Are You Holding Yourself Back?

How do you know when something is holding you back?

When you think of your past, does it fill you with regret, blame, sadness, fear or any heavy emotion that weighs you down?  If the answer is yes, that’s a sign that you probably need to release what’s weighing you down.

Do you feel hopeless, doubtful or a general sense of tiredness when you think of your life?  If the answer is yes, it’s likely that you need to release what’s draining your energy.

To the extent that limiting beliefs, heavy emotions and old wounds weigh you down, you’re not free to move forward.  Heavy emotions, such as worry, jealousy and feeling offended, drain your energy and keep you stuck in the past.  You need plenty of energy to successfully create what you long for. That’s why you must free yourself from inner demons.

Sometimes just becoming aware of negative thoughts can be enough to defeat them. There will be times, however, when awareness alone will not defeat your inner demons.  That’s when releasing practices can help you.

Do You Know Your Energy Leaks?

Memories, people, events and ideas that deplete your energy are energy leaks.  They drain your life force.  More often, they rob you of energy in subtle ways over time.

If a close friend were to ask you what your energy leaks are, what would you say?  It comes back again to awareness.

To change your reality, you must know yourself intimately.  You need to know your strengths and weaknesses.  We all have energy leaks.  Some people have more than others, but we all need to work on ourselves.

Whether you need to let go of self-pity, regret, impatience or depression (to name a few), face each one, forgive and let go.  It does not empower you at all to rehash the past with judgment, regret or blame.  Take responsibility for your emotions and release those that weaken you.

What Will You Gain By Stopping Your Energy Leaks?

When you stop your energy leaks, you build up your energy and can alter your destiny.  You put yourself in a place of power by choosing strength over weakness.  It’s always up to you to choose what gives you strength.

By growing your inner power, you gain benefits on all levels.  Remember, the physical and spiritual worlds are interconnected.

As our energy increases, even in small degrees, we’re more likely to have insights, to see new possibilities, to feel stronger and experience more optimism.  We shift energetically, just as water changes when exposed to certain thoughts.

When that happens, we tend to increasingly draw resources and people into our lives that will help us.  Our probable future changes as we change our inner world.

Excerpts from The Warrior Spirit –How To Use Hidden Mind Powers and Ancient Wisdom To Create Wealth and Much More!

November Forecast 2011

This is the time to renew your commitments, your intentions and your priorities. It is the month to refresh your environment, to refinish and brighten what has dulled, to rekindle important friendships, to recharge relationships, to bring more chi into the body and to re-determine your goals and the path to reach them.

November is a more masculine month with plenty of energy available for moving forward. We have had times supporting movement previously this year. The difference now is that everything has shifted, giving you more access to the quantum field and to what is possible. You need to acknowledge this difference and expand your awareness to accommodate it.

The image is of being in a small pond where you know your limits and your limitations, the edges and the boundaries. The pond has become too small however you are used to navigating within it. The enclosure of the pond has been removed and we find ourselves in a vast ocean not being able to use the sight and feel of the enclosure for navigation. What is necessary now is to trust the inner navigation, your inner radar. This inner radar is your own intuition and sense of self, sense of what is right and sense of where your path lies. Your inner radar is your own heart.

Deeper dimensions of experience are now available to us where we are not limited to experiencing just the physical plane. When you look at a tree you will begin to see not just the physical form of the tree, but rather a multidimensional experience of the tree, its spirit, its communication, its soul. The same goes for people around you. You will begin to experience them as multidimensional beings with loads of history. The downside of this expansion is the tendency for overload and the possibility of losing ones tether to the agreed upon collective experience of the physical world. You will probably witness what appears to be mental breakdown and psychic meltdown among many who are not able to differentiate and separate the physical from the astral very well. They need much compassion and help at this time.

Then there are those that are not conscious enough yet to notice any difference. We have said before that this time frame will begin to create a huge gap between how one person experiences life as opposed to another person. One person’s reality will definitely be way different than another’s depending on their level of consciousness. These times require a great allowing and acceptance of others to be just where they are and acknowledging that the experience of life will be as varied as each individual.

It is important that you keep a good handle on reality during these times but with a conscious allowing of a gradual expansion into the broader experience available. This can be done with intention and we advise taking some time every day to meditate and open your senses. This is a good practice also when you are in nature or in a place of clearer energy. It is not advised when you are in a crowd. If you feel you are on overload you may need to practice pulling your energy field in and putting some protection up. Recommended audio for working with the themes of the month link: Energy Management: Protection & Appropriate Exchange.

The masculine quality of the month provides an opportunity for great clarity especially if you use your intuition with it. Anytime you feel confused you are probably trying to sort things out based on something other than what simply feels right to you. Beware of too many cooks in the kitchen when you are in the process of an important decision. Remember that others view things through the lens of their own experience and what ends up being right for you may not always make sense to them. It is always a good idea to run things by someone you trust but the final decision will have to be yours alone.

In this time you all should be renewing your commitment to taking responsibility for your own lives. No one is going to fix it, make it better, get you out of debt, improve your health, give you a better job, remove your addictions and co-dependencies, or make anything stop except you, yourself. This is the time of growing up. It is your life. Stop whining and complaining and renew your commitment to yourself to create the kind of life that you want. Not what someone else thinks you should be doing, but what you want. Renew your intentions and honor that this is a time of renewal when anything becomes possible. Dream big.

Now comes the hard part; dealing with the distractions that threaten to derail you at every turn.

There is the story of the monk and the temple of a thousand demons. A group of monks were to go through their final test, getting through the temple of a thousand demons. One by one the monks entered the first door and after screams and intense noises coming from inside the temple not one of them emerged from the door on the other side. Finally the last monk asked the elder priest for any advice that would help him get through. “Just keep your eye on the door on the other side. Never take your eyes off the door”, the elder answered. The young monk entered and after a time of the same loud intense noises and screams, he came tumbling out the door on the other side. When asked how he had done it when so many others had failed, he said “I just kept my eye on the door, never took it off”.

The door on the other side represents your goals and intentions. The temple of a thousand demons is life itself. The distractions are your reactions and any behavior that is not of spirit. Feed any energy at all into a small drama and it will very quickly become a big one. Any reaction at all that is not completely neutral will have a charge to it and throw you off center. You will notice that all behaviors not of spirit are initiated by some reaction that is not neutral. Practice neutrality. It is absolutely the best thing you can do and always puts you in a position of power. So renew your priorities based on your inner rudder and your heart and then keep your eye on your goals, on the door on the other side of the temple of a thousand demons.

The theme of Boundaries is a big one this month. As energetic limitations are lifted it is important to renew and reset your own boundaries. In the exploration of the expanded access to the quantum field, you may run across some people with no boundaries at all and others that try to impose on yours or impose their boundaries on you. Everything and everyone is pushing this way and that in an attempt to reset some kind of order. It is up to you to reset and renew your own boundaries according to your priorities and goals. The human experience has been based on reaction and pushing up against something. When you are in the ocean there is nothing to push up against until a boundary is created. The new container has to be created from within and many people are not used to the responsibility of the task. It will be very interesting to observe in the next year or so, what becomes manifest.

Sometimes renewal demands the death of something. The theme of death/rebirth is also active this month. As you go through your life and decide what needs renewal, there may be aspects that you can no longer tolerate or accommodate. Open your eyes and see things realistically. Allow death when it is called for by purposefully eliminating what is past. Especially use death to eliminate old dramas that still have you tethered. Remember that if it does not feel good and if you cannot be neutral about it, it is not of spirit.


Click here to access the full monthly commentary packed with tips to help you strengthen your relationships, health and more.   Print out the full forecast and reference it throughout the month. (The above is an excerpt from the commentary).

The author of the monthly forecast, Lena Stevens, is an author and co-founder of an international school and consulting firm dedicated to the study and application of shamanism and wisdom.  Lena Stevens has co-authored books with Jose Stevens, Ph.D., such as Secrets of Shamanism:Tapping the Spirit Power Within You and The Power Path: The Shaman’s Way To Success in Business and Life.

October 2011 – The Point of No Return

The image is that of facing a well-known view, in fact a view you have become so accustomed to you hardly notice it anymore. And now you have just realized that you are turning away from this view 90 degrees to the right and leaving it completely behind in order to face a new view. Suddenly it dawns on you that the old view will be gone forever, never to be seen again in the same way. There is nostalgia around the permanence of the loss of this old view. It is familiar to you and it has served to inspire, entertain, give you feedback and be a placeholder in your life. You realize that once you turn towards the new view the old one is gone forever. And despite the inadequacies of the old view in matching a new time, there is a resistance to giving it up and turning towards the unknown. What if the new view isn’t as good as the old one? What if you won’t be able to see the new view? What if it is not a clear view, or an inspiring one? What if there is no new view?

The Turning Point can also be called the Point of No Return. When one season ends and another begins, as in moving from Summer to Fall, there is no going back. You have passed the point of no return. And as you move clockwise around the medicine wheel from one direction to the next, you are at a point of no return as you arrive at the new position or direction. The natural progression in moving forward is always clockwise or to your right. That is the way the clock works, the seasons roll, and wheels move forward. So we are at the point of turning clockwise into a new landscape providing us with a new view.

We have been creating this new view for a while now. We just have not turned our sights on it as yet. The new view has been waiting for our much-needed focus on it to come into being and we are just now at that point but some of us still unwilling to make the final turn. What we do not realize in our resistance is that the new view is fabulous, inspiring, supportive and perfect for where we need to go. However in order to see the new view we must turn away from the old one and turn towards the new one. This is happening whether you are choosing to or not. We are truly at the Turning Point right now.

Another image to work with is the idea of the Turning Point as the point at which there is enough energy moving in a certain direction to insure a result. If you have been ill and are recovering, there is turning point in your illness where you are insured a recovery. The same thing applies to an ending or a death. There is a certain turning point at which there is a certainty about the outcome. When a lot of energy is being put into building a business or starting a project, or cultivating a relationship, there is always a turning point at which it either takes off or you see that it won’t work. This month you have the opportunity to experience turning points in many aspects of your life. Perhaps you have set certain intentions, and worked with them over time. This month you may get to experience a turning point in manifesting those intentions.

Other themes of the month are Transition/Transformation and Death/Rebirth.

Transition/Transformation and Death/Rebirth are similar in that they both use the turning point to move from one point to another. The main characteristic of this change as a turning point is that there is finality to the ending of one experience that automatically turns you towards another one. What is the experience of the Turning Point trying to teach us this month?

What we need to learn is to be more present so we can fully embrace what is in front of us and then let it go with gratitude for the experience it provided. We need to learn to be less attached so that we can turn away from the old view and toward the new one with less resistance. We also need to learn to be more trusting and confident that the view we are creating that we are turning toward is exactly what we want and need. We need to face this view with confidence, enthusiasm and excitement instead of with fear.

Many of you know that there is a marker at the end of this month that marks the official end of the Mayan Calendar, namely the date of October 28, 2011. There are many predictions about what may happen at this time. Some predict 3 days of darkness, some predict major earth changes, some predict that nothing significant will happen, and other predict that the changes will be mostly personal, emotional and psychological

October 28, 2011 is simply a marker as it is impossible to predict what the Turning Point will manifest. What we can predict is change and transition that brings us all beyond the point of no return.


Click here to access the full monthly commentary packed with tips to help you strengthen your relationships, health and more.   Print out the full forecast and reference it throughout the month. (The above is an excerpt from the commentary).

The author of the monthly forecast, Lena Stevens, is an author and co-founder of an international school and consulting firm dedicated to the study and application of shamanism and wisdom.  Lena Stevens has co-authored books with Jose Stevens, Ph.D., such as Secrets of Shamanism:Tapping the Spirit Power Within You and The Power Path: The Shaman’s Way To Success in Business and Life.

September Forecast – Tips for Staying Positive and Overcoming Worry

This is a tremendous and unpredictable time of change, opportunity and resetting patterns and we have no idea how it’s all going to manifest or show up. So what is called for right now is to be generously allowing of whatever is occurring to occur without resistance, fear, judgment, over processing, over identifying, over thinking or denial. “Allowing,” means opening yourself up to the unknown, stretching your flexibility muscle and being neutral about whatever is happening. Allowing is not about surrender or giving up, nor is it passive. It is an active choice to let things be the way they are.

The biggest challenge this month is worry. Worry keeps you in a micromanaging position of constantly needing to track and obsess about what is going on. Worry creates a hyper vigilance that is not useful at this time and will only keep you from being able to move forward. Worry and fear are never justified and any choice or decision that is made from a place of worry or fear will set you back instead of supporting you in your greater intentions and desires.

We could say that the subtheme for the month is Trust. A great deal of trust is needed at this time in order to allow for what has been seeded and planted and nurtured to actually be able to come into full bloom. If you have seeded your intentions and tended the garden, you can trust that the plants will bloom. It does not require you to stand in vigilance worrying that they won’t. We are quickly moving towards the harvest of what we have set up for ourselves as a species and global community. What comes before the harvest is seeing the full bloom of our efforts, lessons, personal and collective patterns, and the colors of what we have accomplished and what has yet to be done.

So if you have been in denial, fear, worry, resistance, negativity, complacency, ambivalence, anxiety, judgment or any other negative expression, you will see this in its fullest bloom so you can do something about it. If you have been manifesting unexpressed emotions, old patterns or suppressed anger through your body in physical conditions and symptoms, these may show up as well. If this is the case, the worst thing you can do is go into more anger, resentment, martyrdom, self-loathing, resistance or judgment. Let it be. Allow whatever it is to show up fully however it is showing up, without any resistance and from a place of deep neutrality. From there you will be able to make practical and proactive choices about the changes you need and about what should come next. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.

However if you have been working on yourself and weeding out what does not serve you, setting good intentions, staying present, paying attention, taking responsibility for yourself, your health, your reactions and your patterns, then you will see the fruits of your labors and the blossoms will be big and beautiful. Continue the good work, as this time frame requires a continued focus, responsibility and showing up. Allow yourself to be flexible and resilient. Have compassion for those less fortunate without feeling the need to fix.

The times are unstable, unpredictable, chaotic and full of trends and patterns that are very new to our collective experience. We have pushed through the birth canal and now it is time to trust the current environment to fully support a new life. Allow the environment to serve you in its own way and allow yourself to be in service to whatever your essence has in store for you. This is no longer about what the personality wants but rather what the essence goals are. So get out of your own way and allow the transformation. Just as the caterpillar resists the destruction of its form, that destruction is necessary if it ever intends to be a butterfly.

This is more of a “being” month than a “doing” month. Certainly you may have energy to put into tasks and projects but the motivation and support for their accomplishment comes from a place of being rather than a place of doing and effort. Because of the unpredictability of the times, things may manifest in very unusual ways if you allow them to. This requires putting your fixed ideas about how it should be done aside so that something new can emerge. It is a good month to revisit all of your intentions and determine whether you have enough flexibility to allow a new way of manifesting.

The other challenge this month is to stay positive in the face of so much fear, negativity, martyrdom and discouragement. Staying positive takes discipline. Not effort, just discipline.

How to stay positive:

Always acknowledge a higher order, a bigger picture and a greater plan to anything that feels like a setback, unfair, limiting or contrary to your highest intentions.

Remind yourself daily that you and only you create everything you experience, and usually for a good reason that you may not be able to see just yet.

Allow for the positive things to come into your life as well as the challenges. Just because others may be challenged does not mean you have to join them.

Be inspired by, rather than fearful of, the possibilities and the opportunities that change provides.

Be willing, be allowing, be trusting, be flexible, be in humor, and be delighted.

When you take responsibility for your own blossoms and harvest you come from a place of power. If you are in the drivers seat you can determine where you go next. So if you don’t like what you see, know that you have the power to change it. If you like what you see, don’t get arrogant. Just be grateful.

Click here to access the full monthly commentary packed with tips to help you strengthen your relationships, health, finances and more.   Print out the full forecast and reference it throughout the month. (The above is an excerpt from the commentary).

The author of the monthly forecast, Lena Stevens, is an author and co-founder of an international school and consulting firm dedicated to the study and application of shamanism and wisdom.  Lena Stevens has co-authored books with Jose Stevens, Ph.D., such as Secrets of Shamanism:Tapping the Spirit Power Within You and The Power Path: The Shaman’s Way To Success in Business and Life.

August 2011–A Time To Do More Than You Think Is Possible

The main theme for August is Wake Up and Pay Attention.

This does not mean becoming more hyper-vigilant or controlling but rather becoming more present and taking notice from a place of expanded awareness. Most of us have narrowed our experience of life and ability to respond down to a very narrow band, being asleep or unconscious about the greater part of it. If we didn’t, we would be overwhelmed at what we have put up with and continue putting up with.

In the development of the mind and the mental ability to problem solve, we have traded in the awareness of our instinctual and emotional responses for the illusion of security in trusting that the mind can solve everything. We are quickly seeing that in these accelerated times not only can the mind not keep up, but that it limits our ability to respond in other ways so crucial to our survival at this time. The mind is almost never present. It is almost always either in the past; reviewing, judging, trying to understand, categorizing, filing and organizing; or in the future; planning, worrying, tracking, organizing and trying to get a handle on linear time. Notice that when you are doing a task that requires complete presence, the mind becomes quiet and inactive, taking a back seat.

Animals in the wild and other aspects of nature react to their environment with efficiency in their knowing, timing and action. This does not come from a place of mental planning but rather from being aware and responding to the present circumstances. Nature is very flexible. Because of our attachments, expectations and constant mental micromanaging, we have lost both the ability to be flexible and the ability to be instantly responsive. We have diminished our experience of life, we have fallen asleep, and we forgotten how to trust and be present.

We are still in an emotionally centered year. The emotional center is there to teach us a different way of reacting. The emotional center is not about emoting or being emotional. It is about relying on a different level of intuition that takes in way more information than the intellectual realm of the mind can ever process. We need to remember how to use this center more effectively so that we can trust our non-mental process and begin to give it more credit. The mind is a very useful tool and it is important to use it to set intentions, goals and direction, but we cannot expect the mind to get us there. The mind on its own is not capable of driving enough energy to accomplish anything. It is too limited and yet we have given it this impossible task. No wonder we feel helpless, powerless, fatigued and confused.

It will take time to turn this pattern around and you can start by waking up your senses and paying attention to your surroundings by being more present and aware. If you spend a little bit of time every day in non-mental awareness practicing being present, you will exercise this part of yourself and eventually it will become automatic. This is what is required in order to move into a higher state of consciousness at this time. Anything you can do this month that raises your consciousness is an excellent use of the influences. Any practices that help connect you to spirit and get you out of your mind will also be very helpful.

There will be many lessons and opportunities to see just how effective you can be without your mind trying to control everything. The discipline will be to keep yourself present and out of the past and the future. This is the time to step up to the plate, show up fully and take responsibility for yourself, your actions and your truth. It is time to get out of denial, to open your eyes and all your senses, to truly look at what you have been putting up with and to do something about it. This requires courage and action and you may not always get positive responses from others, as misery loves company. When you decide to take the high road you may need to set some boundaries against certain energies that are no longer compatible. Remember that negative reactions from others are usually projections and it is important not to take things personally especially when you know you are on the right track.

By the same token, if you are having a strong negative reaction to someone or their actions, you may need to look at how you may be projecting on them or how their actions may have threatened your own complacency and denial. See each of them, as a teacher and a mirror, stay neutral, present and awake.

This is an incredibly accelerated time where incredible things are possible. You need to watch for the aggression mode of the year showing up in negative ways both in yourself and in others. Since the mind is being quickly surpassed by the speed of things these days, you also may experience anything from feeling like you are losing your mind, panic attacks, anxiety and amnesia. This is much about the dissolving of linear time and thus the tracking method of the mind. Watch also for bleed-through from the astral plane at inconvenient times, throwing you momentarily off the course of linear thought. You are being called upon to trust all the other senses, to trust your intuition and to learn to process information in a different way. The acceleration of the times makes it possible to accomplish way more than your mind would “think” possible. At the same time, if something is destructing, it will take much less time than “usual” for it to completely destruct. Any process is aggressively accelerated in these times so if something seems stagnant or not moving, all it needs is a spark of intention to set it on course.

Click here to access the full monthly commentary packed with tips to help you strengthen your relationships, health, finances and more.   Print out the full forecast and reference it throughout the month. (The above is an excerpt from the commentary).

The author of the monthly forecast, Lena Stevens, is an author and co-founder of an international school and consulting firm dedicated to the study and application of shamanism and wisdom.  Lena Stevens has co-authored books with Jose Stevens, Ph.D., such as Secrets of Shamanism:Tapping the Spirit Power Within You and The Power Path: The Shaman’s Way To Success in Business and Life.