Today I thought about Barack Obama while I did yoga. I also thought about other less admirable politicians (Donald Trump, Scott Morrison and so on). I realise it’s not what I should have been doing during class. I should have been 100 percent present, focusing on my breath. In and out. In with love, out with hate. In with joy, out with fear. In with…well, you get the picture.
But I wasn’t. And then I thought about why I wasn’t. And on it went. You can tell my brain wasn’t ready to let go this morning.
With so much going on these days, it can be really challenging to switch off and just be present. At this point, I know many of you will start thinking about that lovely trendy word ‘mindfulness’. But, before you do that, I want you to step back and take another look at what I’m really talking about.
I’m talking about being present. A quivering moment in time when you are simply here. It’s not about your mind at all. My mind was in charge for some of my yoga session this morning. And watching my thoughts, mindfully, was not going to help.
The answer does not require thinking, but being. Being here.
You may argue and say, we need to control our minds. But what I’m suggesting, actually no, that sounds way too uncommitted. What I’m saying is that all this focus on our minds is not serving us. What if it is simply about focusing on now?
This morning what eventually brought me back, was my breath. In and out. It wasn’t thinking more about the thoughts that were scurrying through my head about the lamentable state of political leadership here and in the United States.
A friend said recently that, what you focus on, you get more of. She’s a pretty wise chick so, by her measure, the more you think about what you’re thinking about, the more thoughts you will have.
So please, please, stop thinking about your mind and how you can control it and make it submit to your will. Honestly, it’s always going to be there, hanging out in your skull and attempting to twist you into knots when it’s feel like partying.
Focus instead on presence, on your breath. Focus on being here, right now. Don’t focus on the marauding thoughts raping and pillaging your mental faculties. Don’t pay them any mind at all (sorry, bad pun but I couldn’t resist).
I know I’m making it all sound deceptively easy and I know it’s really not simple to do. My yoga class this morning is an example of my own brief ‘epic fail’ in this department.
But trust me, eventually, when you use a focus point like breath, all those marauding thoughts eventually gallop off back to where they came from. They really do.
So, forget for a moment or two about your mind and about controlling it. Focus instead on being here, nothing else, and let all the rest go.
Lucretia is an author, psychic channel and transformational teacher who helps women harness their intuition so they can live their Soul’s Mission. You can find her on Facebook and Instagram
A few years ago I mentioned to a friend that I was thinking about offering mentoring programs in intuition but I was doubting myself. I wondered, “Am I really the best person to do that?”
My friend (who knew me well) laughed aloud and said, “Lucretia you’ve been mentoring people your whole life, why would you stop now.”
I guess in many ways she was right, it’s just that the topics I teach have changed over time.
For me mentoring is about empowering people to speak what’s in their hearts and follow their path. It’s never really about me, it’s actually about them.
When I’ve stood in front of a class of university students or talked to one them afterwards to help them understand a concept or simply manage the stress of study and trying to have a life at the same time, my goal has always been the same. There are some rules, but more importantly there is the need to trust yourself, know that you’re enough and simply do your best.
In my intuitive mentoring programs, my principles are the same and there is nothing more satisfying than seeing a woman beginning to tune into her inner voice and begin to block out the noise of everyone else’s needs, wants and expectations. It’s at that point, that I know we’re making real progress.
Mentoring and even teaching for me is about helping my students or clients to find their own way forward – I’m just there to provide a few signposts, spotlight the potholes and outline the road rules. The rest is in their hands. It all sounds deceptively simple and, in many ways, it is.
But for someone who has never claimed their intuition as their birthright, it’s not always so easy. I know this because I didn’t even know what it meant to trust myself until I was in my third decade. Until then I did a lot of things I loved, made important life decisions and had very strong opinions. But underneath all that, I didn’t have a clue who I was and I had no one to show me.
Then the Universe threw me a curve ball or two and I began to find out about the parts of me I didn’t even know existed (and if you want to know how that initially worked out you should read my first book The Men I’ve Almost Dated).
Everyone’s journey is different and I don’t claim for one moment to have all the answers. But I do know one thing for absolute certain – trusting your intuition and knowing it will always lead you in the right direction for you is the key to a sense of groundedness and stability in yourself that can’t be bought or lived vicariously through someone else. Without it, your cheeky monkey mind will rationalise you in and out of almost anything and the fulfillment of your purpose on the planet will be a lot more difficult than it needs to be.
Of course, the ultimate key (as I mentioned to a former student tonight) is to trust yourself always and use your mind to execute strategy – then you can’t lose.
Picture this. One Sunday, you sit down in your kitchen with a friend who, like you, is a psychic channel. Shortly afterwards, over a cup of tea, you agree that you’d both like to do some trance channeling of your spirit guides.
It’s something you’ve both done before but it’s been a while, at least a year or two. Longer for your friend. However, it seems like an opportune moment.
Then you hit the record button on your phone, take a final sip of water, shut your eyes and tune in. For a few moments your mind says things like, “Maybe I can’t do this anymore. Do I need to get my channeling crystal from the office to help me do this? Perhaps I’ve forgotten this stuff. Who am I kidding? Could I ever really do this?”
Then, from somewhere else comes a quiet voice that simply says, “You can do this. Just breathe and allow it to happen. There’s no rush. Just be here and allow it to be.”
So you breathe and relax further. You trust that you still know the way to connect. Then you feel the familiar, telltale constriction in your throat, like there is a huge lump that won’t go away. You remember this feeling because it has happened every time you have trance channeled your guides. When you first began doing it, your body was so resistant that you would gag and the partner you were working with (because you always do this with a partner) would often lean back in alarm as they expected to be vomited over imminently.
You know it is happening.
You can sense your Gatekeeper Guide organising the others off to your left. He is doing crowd control as they all jostle to be the first to come through. He’s good like that; he keeps them in line, most of the time.
You feel the energies of a few of them pass through you. Which one will be first? And then you know. It is the one who wears the pretty dresses and dances barefooted through the streams and grassy hillsides. What will she say?
She begins to speak through you. She has guidance for you and your friend. Your friend asks questions and recognises your guide from the other times when you’ve channeled together. This is because your voice changes when you channel your guides as they each have their own, very unique personality. Many who have watched you channel before also talk of your face changing as you do so. It changes to reflect the guide you are channeling.
You hear what your guide is saying but it’s as if you are off to the side, observing it happen. You are still present, still in the room, but you have stepped aside for a while to allow your guide to bring through the information you seek. It is such a curious process.
Some people might ask, “Is it like an out-of-body experience?” Your answer would be, “No, not quite.”
But it is strange and to someone who is unused to it, you’re sure it would seem rather freaky indeed. But it is real. It is not imagined. And you are not crazy. Remember, if something happens repeatedly, it really is happening.
Another two guides come through in quick succession, each with their own unique style of delivery and focus. Then it is done and you find yourself re-emerging consciously into the present and you open eyes.
You make eye contact with your friend and suddenly you are both laughing. Your guides have such big personalities and they certainly made their presence felt. You both marvel at this skill you have to connect to energetic beings in this way.
Then you eat some food, drink some water and go for a wander around the house to ground yourself back onto the earthly plane before your friend takes her turn at connecting into the energetic realm.
Some people may read this anecdote and dismiss it as the fanciful ramblings of a deluded woman. Others may feel fear because it is a world they know little about. Meanwhile, there will be readers who feel their curiosity aroused and they will feel drawn to know more.
All of these responses are valid and I respect them all because they arise from the experiences of the individual, the cultural and faith-based contexts they’ve been raised within, the perspectives they’ve developed over time and the teachings they have absorbed from others. We are a product of our experiences and our exposures to the world around us.
My purpose in sharing my experience – because this anecdote is from my reality – is to share information about what it’s like to be psychic from my perspective. There are so many of us out there who reside at various points along the intuitive spectrum and I think it is time to shed light on these gifts so we can build understanding and acceptance within ourselves and, in turn, with others.
Above all, my goal is show that you can be a psychic channel, intuitive, work with energy to heal others, see auras or even be an empath. You can be any or all of these things, or have other energetic gifts I haven’t even touched on here. But having these gifts doesn’t mean you are some weird hippie chick. You can be psychic and live in the mainstream world. After all, I do it every day and I invite you to join me.
Lucretia Ackfield is an author, blogger and psychic channel who helps women understand and manage their psychic gifts so they can live their purpose and create positive change. Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
Fear is the silent stalker that stifles creativity, achievement and our ability to rise up and take our rightful places as the change makers in our communities. It suffocates our enthusiasm, plays into the hands of our detractors and prevents us from serving at a much higher level.
Where does it come from this fear? Is it something we create inside ourselves as a self-protective mechanism born of our egoic mind? Or is it simply absorbed into our souls from external environments, the messages we’re exposed to and the people we learn from?
When you witness a young child climbing trees, swinging from a rope, running barefoot through the grass or simply spinning in circles in a field because it’s fun, there is no fear there. In fact, children in everyday normal life usually don’t feel fear at all. They trust. Fear is something they’re taught through the words and actions of others.
“Don’t do that, you might get hurt,” we warn them as they put their hand carelessly near the flames. And that message is fine. Our destruction by fire is something we should avoid so the lesson is eventually learned and it’s a useful one.
But what about the other fears we teach children and even teach each other. The messages parents tell their children like, “Don’t stand out too much, you need to fit in and make friends” and “Always try to get along with everyone” are fine on one level, they really are. But why is the truth that some people will never like you no matter what you do or say, so unpalatable. And do we really always need to try and get along with everyone? Because if we do that, then we’re always going to be conforming to what other people are comfortable with and this is unlikely to lead to our ultimate happiness. Right?
This is a fear of being who we are.
Our governments propagate our fear, insidiously. “Those people are a threat and shouldn’t be trusted,” we’re told about men, women and children who seek our protection from war and persecution.
Or, “They’re taking advantage of our system” we’re told of people who can’t get jobs and the majority of whom feel humiliated at seeking government assistance to pay their bills.
This is a fear of others taking what we have.
Then culturally we’re told, “The answer is out there!” It’s in technology so scroll through those electronic screens day and night and you will find the answers. Don’t stop and be quiet, alone with your thoughts. No! Fill your waking hours pulled inexorably into the world ‘out there’ and leave your own creative space behind. Soon enough you become uncomfortable with silence, with stillness and with nothingness. You must always be doing, watching someone or something else.
We become fearful of a life without distraction.
Eventually we don’t want to stand out too much, we want everyone to like us, we believe that strangers who don’t look like us and don’t believe what we do want to take something from us, and we can’t be still with our own thoughts.
What chance does our inner voice have then? Where is your intuition then? Where is the Universe’s opportunity to send you guidance then?
It’s squashed. It struggles. It slides to the edge of oblivion.
Fear, if permitted, takes over and leaves nothing in its wake but conformity and loss of consciousness.
How do we bring ourselves back from the brink?
We can begin by recognising that fear has become our driver in the first place and if it’s at the wheel of our car then we need to kick it out. Fear is never going to show us peace or happiness or fulfillment. It’s like a drunk driver – dangerous, with any vestiges of self-awareness drowned out by liquor.
Recognise it’s something we’re taught and absorbed. Then question it.
Acknowledge that we are all different and not all of us are going to ‘like’ or agree with each other – and that’s okay.
Know that in order to follow your calling you’re going to have to stand out and sometimes it will be uncomfortable. Some will try to pull you back into the status quo – resist the pull.
When we’re told that someone is a threat and seeking to take something from us, we need to come back into our hearts and ask is that really true. Or are we being fed a fallacy to manipulate and separate us from other human beings who are just in a tough or desperate situation that they don’t know how to escape from.
And finally we need to regain that balance between the external world and our internal one. We need to stop fearing the silence and instead, embrace it. We need to remember that our creativity and our ability to see opportunities and gain fulfillment begins first with our connection to ourselves and our inner voice. From there everything grows.
Are you ready to stop the fear and begin your real journey?
Lucretia Ackfield is an author, psychic channel and transformational teacher who seeks to empower women to create change and serve humanity. Her program, No I’m Not a Weird Hippie Chick, helping women to develop and manage their intuitive gifts so they can step into their Calling and live their Purpose. You can follow her on Instagram @noimnotaweirdhippiechick or join her Facebook group Rock Your Inner Channel for insights about being psychic and living in the mainstream world.
There is a saying that we teach what we need to learn. This may seem confusing. Shouldn’t the teacher already know what they are teaching?
Yes. And no.
At the university where I teach public relations, I am constantly learning new things as I read up on new approaches and hear the fresh perspectives from my students. I’ve been working in the industry for 20 years but yes, there is still more for me to know and often my teaching itself reminds me of things I’ve somehow forgotten.
This occurs in my work as a transformational teacher where I help women connect to their intuition and manage their psychic gifts so they can live their Purpose. I am a psychic channel and, as such, I’m highly attuned to my intuition and energies. I’ve also accumulated a huge amount of knowledge about how to use my gifts and how they manifest for others. But nevertheless, there is still more for me to learn and often my clients, or the words I prepare for them, teach the teacher instead.
Tonight I did a video about indecision and the patterns of behaviour that no longer serve us. I talked about spending the first 30 years of my life being incredibly indecisive because I didn’t trust myself. I also mentioned that we frequently have negative patterns of behaviour that we repeat across all parts of our lives.
Imagine my surprise shortly afterwards when I realised I had a negative behaviour pattern repeating in my own life. I also discovered I was being indecisive about a particular issue because I wasn’t trusting myself.
Oh, the irony.
My pattern is something a lot of people can relate to: the need to be doing something all the time in the hope that it will hurry the Universe along. My mind has a timetable it would like to be adhered to but it’s not happening. There is universal timing at play but I’m resisting that by trying to push things forward when I actually need to pause, take a breath, and wait for a sign to proceed.
Can you relate to this?
We’re taught that we have to push, push, push and work, work, work to get what we desire. The thought of things flowing (and simply doing what we feel called to do when the timing is right) is almost a foreign concept to most people. But in my experience, when you feel like you’re forcing something through the eye of a needle and nothing is moving, then you need to stop and wait for the timing to be right or pivot your direction.
Wise words, huh? What a shame I’d forgotten them over the last few days when I was trying to force an outcome that either just isn’t ready or perhaps isn’t in my best interests.
When a good friend said, “Maybe you don’t have to ‘do’ anything” I shook my head in amazement at the simplicity and complete accuracy of her statement.
When you’ve tried everything and you don’t know what else to do, pause for a moment, regroup and know that it’s okay to do so. You will move ahead when the time is right.
Tonight I received a reminder that I had slipped into an old behaviour pattern that wasn’t serving me and it was exactly what I had shared on video early in the day. The teacher became the student and taught what she needed to learn.
And so it is.
PS. The picture is of the beautiful arena in Verona – something to take your mind off trying to force things. x
Lucretia Ackfield is a published author, psychic channel and a transformational who helps women reconnect to their passions, own their intuitive power and uncover their Divine Purpose so they can create change and serve humanity. If you’d like more information about her programs, you can find her on Facebook under Lucretia’s Words or join her private Facebook group Rock Your Inner Channel.
Today I’m at Eurochocolate in Perugia and they’re creating some every special and interesting things out of very large and ordinary blocks of chocolate.
This struck me as a rather good metaphor for life. You can treat your life as a big block of ordinariness that can’t be changed. Or you can look at your block and ask yourself, “What am I going to create out of this?”
You’ve only got one life. What are you going to create with it? Is it going to be amazing or is it going to be a big block of ordinary where nothing ever really happens? It’s completely up to you to make your life into something wonderful.
My client Maddy recently gave me feedback on one of my programs. She said her life is now “exhilarating” because she’s connected into what she wants and she’s doing it!!
I feel so blessed to work with women like Maddy who say things like, “It’s my life and there’s more than this so what do I have to do?” If you’re that kind of woman then I want to hear from you too.
My new three-month intensive program is called LIVE ON PURPOSE and it’s designed to help women connect back into their passion, own their intuitive power and discover their purpose.If you’re ready to carve out your block of chocolate and create something magical then email me at lucretia@lucretiaswords.com or PM me on Facebook.
