Tips Guaranteed To Illuminate Your '04
by Trish Whynot, D.C.Ed.

This article is intended to illuminate your experiences, expand your perspectives and bring up some questions as to what is really going on in your life. Do not accept what we (my higher self and I) say merely because we said it, accept what makes sense to you and tuck the other possibilities away for future contemplation.

Articles are not interactive, so what we say may need to be tweaked in order to fit into your unique situation. We will do our best in our one-sided conversation to explain some suggestions for viewing yourself and your life experiences more clearly. Our intention is always to help people to see the bigger picture without losing sight of their current reality.

(We will interchange the terms Universe, Divine, Creator and “All That Is.” Please feel free to put in the term that is most comforting to you.)

If you want to experience some dramatic changes in 2004, look at everyone you meet and picture them as messengers bearing gifts.

“Picture everyone you meet as a messenger bearing gifts.”

There is a “wise one” in each of us, a part of us that sees our life and the lives of others with clarity. We will refer to this “wise one” as your higher self. It is present in each and every one of us. This does not mean that each and every one of us lives our lives, viewing our world through the eyes of this “wise one”. Much to the contrary, most of us experience the majority of our lives through our “lesser selves” because that is all we know. But if you were to look at everyone you encounter through the eyes of this “wise one” you would realize that everyone in your life holds a gift designed specifically for you. You would realize that people do not randomly drop onto your stage uninvited. You may not have consciously invited them, but you would acknowledge that they must have something significant to share with you. Explore the possibility that their “wise one” and yours have gotten the two of you together out of love and that your interaction has the ability to bring forth opportunities for growth and healing for all involved if you can open up to this bigger picture.

Before you go ahead and judge a person or experience at face value, try asking your higher self to show you the gifts they have for you. Take the time to receive the gifts so the messenger doesn’t have to come back in a louder form to get your attention in the future. Messengers always start out whispering their message. The earlier you can recognize their offering, the more gentle the delivery.

“Everyone we encounter is in fact, Spirit embodied.”

Spirit expresses through us, and it mirrors qualities in us through others. We encourage you to look at people for who they are, “Spirit in a body.” From this perspective, taking someone for granted is taking Spirit for granted. If you are judging someone as negative you are judging Spirit as negative.

Give a new perspective to your relationships this year. If no one randomly falls onto your stage, there must be a higher purpose to your relationships that may initially be obscure. As you practice the process of looking at people in your life as messengers bearing gifts and “Spirit embodied” you will become more adept at recognizing the gifts your messengers are offering. Receiving the gifts frees the messenger. Once freed, he/she will either grow with you or move on to bring their gifts to others in need of their services. The messenger is usually unaware of their significance, but that doesn’t make their gifts any less valuable.

“The higher selves of these messengers can be looked upon as the Wise Men that came bearing gifts for the Christ Child.”

The higher selves of the messengers in your life can be looked upon as the Wise Men that came bearing gifts for the Christ Child. The gifts you receive on your life’s journey contain the wisdom and compassion necessary to facilitate your spiritual growth and development. They are meant to show you your talents and gifts, re-connect you to the Divine and remind you of your life purpose. The gifts of Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh presented by the Wise Men held the spiritual vibration necessary to awaken Christ to this end as well. The Gold was to awaken Him to a complete understanding of “All That Is”. The Frankincense was to open Him to his connection to the Divine and the Myrrh was to help Him to see life’s challenges as opportunities to develop wisdom and compassion.

The symbolism of these gifts from this story in the Bible were meant to remind us of the purpose of our journey as well. These highly valued gifts were showing us the value of learning from our experiences, the importance of opening to our higher selves, which is our connection to the Divine, and the necessity of understanding how the Universal forces work for us.

The way our gifts are presented and how we receive them is up to us. They can be experienced elegantly or with resistance. Our gifts can be obvious or obscure. Some may come loosely wrapped and easily opened; others may be presented in a glass box, easy to see, but impossible to grasp without the key; and others may appear to be wrapped with duct tape, impossible to see at first glance and so tightly wound your logical mind can’t imagine how something wrapped in this fashion could possibly have any value to you.

As you can ask your higher self with their more advanced tools to help, you will see that these gifts are not at all difficult to grasp. Without their help we often stare dumbfoundedly at the gifts, only seeing them from the perspective we know. We may use our old tools in efforts to push our gifts away, in our fear, denying their beautiful contents.

Often in our attempts to open our gifts without assistance, we will smash the glass, eventually getting the gift out, yet hurting the messenger and ourselves in the process. You could work on unraveling the duct tape a little each day. It may take you a few years and a lot of aggravation with multiple messengers attempting delivery. In asking for help from higher sources we can gracefully open our gifts. The choice is always ours.

Sometimes we can be so stubborn that it can take lifetimes for us to get it. We have all been in that place at one time or another in our process. As you can be compassionate to your stubbornness, you will realize that your fear of having to let go of old perceptions is keeping you from having the clarity you desire. Your fear, resistance, ignorance and arrogance will significantly increase the difficulty of receiving your messages. Perhaps, ultimately fear that we will have to take responsibility for what we have attracted and will no longer be able to blame others for our creations. Acknowledging our fear can reduce our resistance, making it easier to uncover our life’s purpose.

“What if you were able to peek at your soul contract and realized that you chose the most difficult people in your life to play these roles for you?”

What if you were able to peek at your soul contract and realized that you chose the most difficult person in your childhood to play that role for you? What if you wanted to understand what love was about on a deeper level and asked another soul to be your parent or other significant authority figure to help you experience a childhood where you didn’t feel loved for being you? And what if you realized that you asked another soul to come into your adult life to bring up all those childhood wounds experienced in the process of not being loved for being you, so you could get back in touch with them for the purpose of healing them? What if in the process of healing yourself you woke up to your life purpose and realized that you weren’t supposed to take those wounds to your grave, but instead, you had these experiences for the purpose of moving forward with what you learned from them as part of your life purpose? Now how would you look at these significant players and circumstances in your life? Still angry? Or grateful that they loved you enough to play less than desirable roles just for you?

Being grateful doesn’t necessarily mean that you put anyone on a pedestal or that their behavior was appropriate, but it does help you to forgive them for why they did whatever it was that hurt you. Chances are high that they weren’t loved just for being either. They have forgotten their soul contracts too and there are opportunities for growth and healing for them as well, but that’s their job.

In not waking up to why we are here, we may continue to play out old patterns and blame others for why our adult life isn’t what we are desiring, when really, all we need to do is love the parts of ourselves that weren’t loved just for being. If you find that you are always attracting situations where you have to defend yourself and/or prove your value it could be because there is a part of you that believes that just being you isn’t enough.

“Beware of judgment.” 

In our efforts to make sense of people and situations we tend to judge them as good or bad, positive or negative. In either case we are reluctant to take responsibility for our part in attracting the experience. If we attract a person or situation that we judge as good or positive, we say that we are lucky or blessed. From the judgment perspective this must mean that those who attract negative people and/or situations must not be blessed and are unlucky. We then discern that if some are blessed and others are not, then our Creator must judge who deserves blessings and who doesn’t. This is not how the Universe works, but you can see how one could draw this conclusion of a judging Creator. Being here doesn’t feel particularly safe coming from this perspective.

“Expect your prayers to be answered. “

You can go through life with this fearful Creator belief or you can begin to take responsibility for your creations by owning what you are attracting. In owning what we are attracting, we can see how our prayers are answered. Our prayer are always answered, it is just that the answers don’t always come the way we expect them. As an example, I have had clients that just wanted to be done with their anger issues. As they put their intention out to the Universe, the Universe responded by bringing people to them that would make them angry. In triggering their anger, they were being given the opportunity to re-visit some anger stored from the past that needed to be addressed. If you didn’t understand how the Universe worked, you would feel that you were being punished rather than blessed here.

From this example, you can see that new tools and an understanding of “All That Is” are necessary in order to experience life from the perspective that your Creator is accommodating rather than judgmental. As you view your life’s experiences through your responsibility glasses rather than through the lenses of blame and judgment you will see that your prayers are always answered. This will not diminish the not so nice things that others have done, they are learning too. This understanding comes with the ability to choose a more elegant way of learning and co-creating with the Universe. 

“All you need to do is love yourself.”

“All you need to do is love yourself.” Many of you have heard this phrase and there are others who are new to the process. When you can truly love yourself, you are a magnet for love
and when you are a magnet for love, you are a magnet for anything your heart desires just because you desire it. How nice it would be to be able to truly love yourself and to be in that flow of love. Your life would be worry free. Many of the fears that hold you back from expressing yourself, following your passion and loving and being loved would be gone. All your energy could be put toward creating your dreams rather than toward avoiding the re-creation of your past. Life is adventurous and fun when we can genuinely love ourselves.

How to love yourself is the question. Some of you will probably associate loving yourself with being selfish. Old fear-based beliefs seeded by parents, religion, school and society can interfere with Universal truths around love.

We suggest that you take a little time at the end of each day to review your day and to love yourself for each and every experience that you had that day. Look at yourself as the “We” that you are in this exercise.

For example, perhaps you did something nice for someone, take responsibility for it and love the part of you that made this choice; perhaps you completed a project that you have been working on for awhile, take responsibility for this and love the part of you that made this choice; maybe you took some time out of your day to meditate or to express your creativity in some way ... love the part of you that made this choice. What we are suggesting here is to love the part of you that made the choice, not the act itself. Feel how your heart opens as you embrace the parts of you that made these choices.

If you had one more piece of chocolate cake or glass of wine than you knew was healthy for you ... take responsibility for your choice, forgive yourself and love the part of you that you allowed to make this less than healthy choice. If you withheld the truth to spare someone’s feelings, take responsibility for that, forgive yourself and love the fearful part of you that was afraid of losing love. If your anger toward someone was more than the situation warranted, take responsibility for this, make peace, forgive yourself and love the part of yourself you gave authority to that acted from a place of feeling insignificant or powerless.

This is the place where we get stuck in the “loving ourselves” process. Loving ourselves here doesn’t mean that we continue to give authority to these lesser parts of ourselves, enabling these unhealthy behaviors to continue. Loving ourselves here does involve recognizing that we have parts of ourselves that are wounded and fearful and in need of our love. These parts are not feeling particularly loved or lovable. We have a tendency to blame these “lesser selves” and others for the way we act in the heat of the moment, rather than taking responsibility for giving authority to our undeveloped parts. It is not
possible to explain the entire process of loving yourself in a newsletter, but this awareness of your parts and loving them is a huge first step. In processing and healing these parts of ourselves, we can release our emotional wounds and replace them with what we learned and love for ourselves. You will know this process is complete when your response in the heat of the moment is not reactive or controlled. In taking time to love and understand our misunderstood, undeveloped parts, we help them grow and can come from a wiser place within ourselves in similar situations in the future.

“Different parts of ourselves come up at different times throughout our day.”

Different parts of ourselves come up at different times throughout our day. If we are not conscious of this we will automatically give authority to the part that is the most developed in the area of our experience. This does not always mean that this part has expertise in this area. In fact, the part we give authority to may be very young, inexperienced and have obsolete tools. This part may make destructive choices and decisions. He/she may be blaming, controlling, defensive, fearful or in survival mode rather than coming from a place of love. 

Our undeveloped parts need our love just as much and often more than our stronger parts. They are lesser due to lesser tools, not lesser value. As you review your experiences of the day, take time to note your feelings around different issues that came up. Feel how nice it feels to take a moment to re-visit the choices you made from a place of love. If the feelings from helping someone didn’t feel good, then you may want to ask yourself if you gave authority to a fearful part in your choice to help. Perhaps fear that they wouldn’t love you if you said, “no.” Now, that would be an area for you to explore more deeply. Exploring this place would give you the opportunity to understand yourself more deeply. Love this fearful part of you too, but in the future, help it to feel safe as you say “no,” rather than giving it authority to say “yes”.

When we are asleep to our process and make poor choices we will either justify the choices and decisions we make, blame others for how we are feeling or get angry at our lesser selves for their undeveloped behaviors. Neither justifying, blaming or getting angry are healthy, happy, healing places to stay in.

“When we say something is a priority it is important that we treat it as such.”

So often we say that something or someone is important to us, yet we consistently place them last. When we say something is a priority it is important that we treat it as such. People often say their families are a priority, yet they consistently put work, acquaintances and chores before their family members. Sometimes we are more concerned with what acquaintances will think and comforted by the thought that family will always be there. Saying family is a priority and acting otherwise sends a mixed message. Remember, “Talk is cheap.” If work is a priority, out of love for your family, tell them. Fear that they would judge you for this could cause you to tell them what you think they want to hear. Your mixed messages hurt others much more than the truth and are based in fear.

Stop talking about what you are going to do and do it. If you regularly discuss what you want to do in the future followed by excuses such as, when things calm down, when the kids grow up, when the laundry’s done, after I take the dog for a walk, then it’s not a priority. The things you put first are the priority. If what you are putting off is important there should be some energy put toward whatever it is every day. Just talking about what your heart desires won’t get you there.

Take some time this year to look at where your thoughts and feelings are out of line with your actions. Take the time to understand why, forgive yourself, and change.

“Beware of putting out negative intentions.”

Often we put out the intention of what we don’t want to do. Putting out the intention to quit a bad habit, is putting out a negative intention. A better intention might be to understand why you have developed this habit. We often develop bad habits in efforts to suppress uncomfortable feelings. If we can be more conscious of what we are feeling when we gravitate toward this bad habit and appropriately express what we are feeling instead of suppressing it with the bad habit, losing the habit will be a natural progression.

Appropriately is the key word here. As we always say, as a rule only 10-20% of what we feel is from the current situation and the other 80-90% is old stuff surfacing from the current trigger. It is not appropriate to blame someone for 100% of what you are feeling and only temporarily makes you feel better. Getting to the root and doing the healing and expression there is the only way to remove the trigger. Then address the current situation if you need to. Old behaviors of eating, drinking, smoking, etc. can be replaced with appropriate expression. 

The old method for breaking bad habits was to control them. Control uses a tremendous amount of our energy and eventually another addiction will be necessary to divert our attention away from our emotions or resorting back to our original addiction.

Love the part of you that gravitates toward bad habits, but stop giving it authority. Ask your wiser parts for some help with your healing and expression.

“Taking time to be still, create and have fun, gives parts that are more an opportunity to express.” 

We all have a wise counsel within that wants to connect with us. There is a higher purpose to why we are here. We forget this purpose when we are born, but that doesn’t mean that our purpose is forgotten. Our wise counsel knows what we agreed to in our soul contracts and can help us to remember. In taking time to be still, create and have fun, we give these parts that are more the opportunity to express. When we don’t make time to listen, the only avenue available is crisis. In working with our wise counsel within, we create the space for our issues to come to the surface so we can address them. When learning through crisis, our issues come at us. As an example, look at someone who hates their job. If they can work with their higher selves to understand what the hate is about for them, they may realize that being told what to do and how to do it brings up feelings from childhood with a controlling parent. On healing their inner child, their boss’s ways will no longer irritate them. From this point forward the changes (healing) made on the inside will play themselves out on the outside and they can be grateful for the opportunity to do some healing. We have seen changes ranging from the boss giving his/her notice, to their controlling behavior being directed elsewhere, to a new job opportunity presenting itself. If someone hates their job, but doesn’t do anything about it, they may eventually get sick or fired and then have to deal with all the pain around this before getting to the root of the problem. Once they get over all the emotion created over choosing to stay in an unhealthy place for an extended period and being propelled out, hopefully they will continue to the core of the problem where they could take responsibility for why they attracted it. This is where the healing takes place and the patterns are changed.

“... if emotion wasn’t already present to be triggered, then you may have responded differently.”

Blaming someone for how you are feeling won’t make you feel better. Feeling justified in your feelings may be a temporary fix, but those feelings will creep back up, only to be experienced again. Start taking responsibility for how you are feeling. Take some time to explore the possibility that if emotion wasn’t already present to be triggered, then you may have responded differently.

“Be grateful for the messengers in your life.”

Life should be great as an adult. Our prayers are always answered and we always have a choice. We encourage you to view 2004 through the lenses of awesome and opportunity. Be tender with yourself and have fun!

Wishes for a year filled with whatever your heart desires!