Lessons About Love

I wanted to share a story by Jose L. Stevens that  I read today about the hard lessons of love.  Below is an excerpt from the article that can be found on his website thepowerpath dot com.

I bolded a few sentences that really struck me.  This story made me ask myself  deeper questions about a personal challenge I am dealing with.  It made me understand at a deeper level why this challenge has come up for me over and over.  Jose’s story helped me realize that I have been forced to confront an aspect of myself that I have not fully forgiven and embraced.  I know I need to make  peace with the situation or else it will continue to haunt me.  Just this realization has  lifted my spirit.  Perhaps Jose’s story below will also inspire you to ask yourself questions about a difficult situation you may be having and to gain insights on how to change it.  Perhaps there  is someone in your life that really pushes your buttons. Or perhaps there is a situation in your life that keeps haunting you.  Why is this person or situation a part of your life?  What lessons do you need to learn?  They are there for a reason.  Our personal demons are there to help us evolve.  Enjoy the story.

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“When we think of lessons about love, we usually think of romantic themes or the love between a parent and a child, but that is only the tip of the iceberg. The truth is, lessons about love can be extremely difficult and show up in ways that seem to have nothing to do with love at all. The truth is, that unless we learn these tough lessons, we will not make very much progress toward our eventual awakening. These lessons can be true knuckle biters and every great master or teacher this planet has seen has faced enormous personal challenges in the face of love, no exceptions.

Recently I had one hard love lesson of my own. My wife Lena and I own some land near Mora, New Mexico where we have many summer shamanic retreats, trainings, and events. We call it Eagle Bear Ranch and it is reached from the highway via a long windy, rocky, and steep dirt road that crosses land that we do not own but have an easement on. The road has been deteriorating over the years due to the rain, snow, and much use and needed work badly. I called the woman who I knew owned most of the land and talked to her about fixing the road and she agreed it needed attention. I suggested that we could save some money by using a great pile of rocky red earth that had been sitting by the side of the road for years. We could spread it over the rocks and improve the road. She said that was fine.

I have an old dump truck and a skidsteer and after a couple of months I had our Huichol friends come out and work on the road. They are very good with heavy machinery and began to make a lot of progress. They did a wonderful job and I was delighted with the roadwork. One afternoon they came back to camp upset and said that a “crazy man” had yelled at them and kicked them off the road. It turned out to be the man who owned a short section of the property that the road went through. He had bought the land from the woman’s father I had called. Legally, we had the right to fix a road that we had an easement on if the road became impassable or difficult. Yet in my enthusiasm to fix the road I had neglected to consult with him about that short section of road that he had purchased. That afternoon, when I went to look at the road, it was all trashed. In a rage the man had taken his own tractor and tried to scrape off all the new surface we had put down. When I saw that he had destroyed much of the good work the Huichols had done I was in a rage myself. In my mind’s eye, I saw my hands reaching for his throat to choke him and worse. I found it extremely disturbing that I could not stop these raging thoughts. I knew that this was not good, but I had a hard time controlling my anger. I did not want to confront him until I had better control over my anger.

I went directly to my spiritual practices. I did Ho’oponopono over and over again. This is a Hawaian shamanic practice to reduce conflict. In the short version, one imagines telling the person they have conflict with that they are very sorry this problem has come between them. One takes responsibility for the conflict and apologizes for creating a reality where there is this fight and unpleasantness. It goes something like this: “I am sorry this has come between us. I am sorry that I dreamed this version of reality where you are angry with me and I am angry with you. I forgive you for whatever I have been blaming you for and I forgive myself for whatever I have done to contribute to the problem. I love you and I love myself no matter what has happened, because I am a son of the Great Spirit. You are my brother, a fellow son of the Great Spirit, the same as me. Thank you for helping me to learn this lesson.

Try as I might, I lay in bed awake all night, still angry as hell. I saw clearly that I had created this event to learn something about love, but I was damned in letting go of the anger. Little by little, I made progress. I was able to see that this man, a warrior, represented my older brother (also a warrior) with whom I had a lot of conflict as a child. I was projecting certain things onto him that belonged with my brother, who I thought I had forgiven, but evidently I had not been thorough enough. When I was a child, I feared my older brother. He physically hurt me and one time when I was about four I hit him over the head with hammer with the intention to kill him and get rid of him. Of course I failed and all I did was make him cry and I got in big trouble for it. Now I feared what this man was doing to our work on the road and I was so angry at him for it I had similar murderous fantasies.

My wife Lena and I agreed that she would be the one to talk with him about the road because I might make things worse, given my mood and projections. She was much more neutral about the event and was able to do some healing work about the event long distance. This turned out to be very successful. She took him some cookies and visited him with my daughter Anna who brought my new four month old grandchild. As it turned out, he was contrite about what had occurred and muttered something about it just being a road. She saw that he was quite lonely and not being consulted about his section of road had triggered him to attack. They had a good conversation about how to come to a compromise. The result was that we would agree to bring in some base-course to cover the red earth on his section of road that he objected to. The entire event cost us an extra several thousand dollars but the outcome was what we needed, to be able to fix the road.

By the end, I was able to see that he represented that part of me that has at times, felt ignored and not included in decisions. While he is not my favorite character and I would prefer not to have another run in with him, I no longer feel like choking him and I am not upset anymore about what happened. When I look at the bigger picture, I realize that there are much tougher lessons about love to be dealt with. What if he had killed my family instead? What if he had run me off the road and paralyzed me? Would I be able to forgive him for that? That would be much harder, but that is what I would have to do in the long run.

Lessons of love are not just about romance. They are often about nitty gritty relationships that come up into your face to be dealt with without warning. These may have to come up over and over and over again until there is no fear left, nothing left but love. “Damn! It’s hard”. And it’s not fun, but there is no other way out unless one is willing to repeat these events again and again. I want them done, for good. This is the only way we are going to move forward in this world, to a new world, where hate does not dominate our experience as human beings. ..”

I’ve Never Met An Ugly Witch

We are facing a most serious threat in the world.

The threat is the systematic control of an individual’s energy. There are many strategies being used to weaken us, to eliminate our will and vision. A key strategy is to instill fear in society in order to get people to give up their freedom. Another strategy is to taint our food and water and air with poisons. There is also the threat of legal drugs.

Life-depleting strategies against us often are not obvious unless we are on constant alert and open our minds. A shaman by the name of Stalking Wolf once said “I have never seen an ugly witch.”  What do you think this means?  There is profound wisdom in this saying.  It teaches that darkness tends to disguise itself as attractive.

Do you remember in Star Wars how Senator Palpatine in the beginning appeared to be well meaning and noble then later revealed his secret identity of a dark lord?  Evil disguises itself in many ways.  More recently darkness is disguising itself less and less.  It is up to us to open our minds to see.

Today, there are many leaders and organizations which feign to want to protect us.  Be aware that darkness uses deception as one of its main weapons.  We are being attacked on many different levels.  Yet, warriors of the light can choose to be awake.  Awareness is our ticket to freedom.  Do not fear challenges as they can help you sharpen your will and increase your life force.  Darkness can teach us to transcend our weaknesses and to become the powerful beings we are meant to be.

There is nothing more important than connecting with our inner power.  We are guided by a higher force that is always there for us.  This force is within us, not out there.  It protects us and guides us in infinite ways—from the most practical to the most abstract matters—when we open our hearts and minds to it.

Knowledge protects you.  Ignorance endangers.  Keep learning.

The Warrior Spirit

October 2012 - Creating Space for Creativity

A time for evaluating and creativity.

You could be evaluating almost everything this month: Finances, work, environment, relationships, career, projects, health, practices, routines, home, your physical environment, your reactions to things, your beliefs, your spiritual life etc. The big question will be, “How important is it in your life, and does it serve you?” If not, there are adjustments to be made.

In order to evaluate anything you need to have the space and time to do it. There is a breather this month as the very yang action influence backs off a bit and allows us more clarity about what we have been doing and what we have involved ourselves in. If adjustments are in order don’t be afraid to make them. This is about putting yourself first and trusting that the right decisions will lead to the creativity needed to implement them.

One of the challenges will be to face the truth in your evaluation of something that may be a hard truth to see. If you allow yourself to be deeply disappointed, you will be. A great deal of neutrality this month will serve you better around facing some of these difficult but necessary truths. Remember that no matter how hard these adjustments are to make, they will bring great rewards of creativity and expansion.

How do you evaluate something in your life?

The first clue is that it does not feel right. It does not serve you. It gives you no satisfaction and it is an energy leak. When you put energy out, something has to come back. If it doesn’t, there is something wrong with the picture. If you feel drained instead of just simply tired after a day’s activities, you were not nurtured and fed by your experiences. Always ask yourself, “What am I getting out of this?“

True service towards others always feels good. Service offered out of ego, ingratiation, fear of rejection, Self-deprecation or Martyrdom is doomed from the beginning and will not end well. Learn to be discerning and to differentiate between right service and ego driven involvement.

The other big energy leak is getting overinvolved in other people’s drama. Evaluate this with neutrality and practical truth. Remove yourself from this unhealthy waste of time no matter how deliciously it may beckon you.

How do you make adjustments?

These will be different depending on each individual circumstance. The key is to adjust gradually by weaning yourself away from activities, relationships, practices and habits that do not serve you. Once in awhile it is appropriate to change something completely and dramatically but often it is too much for the ego to handle all at once.

Think it through. There is enough intellectually centered support to bring clarity and mental problem solving into the picture this month. Beware of impulsive decisions and give everything just a bit more time to sort itself out before making an adjustment. If there is no clarity, wait until there is before moving ahead.

You may run into something that needs to be adjusted that seems overwhelming to you. Start with the baby steps and do at least something towards a greater adjustment that may take a much longer time to accomplish. This would be the case in a huge change such as changing careers or making a big move or ending a long-term partnership. Sometimes just the decision to finally make this adjustment in your life is enough as long as you are committed to it.

So how does creativity fit into this picture?

We are still under the influence of the Artisan with Creativity as a major theme for the year. What blocks creativity is the encumbrance of all those things and activities that don’t serve you. Once you have cleared the decks and made space for something new, creating is the next natural step. In fact once you feel unencumbered, you may begin to feel more creative. Use your creativity as the inspiration and fuel for what you want to manifest.

The opportunities are for getting yourself realigned, for seeing great results in your creative endeavors and for manifesting more balance and well being for yourself. In other words, you could end this month feeling really great.

The challenges as usual will come from fear, resistance and confusion. As we mentioned last month, action always cures fear. Decisiveness around taking action towards adjustments will keep things flowing and not taking everything personally will keep you neutral.

How the month shows up:

YOU PERSONALLY

This is a great opportunity to make profound changes and adjustments in your personal life that will serve you better. You have support for ending this time frame feeling better and in a better situation than you have ever experienced before…

The above is an excerpt from the monthly forecast.

The author of this commentary, Lena Stevens, is the 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.

Click here to access the full forecast on their website to  learn more wisdom, specific power days of the month and to learn more about creating space for creativity.

Warrior Spirit Book Trailer Release

Today we celebrate the book trailer release for The Warrior Spirit—How To Use Hidden Mind Powers and Ancient Wisdom To Create Wealth and More!

The book trailer’s theme is simple, yet profound:  Our dreams are sacred, and we must do all that we can to follow our life’s vision.  When we live our vision, we become whole.

The trailer begins by teaching that we, like the shepherd in Paulo Coehlo’s book The Alchemist, must follow our dreams, our life’s vision.  We too must learn spiritual lessons on our journey to realize our inspired dreams.

To follow our life’s vision, we must learn to pay attention to that faint voice within that guides us. That faint voice will guide us but we must learn to listen to it and have inner strength to conquer our personal demons (e.g., fear, self-doubt, procrastination) that distract us from our path.

When we conquer our self-defeating habits, we become alchemists, warriors, and change the direction of our life.  Click here to watch the book trailer.

The Warrior Spirit –How To Use Hidden Mind Powers and Ancient Wisdom To Create Wealth and Much More! is an inspirational self-help audio book and e-book about discovering our inner power to realize our life’s vision.  It takes up where The Alchemist book left off; it provides guidance on how to achieve our dreams using inner vision and it empowers us at the core.  Share your comments about the book trailer.

What To Do To Work Through Your Fears?

In this post, you will learn some powerful tips for working through personal fear.

The main word we will use this month is triggered. People will be triggered this month by just about everything. There is an emotional component to the month potentially infusing hysteria and irrationality to some of what is being triggered. Navigating through what is real in your experience today and what belongs to some deeply hidden (up till now) past wound will be the main work and challenge. As always, there is a tremendous opportunity to change and release the past that still triggers and runs you today.

We will be dealing a lot with fear and most of it has no reality base in present time. You will see that fear is almost always about the past or about the future, neither of which really exist. Reactions are usually fear-based and have no power. True action comes from the power of choice and decision.

The energy of the month is very yang and aggressive whether you are in the “reaction” or in the “action” part of it. The masculine quality provides an opportunity to practice right action and the positive aspects of the masculine, but reactivity may also show up as a negative aspect and something to be aware of, both in yourself and in others.

August’s theme of power continues in the background and insures that actions and reactions are powerful, forceful, sudden and explosive. This can be either a very good thing, or an intense challenge. For some, this time will show up as a great open door of possibilities for right action, right work and tremendous movement and manifesting. For others, it will be a challenge just to stay in neutral gear and not become mired in a reactive place of fear. What comes to mind is Thor’s Hammer. In Norse Mythology, Thor is a god associated with thunder. His Hammer is one of the most fearsome of weapons, capable of leveling mountains. Though generally recognized and depicted as a hammer, it is sometimes referred to as an axe or club. In wielding the hammer, Thor

“Would be able to strike as firmly as he wanted, whatever his aim, and the hammer would never fail, and if he threw it at something, it would never miss and never fly so far from his hand that it would not find its way back, and when he wanted, it would be so small that it could be carried inside his tunic.”

Thor’s hammer is descriptive of what we have this month. Either you will get hit with it or you will wield it. You decide. The image and symbolism of throwing the hammer is about taking deliberate and specific action. Specific and deliberate action is not a reaction or an action taken out of reaction. It is a choice. If you are taking action from a place of “being left no choice” you are acting out of reaction and there is no power in that. When you wield Thor’s hammer and throw your intention, choice, and motivation into an action for yourself and your own personal future, you can’t miss. The force of this dynamic energy will carry you forward into manifesting your future in the way you consciously choose. Wielding Thor’s hammer is not an ambivalent act. You don’t sort of throw it. You put 100% behind your choice, decision and action.

On the other hand, if you find yourself flattened by Thor’s Hammer, it means you have become mired in the quicksand of fear and reactivity that has made you a target. You will likely find that at this time you are inflexible, blaming, attached, stubborn, martyred, angry, judgmental, self-deprecating, full of regret, or trying to fix something that is not in your control or yours to fix. This is the place of feeling powerless to act. You got triggered by something or someone and did not stay neutral. If this happens, become neutral as quickly as possible, observe that you always have a choice, reflect on what action you choose to take in your life, and then do it. Use the image of having a “Thor’s Hammer” as your own ability to choose, intend and take powerful action. This is it. Do it now.

When you get triggered by an event, a person, or an experience, your reaction is almost always connected to a core issue that has its roots in the past. When any event happens in your life, the experience of it has to filter down into the instinctive center where over time it becomes a core belief. All childhood traumas and experiences are processed in this way especially during formative years and times of core imprinting. Usually similar events are re created, as they are magnetized to the pattern solidifying its identity as a core belief. So when you react strongly to something, you are reacting to very old information that has nothing to do with the present. This month provides a huge opportunity to follow the threads of your reactions to their core and uncover the old fears and beliefs that have been running you your whole life. The task is to take action and throw that hammer at them, eliminating them for good.

As you take advantage of this time and go deeply into following the threads of your reactions to their core with the intention of eliminating those old beliefs and patterns, make sure you have something to replace them with. Nature abhors a vacuum and you want to be able to decide what goes into that vacuum of available space once it is cleared. It is also very threatening to your personality and instinctive center to all of a sudden change everything. We always suggest doing this gradually. Remember the bid for power information about being ready and not taking on more than you can handle. It is OK to do this little by little and to get help. The most important thing is to pay attention to where and how you react.

Because of the emotional aspect of the month, you may experience mood swings in yourself and in others. One day up, the next down; one day pleased with your actions, the next day confused and despairing; one day happy with life and everyone in it, the next day angry and cynical. Just remember that much of what is surfacing is not of the present. Don’t get stuck in feeling badly or trying to analyze as it probably will not make much sense. Movement is key. Change something, clean out a junk drawer, and throw away something old. Get up and move around, change your position, take a walk, go outside. Use your breath to release the charge behind your reaction.

Working through FEAR.

When you react, immediately ask yourself, ”What is the fear?”

Then look to see if the fear is real in what is happening to you right at that moment. Chances are it is not. For example, if you get a letter from someone or something you identify as an authority (IRS, bank, creditor, court, lawyer, someone you owe something to….), you may react and that reaction may have fear under it. What is the fear? Follow the thread. Notice that the fear is not founded in any experience you are having right at the present moment where you may be cooking a nice meal or having a good conversation or enjoying a cup of tea or a good walk with your dog. These fears are always about something possible in the future that has not happened yet. Always bring yourself back to the present, move the fear aside and focus instead on taking whatever action you need to take from your own choices and personal power. One of the hardest choices and action to take is to ask for help. Sometimes you need to ask for help. If you do ask, ask with the powerful intention of getting help and not with the belief that you won’t get it because you don’t deserve it or it has never been there for you and does not exist.

How do you deal with others that are triggered around you?

You come from a place of compassion. You stay uninvolved in their drama. You do not try and fix it for them. You do not take it personally, as it almost never is, since it is connected to their own past and not yours. You serve, help and support through your own right action as an example they can choose to follow or not. It is painful to see people you care about mired in their own reactions. But jumping in there with them means that now there are two of you mired and powerless. You may wish to physically remove yourself from any situation that is particularly toxic.

The above is an excerpt from the monthly forecast.

The author of this commentary, Lena Stevens, is the 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.

Click here to access the full forecast on their website to  learn more wisdom, specific power days of the month and to learn more about how to work through fear.

The Alchemist and the Sacredness of Following Your Dreams

The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho, is an inspirational fable about a Spanish shepherd, Santiago, who sets out on a quixotic quest to find a treasure at the Egyptian pyramids.  Along the way he learns various spiritual lessons.  The lessons he learns include the importance of paying attention to the signs in our life, and that it is our responsibility to follow our dreams, our inner vision, because that is how we become whole.

Our dreams are sacred and powerful, and we must do all that we can to follow our calling.  An Apache shaman once said, “A man not living his vision is living death.”  I believe this is true.  This quote may not be as poetic as the quotes in The Alchemist, but it is profoundly wise and has layers of meanings.

The shaman’s wisdom inspired me to create The Warrior Spirit –How To Use Hidden Mind Powers and Ancient Wisdom To Create Wealth and Much More! It teaches how we can conquer personal demons that keep us from realizing our life’s vision. In doing so, we become the alchemist, transforming our lead into gold, figuratively speaking.

The Warrior Spirit takes up where The Alchemist book left off.  It provides guidance on how to achieve your inspired dreams, and it empowers you at the core, at the spiritual level.

Today, I came across an inspiring article by Matthew Walsh about The Alchemist. Matthew, the founder of Spiritual Media Blog Newsletter, wrote about the upcoming movie based on The Alchemist and included great Alchemist quotes about the power of following our dreams.  May this article help to remind you of the sacredness of your dreams.  Below is an excerpt from his article:

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In an interview, Paulo Coelho made these bold declaration about following your dreams:

“We who fight for our dream suffer far more when it doesn’t work out, because we cannot fall back on the old excuse: ‘Oh, well, I didn’t really want it anyway.’ We do want it and know that we have staked everything on it…

Then, we warriors of light must be prepared to have patience in difficult times and to know that the Universe is conspiring in our favor, even though we may not understand how…

When we first begin fighting for our dream, we have  no experience and make many mistakes. The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times. So why is it so important to live our personal calling if we are only going to suffer more than other people? Because, once we have overcome the defeats–and we always do–we are filled by a greater sense of euphoria and confidence…

If you believe yourself worthy of the thing you fought so hard to get, then you become an instrument of God, you help the Soul of the World, and you understand why you are here.”

Please share your comments below and share with friends.

Reprinted from Matthew Welsh’s Spiritual Media Blog Newsletter.

Matthew Welsh is the founder of Spiritual Media Blog, the News Source for Spiritual Entertainment.  For more information about Spiritual Media Blog please visit www.SpiritualMediaBlog.com

Unlimited Inner Power was founded to empower individuals using basic ancient shamanic techniques, principles and wisdom combined with modern scientific understandings of the powers of the mind. Find me at Facebook and Twitter.

Wisdom & Empowering Tips for August 2012

Are you ready to embrace wisdom and enhance your life?

The theme for August is POWER. There are many ways to work with a theme of power and for this month it is more about looking at where you give your power away and then changing that behavior or pattern. It is also about learning to empower your desires from within rather than always looking to a greater power outside yourself to make things happen. This is a great month to revisit the idea of power and energy leaks and to spend some intentional time reworking your patterns in these areas.

Power and can show up in many ways. Power is health, vitality, truth, love, resources, awareness, creativity, service, acceptance, attention, connection, joy, ability, talent, recognition, expression, freedom and choice just to name a few. These are what you practice or embody and what no one can take away from you. So the resources we are mentioning are not resources that can be taken but rather inner resources of resiliency, flexibility, and personal talent and creativity. What power is not includes control, worry, negativity, resistance, oppression, slavery, fear, and any practice or behavior that is run by the obstacles of the false personality

We all have an idea about what power is. We also all have a definition of what a powerful person looks like and acts. We have been told all our lives about what and who has more power than we do and when it is best just to do as you are told without question. This is a month when all of this automatic behavior comes into questioning and reevaluation. At the end of the day, you are the one who gets to decide whether or not to give your power to something or someone. You will also get to evaluate whether something is capable of empowering you or not.

The task this month is to study where you put your energy. Is it a good investment or not? If you spend your time worrying about something that could happen you are giving your power away to the future that has not yet manifested and may never manifest. There is no power in that. However if you put that same energy into gratitude, you will not only feel better, you will be greatly empowered rather than disempowered. Anything that keeps you in the present rather than regretting the past or worrying about the future is a much greater source of power.

Procrastination is also a great power leak. Take up the motto this month of “DO IT NOW” and get a handle on your procrastination. If you can’t “do it now” then decide when, make a plan, and forget about it. It is not the timing that is the power giveaway; it is the worry and obsession that goes along with it. This is giving your power away to time.

Another common power giveaway is deferring to another’s preference all the time, saying yes to doing things you truly do not wish to do, and compromising yourself in an effort to keep the peace in a volatile environment or to please someone in a relationship. This never works, as it will breed resentment in the long run. Anything you do with strings attached has an expectation on the other end, either yours or someone else’s. Expectations set you up for disappointment and limit the power available. Practice doing things because you want to and if you are in a situation such as a job or family commitment that requires some degree of sacrifice and compromise, remember that you chose this on some level. The best approach is to continue choosing it fully and from service rather than martyrdom.

There are many ways that people give their power away to others, to institutions, to those they consider more powerful or more knowledgeable, to government, to authority, to addictions, and to anything they consider vital to their survival. These are too numerous to list. However you can examine your own life and see where you may make some small changes to take your power back where it makes sense. Reevaluate what you thought was more powerful than it really is. What makes you react in a fearful way? Does it really have power over you?  Continually asking yourself questions is an important practice and will help you deepen your wisdom.

The other part if this equation is looking at what truly does have power and being receptive and open to it as a source of energy, inspiration and vitality. Anything in nature and the elements, essence connection, your own creativity, beauty, starlight, love, the sun and moon, a waterfall, sacred mountains, a storm, just to name a few. The more time you spend in communion and practice with natural sources of power, the more powerful you will be from within and the more wisdom you stand to acquire.

How the month shows up:

YOU PERSONALLY

You have the opportunity to examine where you give your power away and to consciously make choices to change that behavior. If you are always deferring to another’s decisions out of fear, you are giving your power away. If you are letting your obstacles (stubbornness, greed, self-destruction, arrogance, self-deprecation, impatience, martyrdom) get the better of you and influence your decisions, you are giving your power away. This month is a time to take your personal power back from the habits and patterns that do not serve you.

You can also make great strides in empowering yourself personally through practices of being around natural power consciously. The next time you see a beautiful sunset, open yourself up to the power of the beauty and absorb it into yourself. If you take one thing every day and turn it around from being a power giveaway into a practice of empowerment you will be doing good work. For example if you are always judging and speaking negatively, spend a set amount of time speaking only positively and suspending all judgment. Then follow this up with a practice of gratitude.

RELATIONSHIPS

Relationships could see power struggles depending on the nature of the relationship. There is also an opportunity to empower relationships with more truth, creativity, joy, freedom, choice, love, attention and wisdom. It is important to try and take the expectations out of the equation. It will become clear once you take your power back from relationships where you have been giving it over, whether the relationship is still viable.

Some relationships have been built on an imbalanced platform of power where one person has given their power away. Once the power is taken back, the relationship either has to reconfigure a new platform or dissolve. Reconfiguring a new platform usually requires a time of separation or disconnection to be successful.

A good practice to do with regards to relationships is the practice of giving acknowledgment, attention, acceptance, freedom and choice to others. Give it without expecting anything back. This gets you away from focusing on yourself and into the service of empowering others. By eliminating the expectation you also make yourself available for that experience to come to you in ways maybe you never imagined.

HEALTH AND THE PHYSICAL BODY

Where do you give your power away? To your addictions, to your health practitioners, to your bad habits, to your lethargy or fear, to your illness, to your beliefs about aging, to your beliefs about what the body is capable? This is a time of examination and taking your power back from where you have given it away. It is also a great month to drop the excess weight, worry, obsession, doubt, and fear. It is maybe the best opportunity so far to reestablish a new relationship with your body and empower it as never before. Acknowledge it, have gratitude, give it love and attention, decorate it, get some new clothes, feed it some good food, take it out into nature as much as possible and let it run and play.

This is a time to move away from fear and mistrust to trust and relationship. The body will respond to physical nurturing and loving attention from you and from others. You may through periods of lethargy or depression. Use your will to get out and walk and be in nature. The body is designed to move. Notice how your thoughts about what it is you need to do are the ones making you tired and not the actual activity. Notice when you give your power away to your thoughts and beliefs especially around your body, your health and what you are capable of.

FINANCE, PROJECTS, PARTNERSHIPS, BUSINESS

This can be an exciting month for projects, partnerships and business. The opportunity for empowering them is huge provided they are infused with the right kind of power. For example if you have been waiting for a certain investor to come along to launch your business and you believe that you cannot do it without them, you are setting yourself up for disappointment and perhaps failure. If however you focus on infusing your business with the powerful support of inspiration, the right people, creativity, resourcefulness, flexibility, the power of an ally, the support of the four directions and other natural elements, you will open the opportunity for great success. The key is dropping the expectation of what it should look like.

Examine where you are giving your power away and take it back. There is a great movement now away from larger corporate entities and towards smaller more local business models. The more personal of a relationship you can have with your projects, finances and business the better. Stay involved and inspired. If you are entangled in an old model with partners that cannot change, you may need to take your power back and do something else. Any project that is launched in the right way this month has the possibility of great success. If it is not right, it will be obvious.

The above is an excerpt from the monthly forecast.

The author of this commentary, Lena Stevens, is the 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.

Click here to access the full forecast on their website to  learn more wisdom & specific power days of the month.