in there.’
Phew. I’m so glad she offered me those words at that moment. Those simple words helped me gather up my courage close to my chest and shortly afterwards, I made the time to sit quietly with myself and ask my soul what it wanted.
And I, of course, discovered that my soul was there the whole time; not so quietly waiting for me to connect. I discovered there was no empty void within me. Instead there was so much depth, love and things to be discovered and learned. I’m still learning those things now. Every day or week or month there is another layer to me that I peel away to discover more.
I’m not sure if this is helpful for you. Perhaps you have no fear of what lies within you?
Yet I have spoken my friend Samantha’s* words to many clients and friends since they were first told to me. And I know they have provided comfort and enabled many of them to discover their own courage and begin traveling the road to their soul connection.
It seems to me there is the duality of fear when it comes to looking too closely at ourselves and what we truly desire. Our somewhat merciless, protective egoic mind splits down the middle and says either, ‘Don’t go there, it will be too much, you won’t be able to cope with the fall out’ or ‘Who are you kidding? There is nothing within. You don’t need to look behind the curtain to confirm it.’
Many of us will remain, some of us for a lifetime, sitting on the knife-edge between the two, slowly but surely splitting ourselves down the middle.
Such is the power of our fear of change.
But if there is one thing I know, it is this. And I know it with every fibre of my spiritual being.
If you choose to go deep within yourself, connect to your soul and uncover your true desires, you will discover something incredible. You will discover a depth in yourself you didn’t know existed.
You will discover that behind the curtain you are keeping so tightly closed, is something so magical and beautiful that it should never be hidden.
Because that ‘something’ currently hidden, is the very essence of you.
That is one thing I know to be true.
*Names changed.
Lucretia Ackfield is a writer and transformational teacher. If you’re interested in expanding your self-awareness, connecting to your soul and owning your intuitive power, check out her Facebook group Rock Your Inner Channel.
by Lucretia | Mar 21, 2017 | create your life, empowerment, Love, Men |
Are you still waiting for a man to rescue you? Except, the men you keep attracting are not the White Knights. Instead they are the reflection of all the ways you doubt yourself and all the parts of you that you don’t believe are ‘good enough’.
You are attracting the Dark Knight; the one who is the epitome of the dark sadness in your soul. Yet you accept his negative behaviours, his emotional abuse, his dismissiveness, his devaluing of you and non-acceptance because you do those things to yourself little by little every day. You don’t believe you’re worth anymore.
And deep down you know this. You know you are the root of the pattern. You probably even have a good idea where it’s come from. Maybe it’s from your childhood and your teens. Maybe your Dad didn’t listen to you, made you feel small. Maybe you never felt you could speak up and instead you focused on being the good girl. Trying to do the ‘right thing’. But you were never easy. People sometimes found you difficult. ‘Why can’t you just ‘get over’ things?’ they’d ask you.
But you never could. Your very unique and capricious soul was marked with discontent of yourself as you tried to be one thing and wanted desperately to be another.
Fast forward and now you’re an adult. But those marks of the past persist and now manifest in your entrenched ‘not good enoughness’. So you attract the same and you accept the same. Your Dark Knight arrives.
The curious thing is the Dark Knight often looks exactly like his White Knight brother. They are, after all, two sides of the same coin because we all, even you, have light and shadow within us. It’s just up to us to manage the shadows and grow the light.
The Dark Knight is just as shiny on the surface. He is just as good-looking and just as attentive (for a moment or two). But soon enough his shadows make themselves known. He doesn’t return calls, belittles you just a little, suggests oh so subtly that maybe you need to change yourself…condense yourself into a box he’s more comfortable with. And you respond in kind, oh so subtly, because it’s more comfortable that way. It’s the pattern you adhere to. It’s your comfortable zone. And your mind is happy there, sort of. Your soul weeps but it often seems like the pain of conformity and the life you’ve lived for so long, is preferable to unhooking your caboose and letting go of someone else’s direction. Far better to conform to their projection.
For the Dark Knight is merely your reflection and you are responsible for your predicament. I know these words seem harsh. I’ve directed them to myself often enough. But I know them to be true. For my boundaries are decided by me and if I don’t put any in place then how does anyone know they’re there?
My heart will still search for love in the Dark Knight because I wish to find it there. I crave it. I see his potential. But therein lies the trick of the light because his potential is mine. He is me. But I must cut him loose in order to allow my light to shine. His shadows are his to manage and he is my reflection. I cannot allow his shadows to suffocate my light. Yet I have done, so many times. So many Dark Knights have galloped in and swept me away and I have loved them. I have given myself unto them willingly. Desperately seeking the light of love that glimmers within them.
But they cannot light the match that ignites my lantern. They will instead snuff it out as they simply do what I do to myself, time and again. I snuff out my own light with my feelings of not being worthy, of not being enough, of not deserving more, of not being heard.
But I am done with the Dark Knights. I cannot carry their shadows any longer. And I know the White Knight can only come unto me when my own light shines brightly; when my own shadows are gently but firmly confined back where they should be.
I must focus on my light. I must be accountable for dealing with my own shadows and sending them on their way, one by one. Only then will I stop attracting the Dark Knights of My Own Soul.
Only then will the White Knight come.
Only then will I be free of the shadows of me.
Only then will I realise, perhaps my White Knight, is me.
Lucretia Ackfield is a writer and transformational teacher who helps women unlock their intuitive power so they can become their own White Knights. For more information about her programs and tips about using your intuition, join her Facebook group Rock Your Inner Channel or visit her Facebook page Lucretia’s Words.
by Lucretia | Mar 15, 2017 | Being present, create your life, empowerment, Fear, meditation |
Today’s blog might be a bit controversial. I’m about to venture forth into a space I’ve only skirted around up until now. But I can’t stay silent about it any longer. I. Just. Can’t.
Because it’s getting worse and I’m seeing it a lot. Friends and acquaintances succumbing. Dropping like flies as we say in Australia. Their connection to self so broken that they will avoid their inner voice so they can just keep doing what they’re doing. So they can just keep going to keep everyone else happy; so they can maintain the status quo.
I’m not about the status quo. So I’m going to say it. And I’m sorry if it offends but it’s not my intention. Instead I just want to shine a light on something that’s getting worse. Here goes…
It’s Valium. It’s sleeping tablets. It’s the anti-depressants doled out like candy at the corner store. Women medicated to block out the sound of their soul whimpering to be heard.
I’m sorry if I’m being obtuse. Let me be more specific. Sometimes women are medicating themselves because it’s easier than standing in their power and owning their inner voice that is yelling for more. More than ‘this’ – whatever ‘this’ is for you.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not anti-medication. I spent about a decade on anti-depressants in my 20s and early 30s. I saw psychiatrists and counselors at the same time. I was frequently a miserable, anxiety-ridden, tear-sodden mess. I had no idea who I was and I was sensitive to everyone else’s energy around me too. No one had ever shown me how to connect to my inner voice, the one that kept jumping up and down and causing all that anxiety because it wanted me to know there was ‘more’. No one ever told me that maybe I should ask if the feelings I felt were mine or were being picked up from the person next to me.
No one ever showed me how to trust my own judgement and then let the cards fall where they may.
So I was medicated. I chose it. Just like you’re medicated now. Yes, you; the beautifully gifted woman who is reading this blog post. I was you! I thought it was the best way, the only way to function, to be normal. And it did help, for a while. Kind of. But it wasn’t a long-term fix. It never could be. Not for me.
So what am I going on about then? Am I saying mental illness isn’t real? No, I’m definitely not saying that.
Am I saying that people shouldn’t take medication when they need it? No, I’m not saying that either. Sometimes medication is part of the solution that will keep you sane.
But when you have anxiety and you don’t sleep, I’m suggesting that maybe, just maybe, we’re culturally trained to be in too much of a hurry to muffle those emotions that are rising up and causing our disquiet.
When a woman tells me she wakes in the middle of the night for no reason because she feels like she’s forgotten something important and then, when it happens repeatedly for months, she medicates to block it out, I really feel there’s something wrong.
When another woman tells me her anxiety is out of control and her first response is to get medication to shut it up, but she’s not looked underneath to see what’s caused it, and she just wants to keep going because she ‘has to’, I really feel there’s something wrong.
When another one tells me her psychologist advises her not to meditate (which is simply the act of being present with yourself), I really feel there’s something wrong.
If we cannot ‘be’ with ourselves then there is a reason. And the reason in so many of the examples I hear is because women are not allowing themselves to ‘be’ with themselves. That disquiet we’re feeling, the anxiety that overtakes our minds and paralyses us is caused by our bodies trying to tell us something. It’s a response with a message and that message comes from deep within. It’s our soul telling us, ‘Hey, there’s something you need to look at here.’ Yet too often our response, our culturally-conditioned response is, ‘I can’t stop and listen to that voice. I can’t peer under those layers because I don’t have time. I have to keep going. I have to keep doing, doing, doing. I have to look after everyone else.’
So we medicate.
It breaks my heart. It makes me angry. It makes me feel despairing. When our first recourse is to medicate rather than heed our inner voice, I believe that is a tragedy. Because your inner voice is worth listening to. It’s yours. It’s trying to tell you something. But when you medicate unnecessarily you muzzle the messenger.
And that messenger is you.
