The topic of how to harness resilience during times of stress has really hit home for me personally. The Thomas Fire, the largest fire in California history consuming 281,000 acres, burned its way across the Los Padres Mountains from Ventura to Ojai to my front door. My home miraculously survived because of the protection of world-class firefighters; the beast licking a few final leaves of my hedges before it rolled on in search of new mountains and new homes to destroy.
One week later, the beast finally dead, my husband and I surveyed a charred landscape, grateful no one was harmed. We had about a week to catch our breath. Then the rain came. Torrential, it descended like a million bullets hammering our fragile, barren mountains. The watershed came rolling down, boulders the size of trucks carried by mud-like liquid concrete cascading upon us like cold grey lava. My home town, Montecito, California, was buried like Pompeii while we were asleep in our beds, the destruction rolling all the way to the ocean. The next day we faced the unimaginable, neighbors, friends, pets and homes lost, our beautiful California dream gone.
Of the hundreds of homes destroyed, my house again survived. The boulders, the debris had missed us, leaving a new landscape, trees gone, enormous stone statues in their place, a canyon carved 30-feet deep just 15 feet away from our house. Such is nature's power. These will remain here forever as monuments reminding me how profoundly close life and death can be.
Welcome to the Age of Surprise.
Calamity, abrupt change, often comes without any kind of warning. So, how do we handle this? How do we find strength and resilience? How do we care for ourselves and those that we love? How do we manage the inner stress?
In experiencing the Thomas Fire and the mud and debris flows that followed, it reminded me of so many other times when my world came apart. I was in my 20's when my mother died, then soon after my father died. Then, after thirteen years of marriage, a divorce occurred, breaking my heart, leaving me with two small children looking to me for answers as my best friend died, same as my parents, a victim of cancer. In the middle of all these losses I was certain grief would kill me. I was unsure if I would survive. And yet, I survived it all. Because, when I felt my world coming apart, my body freezing up with anxiety and fear as I went about worrying, "What am I going to do?" a voice, a Presence, spoke to me each time, helping guide me through.
You see, I am a mystic, a person who, for whatever reason, has been given the ability to live with one foot grounded in an unseen reality I call the wisdom light of All That Is while having the other foot fully grounded in this physical reality. I see and hear angels and other beings and receive information that most people do not, which places me in an interesting position during the difficult times we face here in our country and around the world today.
We entered 2018 with hope that it would be a year of new possibility. We are all very much in need of a boost, and the divine is here to help. Which is why I feel now is the time to share what has been shown to me in conversations, visions and insights on my journeys to and from this other reality. With this need to share in mind, I asked in my morning prayers recently, “What does all this disaster and change mean? What is the message? What can I share with my family and friends? What can I share from You, Presence of Pure Creation, Great Light of God, that will help us find the possibility in all of this today?” And in a flash of clarity, everything that I had studied in my years of spiritual pursuit, all of the varied teachings of truth, words I had memorized from sacred texts, collided together in one giant symphony of thought, feeling, and awe. I had an understanding that has renewed my life and the lives of all I have shared it with.
Here is the message:
We are here at this moment in time, The Age of Surprise, to reconnect our souls with each other, to reunite in a state of deep love, care and compassion. Connection is the most important lesson humanity is here to learn. Everything that comes our way right now is to teach us that we must change our perception to know that the value of who we are is far greater than the things that we try to achieve, build or accomplish, from setting goals to becoming successful. Those things alone will not bring us the peace, joy and fulfillment that we think they will. The only true and lasting happiness our souls know comes from experiencing deep interpersonal connection. It is time to come together, soul to soul. It is time to remember who we really are. We are the presence of eternal love.
When catastrophe comes, all that we’ve considered vital and important gets put aside because now we have to survive and take care of one another. This is the great lesson: we are here to learn to take care of each other. Period. This is the light and the grace inside the darkness of our suffering. The Presence of Pure Creation, the worlds of light, the Creator, want all of us to know how to find each other, how to reconnect, soul to soul, caring for each other in harmony, love, and service without needing a calamity to force us into caring for each other.
So, then I asked, “How do we do this when we’re all so busy and overwhelmed?” And the answer came:
It is simple: take one step at a time on my ladder of steps to re-connecting soul to soul. One step is harnessing resilience. After that are the steps of guiding faith and trust. Here, take my ladder, take these steps and I will do the rest. And then, one day, you will be upon my Altar and We will create Our greatest manifestation. For The Age of Surprise is, in Truth, Your Great Age of Transformation - Your Age of Enlightenment.
Here are the first two steps God showed me as important and necessary in order to create this year, and every year thereafter, as A Year of Possibility.
Step One: Reclaim Your Core Value
Your core value, the virtue you live by, is the energy of your soul purpose. And when you live from this core of who you are you are connected to All. This is the foundation of God that will sustain you through times of stress and disaster. Your core value is the profound miraculous energy from which you will create A Year of Possibility.
How to find your core value:
A: Close your eyes. Imagine you are sitting in your belly, within a golden light.
B: Gently watch your breath, allowing your breath to soften, continuing to place your awareness in your belly in the golden light.
C: Ask yourself: What is my soul’s core value, the virtue I used to live by as a young child? What virtue do I believe in more than any other? Ask this golden light these questions and then listen for the answer.
D: Continue to repeat the questions followed by silence until you hear an answer. Be patient. Allow this communication to come from your soul. The answer will come, I promise.
E: Write your core value down on a piece of paper and place it on your altar or desk, someplace where you see it and are reminded of it every day. Then, over the next few days, meditate upon these questions:
“Am I living truthfully by my core value?"
"Where in my life have I fallen off my core value, and what effect has that had on me and those I love?"
"What can I do to live my life from my core value?"
Now, every morning when you first wake up, affirm your core value and the guidance you have received from your soul. When you live by your core value/virtue to the best of your ability, something magical happens, synchronicity comes. New ideas, chance meetings, healing of relationships come, all this, because your soul is now fully engaged with you.
This basic step, this simple practice will bring a wealth of possibilities for you. It works because virtue and value are the building blocks of manifestation used by the divine universe.
Step 2. Invite Divine Resilience.
The changing times will continue. They will surprise you. They will test you. And this is not going to slow down. The unexpected will become the expected. Every single human being on this planet will be impacted. And with change comes anxiety and stress. However, even if life is not a bed of roses, we can look for roses. We can find roses along the way. We can plant the saplings of hope by being in touch with a greater reality.
When we look straight into what is happening right before us with our core value intact, the resilience of a divine power becomes our power. With divine resilience you can overcome any obstacle, any trauma. You can manifest a new possibility. You do not have to have your own resilience. You only have to have God's resilience. Make it your own. Color it to your favor.
You see, we are here to bring light (love) into the human experience. We are here to bring joy to our soul, and the soul's greatest joy is to serve others. If we were meant to be in heaven, we would all be in heaven right now. We would not have incarnated into the volatile world we live in. We are here to fully experience our soul's love as the human experience. To do this we must partner with the divine, God, The Presence of Pure Creation. And we take a closer step toward this by inviting divine resilience into our life. We actualize this partnership when we find each other in authentic connection, that place of being-ness where our differences do not even matter. This is the meaning of true resilience.
How to invite divine resilience into your life.
A. Once you have your core value in place, repeat this invocation every morning:
God, Presence of Pure Creation, fill me with your divine resilience. I open myself to you as a vessel for your strength and your all-knowing wisdom. I am human and limited, but with you as my partner, your invincible resilience and strength I know will uplift me, protect me and guide me throughout this day, this year, this life.
B. Create a Soul Pod, a small group of supportive and trusted friends who want to share this practice with you. Set a designated time to meet. At each meeting each participant shares their core value and what that means to them. Go around the circle. Next, everyone shares how their heart is feeling while everyone else bears witness, listening deeply, paying attention silently. When each person finishes sharing, the group repeats the following mantra:
I hear you. I see you. I love you. I share with you my light and my strength, dear friend. My soul is completely with your soul. And together we form a ring of divine resilience around you, protecting you, supporting you, holding you with our love.
Inviting divine resilience into your life and creating a Soul Pod will harmonize and sooth your nervous system. It will heal your anxiety and remove the stress from your body. This, along with consciously embracing your core value/virtue, is a winning practice for thriving and manifesting all possibilities. For you will have taken great steps in self-awareness, surrender and soul to soul connection
We can learn and receive the message of our changing times with grace, forbearance and wisdom. We can learn to love each other without disaster. We can open to our souls without having to be forced into a great calamity to drop our differences and our judgments. We have the ability to heal each other now. And not only will we survive the Age of Surprise, we will thrive as the true creators and manifestors of brilliance that is our birthright.
2018 really is the Year of Possibility. And the possibility is YOU.
About Deirdre Hade
Mystical visionary Deirdre Hade is the founder of The Radiance Journey. She is the co-author of The (not so ) Little Book of Surprises with her husband William Arntz, the creator of the film “What the BLEEP do We Know!?,” and the author of the forthcoming book The 12 Archetypes of Eve: A Modern Woman’s Guide to Achieving Full Feminine Power. Her website is www.DeirdreHade.com
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