9 Tips For Getting Grounded

When it comes down to returning to our center state, there are two important keys. One is perspective; the other is action. You must take an action to gain perspective. It’s that perspective that brings calm.

Triggers, like anything else that upsets the applecart of our life, embodies the energy of chaos. Now, whether that chaos is perceived, felt, or seen doesn’t matter; it’s still chaos to the person experiencing something other than their resting state.

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As with all the posts in this series, I’ve had to go back and review all the things I’ve learned about getting to getting to the root of my triggers and how to navigate through dealing with people during one.

That last post definitely hit a nerve for me, but it forced me to take another layer of dead skin off; no regrets, it was healthy and my skin is softer now for speaking about it. I had to go through the motions of figuring out which of the many methods of getting myself centered hit the sweet spot this time around, though.

Now that this energy has passed for me; it’s a great time to share with all of you what I did and the new thing I learned while getting myself grounded again. Maybe something on this list can help you too.

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1. Ask your higher self

Bust out your tarot , oracle, or preferred method of divination and ask your higher self. As someone who has had tarot as a part of their life since childhood; this is often my go-to for insight. It took a while to learn how to read myself though. Many tarot readers struggle with this too, no matter how long they’ve been working with the cards. The problem is, when reading for yourself, it can be difficult to remain objective. This is even more apparent if it is something that has you even slightly emotionally off center. Kind of like the whole forest-tree thing.

I run into this as well occasionally, even now, but I’ve learned a few tricks along the way to help prevent it.

First, I really think about the question that I have. The question is always the key to unlocking the guidance that tarot can provide.

Second, I don’t touch my cards right away. I wait and marinate in that one question so the energy of that question is stronger than anything else that might be flying through my head regarding the situation.

Third, I pull no more than two cards ( or after the first two cards that fly out the deck) and I always look at the bottom of the deck. In my opinion, looking at the bottom of the deck is a great way to highlight the theme of what it is that you’re NOT seeing.

Last, I stick to standard interpretations I have developed for each card and look at the facts of the cards only.

I’m very logical and literal when doing readings for myself, it works better for me to leave the intuition out of it to prevent the lack of objectivity that can sometimes creep in. Nearly every time the cards tell me what I would like to know too. I say nearly because sometimes getting an answer from the tarot may be what we want, but tuning into to ourselves for the answer is what is really needed. My decks and I have a routine, there’s even certain cards that will come out or physical symptoms that happen to let me know there’s no more information, so this approach works really well for me. I border on retentive sometimes so for type A folks, this method could work really well for you too, regardless of divination medium.

As a side note; The Psychic Tarot by John Holland is perhaps one of my favorite modern decks to work with for reading myself too. There’s no court cards in this deck, so I recommend this one as a good deck for those who primarily read themselves who run into issues interpreting the court cards when reading themselves.

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2. Exercise

There’s this whole thing about exercise that seems incredibly daunting if it’s something that isn’t already a part of your routine. That said, even those of us who do as part of our routines, have days where you’re just REALLY not feeling it. Exercise, beyond it being a part of a healthy physical lifestyle, is also one that is part of a healthy mental one, too. Think about a runner’s high, or how deeply you can breathe after you’ve finished gaining elevation on a hike after an hour.

Those endorphins that flow through our body after a workout help to quiet the mind. There are plenty of studies on this, I won’t link any of them here, but if you are curious about this concept, I suggest a deep internet search to learn more. It goes without saying as well, look for credible resources.

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3. Self-Care

Self-care is sometimes a misnomer in my mind because the term alludes to doing something to yourself. However, I think self-care goes beyond this. Taking the car through the carwash and cleaning it out at the end of the day doesn’t really seem like it’s doing much in the terms of self-care until you realize how having that clean car actually affects your mood, especially if you have to spend a large part of your day in it. The same could be said about cleaning off your work desk, kitchen table, or going through your clothes closet too. Of course, there are the usual paths for self care like taking your time doing makeup, grooming your beard, or even putting lotion on your skin after a carefully prepared bath. My point is doing something FOR yourself is healthy self-care just like doing something TO yourself.

The point of this is to create the calm externally that facilitates calmness internally. Outer order for inner calm. I just listened to this book by Gretchen Rubin and it was really insightful. This leads me to the next two on this list.

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4. Spiritual Cleanse

So, back to that bath thing. A common way to clear your energy and get grounded is by taking a spiritual bath or shower. This consists of a few items you probably already have in your home.

  • Non-iodized sea salt ( 1 lb)
  • Epsom salt ( 1 cup)
  • Essential oils( rosemary, lavender, cedar, or citrus are good ones) or an oil/water/powder curio of your choice ( uncrossing, blockbuster, or road opener, just to name a few)
  • Add your ingredients to the bath or bucket( to pour over your head and body) and you’re good to go. Don’t forget to say a prayer, set an intention, or meditate over the water first.

You want to make sure that your physical body is clean before you spiritually cleanse. This is not a bath or shower meant to scrub your skin, you don’t even do it for more than maybe 15 minutes. It’s more to repair any holes that might be in your aura, evict attachments that might be hanging around, or ward off stray negative energy that thought your energy looked tasty. We all pick up these in one form or another at one time or another as we move about our days interacting with people and the more people we interact with, the more likely it is that someone’s stank energy will try to follow you home. Some places are notorious for this too; think abandoned buildings, cemeteries, and places where a lot of suffering has occurred.

Smudging with sage works well, same with Palo Santo, frankincense, Benzoin, copal, cedar, etc.; but, water is the source of life and the universal solvent, literally. So, to give yourself a recharge if life is feeling chaotic or dissolve negative energies and entities, I recommend to all my clients to begin implementing a spiritual bath or shower at least once a month, twice is better, and if you can time it with the moon cycle it will be an even more potent method of cleansing and protection because all that ick goes down the drain leaving you with squeaky clean energy heading into the next cycle. If you work with the public in any capacity, but especially in a metaphysical or magickal capacity as a reader or healer, it may be worth looking at doing this once a week, especially when collective tensions are high like they are this fall and people are seriously on edge.

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5. Clean Your Space

I touched on this one a little bit when I spoke about self-care, but I separated it because the intentional act of physically cleaning your space is a mirror reflection of you intentionally clearing your mind. When we have too much clutter around us, it can seriously stagnate our energy. I won’t pretend like I have mastered this one. In fact, it wasn’t until someone pointed this out to me several years ago that I even made the connection, but I am a lot more conscious of how my space makes me feel and what it looks like when my energy feels off. Even when I was an baby, I wouldn’t sleep if I was around a lot of clutter. My mom is a Virgo, so I imagine that this wasn’t an issue that happened a lot, but it must have happened enough to show her that it was a pattern. The way she describes it; we’re talking one or 2 toys on the floor with a blanket across the room and my ass was keeping her up all night.

Not much has changed. I didn’t realize this as an adult until I consciously looked at my surroundings and listened to what my body was telling me while I was doing so that I knew how that manifested in my mood and behavior. What I have found for myself is that the first sign that I need to address my space, outside of a nasty case of insomnia, is that I get agitated. When I’m around a lot of clutter, physical energy feels like it’s a myth, and my fuse tends to be shorter. Not sure why that’s how I tend to react, but I do, so these have become indicators that something isn’t being addressed in my space.

There is a saying I read, or maybe I heard it from one of the readers that I used to watch frequently on YouTube ( I think it was House of Oshun), and I’m paraphrasing here, that, “before you reach for the sage and holy water, reach for the mop and broom”. #truthdotcom

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6. Reflection

Reflecting on what has been going on is always a good way to get into a state of presence. This can be a truly enlightening experience for perspective when done correctly. In the version of this I practice, the correct way to utilize reflection is with mental detachment. It’s that detachment that allows you to feel your body and when you can feel your body you get a deeper lesson about how you’ve been impacted by previous and current events. I have a lot of mutable energy in my chart, so I really do have to shut it all off sometimes to get to the nitty gritty.

For example, in that last post I did, I realized I was still really angry about everything that went down when I was in college, but I was able to get a lot deeper to the core reasons of why that anger was still present and take accountability for the decisions I made that got me there in the first place. This allowed me to take responsibility for my own actions without chastising myself for them. Instead, I was able to learn another valuable lesson in the hindsight of that experience. Ultimately, that’s the outcome you want from reflection because the goal is to help you grow as a person.

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6. Meditate

I’ve said this a few times and even despite my current inability to get beyond 7 minutes of meditation I still urge this practice to anyone who is seeking a state of internal balance. Meditation helps to clear the mind. Period. It can be difficult to suss-out a laundry list of current challenges when you’re thinking about them all at once. The trick is really to not think about them at all and the solutions will come to you. This is where meditation is the most potent. When you get to a certain state in meditation, you stop thinking your thoughts and you begin to observe them.

There is no set amount of time or frequency that meditation needs to be done; I feel it’s the practice itself that is more important than meeting an arbitrary amount of time doing it. Amazing benefits can result, even from a mere 7 minutes.

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7. Go for a walk

There are studies out there that talk about the connection that humans intricately have to nature and how we move through it, again, not linking them here but I encourage you to do your own research. The studies i’ve read say It lowers our blood pressure, contributes to positive mental and emotional health, and it’s been shown statistically that cities and towns with greenspaces have better rates in everything. Now, I could go into a whole spiel about the barriers that some communities experience with this but I’ll save that for another time. There is an energetic signature when it comes to inequality and that definitely deserves it’s own blog post. Heads up, it will probably be a long one.

Anyhoodle, going for a short hike, or even just walking in a park can go a long way to help ground your energy because movement helps to release pent up energy; think kinetics. I did opt for this with this last trigger cycle, and I did feel great; but the affects I’ve come to love about this activity didn’t seem to linger very long this time around, so after a few days I found myself in the same agro energy again. I have a hypothesis about why this happened though, so I’ll have to experiment a bit to see if what I suspect is correct in why this didn’t work as well as it has in the past.

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8. Bring nature to you

For those of you out there that are allergic to going out in nature, literally or metaphorically speaking, you can always bring nature to you. Get some fresh cut flowers ( if that literal allergy will allow it), get a houseplant or a few, grow some herbs in your windowsill. Having nature in your space also brings good energy into it.

I personally love to garden! I ended up with a very large community garden plot this year and after getting a routine going, it was easy to tell when I couldn’t get out there because my energy would feel weird. For me, gardening is like having a glass of wine after work is for some people. I always feel relaxed and am able to decompress, even if I’m just weeding or watering the plant family. I find it meditative to watch the pollinators go to work turning a flower into something that can sustain my body in a healthy way. There really is nothing like it I’ve found that strips all of the off-kilter energy that can sometimes enter my life through external challenges.

It was gardening and engaging with nature that helped me get through my Dark Night of the Soul. While overall the whole process of the Dark Night really sucks ass, somehow; working with plants made it all a little easier to bare and helped me become even more self aware by tuning into caring for them. It’s still strange to me how it all shook out, but by putting the focus on something external to me, it in fact helped me find the balance I was seeking internally. It redirected my focus from a very painful and ugly healing process to something that was inspiring and beautiful.

For this last trigger round, this was the grounding method that did the trick.

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9. Staying in the present- Find the time sucks and evict them!

This one was new, the most eye-opening, and something I hadn’t considered before going through this last trigger cycle as a way to get grounded. It seems, that with deep reflection; you’ll naturally find the things that kind of don’t fit in your life anymore; time-sucks. Old activities won’t have the same sparkle keeping your interest the way it used to, especially if they were bordering on toxic to begin with. In my case, the most shocking was the realization that I might have some food allergies I wasn’t aware of (sorry kiwi), random, right? I’ll dive deeper into the weird stuff that happens with food on the spiritual journey another time. The point is, being in the present comes as a natural result of the activity that is reflection, and this can help not just with triggers, but the time you spend moving throughout your everyday too because it forces you to slow down. I found quite a few time sucks but I was able to correct them because I allowed myself to observe where I was putting my energy.

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I hope you enjoyed this series. As drawn out as it was :-). Definitely wasn’t my intention to take 6 months to get through it!

Sometimes when you step into the role of sharing and teaching these kinds of things, you have to revisit your own wounds. I’m grateful for the space allowed to work through this at the pace that was right for me. One reason why I’m coming to like blogging a lot more than I like uploading on YouTube. A blog post or two a month.. or every few months in my case can’t really relay just how much work I was putting into my own wounds in the background by discussing this idea of triggers or even how much healing occurred as a result of it. It makes me smile; I don’t believe anything really happens by chance. So, just like all of you reading this; I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be, taking the next steps on my way towards personal and spiritual ascension. It’s the awareness of this that matters most. Keep growing, misfits.

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The Why Cycle: Getting to the Root of your triggers

I’ve had some challenges trying to write this particular post. Not a writer’s block issue, it had more to do with finding the right words to communicate this topic and exercise. I believe this is mainly because ‘The Why Cycle’ can bounce between the emotions of liberation and debilitation and there is not exactly a clear-cut way to properly explain this process without sharing quite a bit of my journey, so humor me as I attempt to explain what this is and how to do it through sharing the first experience that I had with it. 

I apologize in advance for the snark-shark in this post and additionally for how burly it is too, but I promise, none of this is just hot air filling space.

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When we ask ourselves this simple question; Why? It’s as if something in us is activated. Now, if you are someone who is curious by your blueprint and can remain a little detached, this can be an incredible way to dig deep into your psyche, whether emotionally driven or by habit. I think most people at some point in their lives have had to check themselves on both, and generally, our emotions and our habits are deeply tied together. Our species is fallible after all and we practice compartmentalization on the daily, but very few have mastered a healthy version of it.

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If you are not someone who is naturally curious and has a hard time detaching, any of the exercises I mentioned in my last post, The Tipping Point, will help you with the process I’m about to discuss.

The easiest way to explain what I mean by “The Why Cycle” is to think back to the last time you were around a young child. Kids are naturally curious if provided the space to be that way, and if you allow them that space, they’ll run with it.

Some of you might know where I’m going with this.

Imagine A kid comes up to you and asks you what something is for; you tell them. They then ask, why is that thing, for that; so, you explain what it does. They then ask you why it works that way. Now, unless you’re trying to explain a rocket and you’re not a rocket scientist, engineer, or what have you, usually this cycle of them asking why and you explaining can go on for a LONG time, lol.

Come on; let’s just all admit that we were that kid.

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The Why Cycle is very similar. The execution is more organized and ideally it’s turned inward with intention and without judgement. It’s that last part about judgement that can make this exercise so difficult and can lead to you feeling debilitated.

The first time I did this, I didn’t even know that this was what I was doing.

I was sitting in class, listening to the instructions about what we were doing that day and just asking myself; why am I here?

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This moment was one of my tipping points. What I’m about to share with you was painful as hell, but I don’t regret going through any of it. Not gonna lie, I wish I had figured this all out a lot sooner though and I will not pretend like I still don’t get a little pissed off when thinking about it, I definitely do. 

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A few days prior to this class; I quit my job. It was my first job in the tech industry; the supervisor was extremely abusive, and I was on a team at that job where the vibe was not copasetic in the slightest, so I walked out and never looked back to the tech industry for work. If one of the largest worldwide employers and leaders in the thisindustry lets their management scream at employees like I was; I wanted none of it. Being in the workforce since I was a teenager has taught me that job dynamics like this will rob you of your quality of life, no matter how fancy the title or company. I was also in this weird gray area of trying to test out of two classes I unexpectedly failed in what should have been the last quarter of my undergrad while also entering my first quarter in grad school, literally all at the same time.

The school was kind enough to give me that first quarter of grad school to get it done because I couldn’t pay to just retake the classes and it would have pushed grad school back an entire year to do so, however; I’m being too kind to this institution if I don’t acknowledge that this university also played a significant role in this particular crisis in my life. That’s a whole separate blog ya’ll, not a blog post, I mean a full blog.

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Anyways, at the time of making the extremely ignorant decision to pursue that set-up for failure; I thought I had no choice. Keep this idea of choice in the back of your mind, I’ll come back to it later. Hindsight being what it is, it was the perfect storm for me to literally lose my shit, and that’s exactly what happened. I was running on fumes long before I failed those two classes, years even. It’s accurate to say that I fully understand what someone means when they say they’re having a nervous breakdown or experiencing burnout (they’re the same thing btw, one just sounds better).

The moment of pure clarity that this set-up no longer resonated came from asking the simple question; why? It seemed to bring something to the surface that I hadn’t really experienced in my adult life up to that point; for the first time I was questioning my motivation for being where I was, how I got myself there, and why I was staying there. It’s not that I hadn’t asked myself this question before, just not in any deep and meaningful way. It was never introspective or with actual intention. At some point, in the hustle to simply “make it” out of the poverty cycle, I went on autopilot and I forgot it was still my job to steer where the car of life goes. 

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Although, to be fair, I was fed the kool-aid as a child that college was the only path out of poverty and that there was no other option. In some ways, I think this programming had a direct effect on me feeling completely debilitated at not attaining this specific goal of graduating college when I did The Why Cycle exercise. It broke me like nothing ever has, and believe me, many have tried, but; THIS was my Achilles heel. It might be why it still irritates me so much. I directly suffered from the lie I was fed as a very impressionable child and I’ve suffered the consequences of that lie as an adult. They even fed the lie that you have to go to school for business to start a business. Does it hurt to do so? No. But it’s also not necessary for success either. I’m glad that the kids now can see through that crock of shit and are starting early on the path of entrepreneurship so they don’t get trapped in this spiderweb so many of us adults are in. I’m grateful every day, just for that, and I know this shift they’re leading will improve the quality of life among the collective.

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Now, don’t get it twisted, the quality of my education generally speaking was mostly a crapshoot, but I can’t say I didn’t gain anything from the experience, because I did. Wasn’t worth the money I overpaid for it, but I did get something out of it, just not the part that would have made it all “worth it”. Ultimately, it was a money pit. I hesitate recommending college to anyone and am less likely to recommend it to a kid as the only option to get where they want to go; it’s not. Is my own bias playing into that hesitation? Probably, but I can own that; it would take a complete overhaul of the system for me to change my opinion though. Let’s not forget the elephant in the room too; the debt makes it a strong deterrent for recommendation on a practical level as well. 

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I may never be able to pay off that debt. That’s just realism mixed with knowledge of how daily interest works when combined with bad hiring practices and low wages when you don’t have a piece of paper to prove your worth. When this was happening in my life, you needed a BA to even get a crappy low paid, but stable job; in 2021, it’s more like crappy and unstable. Point is, at this rate, pretty soon you’ll need a PhD just to flip burgers for minimum wage and you’ll still be seen as replaceable with all those letters behind your name, but I digress. 

Hey, I warned you about the snark shark,lol.

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In any case, one “why?”, lead me to ask another “why?”, and then another until I suddenly found myself taking a fuck-it-all pill and walking away. It was, hands down, the hardest decision that I’ve ever had to make and I certainly didn’t make the decision lightly because, well, going to school costs more than a down payment on house, and it’s usually only worth it if you finish, so in not finishing; I was fully aware of the situation that I was walking into financially and my prospects in the job market. I just no longer could justify pursuing something that I couldn’t pin down why I was doing it in the first place. It wasn’t even the grad program, that program was pretty rad in and of itself, I even got a scholarship; it was school in general. By that point in my higher education career, any love and joy I had for learning had literally been sucked out of my life. I hated it. All of it.

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That one simple question caused all of this, but it didn’t stop there for me. Ideally, had I been doing this exercise on a regular basis; recognizing that I’d grown to want what’s beyond the programming I received would have been an incredibly liberating experience; it’s a sign of soul growth. Unfortunately, I hadn’t been, so my life got very dark, very quickly. It was that December, in 2015 after I dropped out, that I took the first step on the descent into The Dark Night of the Soul but I was on a high speed train heading there as far back as 2013. Now, I’m not saying that this exercise will lead you into the Dark Night process, but if you haven’t been checking in with yourself about what is still meaningful and resonates for you; it could.

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This is not surface level fru-fru new age stuff i’m really talking about here. In a perfect world where everyone has access to proper mental healthcare, a crystal grid would be enough to counter the types of energies that come up doing this work. However, our world is far from perfect. This is ideally an exercise you would have a counselor, psychologist, or psychiatrist assisting you with, and if you have that kind of access; I would suggest working with them while pursuing this level of introspection. I didn’t have that kind of access; so as with most things regarding my own health as an adult; I figured it out on my own.

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All the signs were there, as far back as 2012 that I needed to hang-up my backpack but I was trapped in this thinking that I didn’t have a choice, that I had to finish to be considered worthy of basic respect in the job market. I thought I was too close to quit. That leaving was failing all the ancestors shoulders that I was standing on. I didn’t want to fail them and disrespect the suffering that they went through just so I could grow up and have the privilege of getting the education that wasn’t within their reach.

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These were all excuses though, because I was afraid to walk away, afraid to fail. The truth is, not quitting probably would have killed me. My health, mentally and physically was the worst it had been my entire adult life, not just from the stress but from the habits I developed unconsciously as a way to relieve myself from the stress I was experiencing. Going through The Why Cycle will prevent you from ever getting pushed into the corner I managed to get myself into, and making it a part of your spiritual hygiene routine will help prevent feelings of debilitation as well. Had I been doing this, I could have avoided 5 years of being in the pit, as I prefer to call it.

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I know this because the same type of scenario has happened multiple times since then and whenever I do The Why Cycle exercise, I make better decisions . Period. Every time I haven’t, something blows up in my face. Every time. There’s a time to push and a time to walk away and that has perhaps been my hardest lesson to learn, in general, in every facet of my life. I don’t like to give-up on anything, but sometimes, for me, that need to keep pushing forward is nothing but a low vibrational trap. The Why Cycle helped me realize this.

You may have a couple of behaviors or emotions that you naturally default to; these are the ones to pay attention to and can give you a clue that it’s time to do a deep check-in with yourself. Personally, I tend to get a bit prickly and overdo the indulgence thing with something, like eating my feelings. Which does nothing to resolve the feelings but does add extra jiggle to my booty.

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Talk about putting yourself on blast, LOL. Hey, if we don’t own our own shit, it owns us, right?

default. I didn’t comprehend that these were my defaults until I started really checking-in with myself on a regular basis. Recognizing this was a wake-up call, to say the least, but it still feels like an understatement when I think about how much lighter my energy felt when I finally identified the source of the snark shark prickly bitch. At the end of the day, for me it was a self-worth issue; that was the root. 

Sometimes, I still will catch myself trying to default to these, even though I’m conscious of them. Some old energy in a new package will come along to trigger me and I have to slow myself down to recognize that I’m in a state of mind not conducive to making decisions for my long-term growth, and need to do The Why Cycle exercise.

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Your default habits and emotions can be as simple as you overextending yourself to people and not setting boundaries or getting pissed off in the drive-thru line because you had to repeat your order. It can even be sitting down and pulling out your tarot deck asking the same question, in a different way, multiple times, every day, expecting the tarot to tell you what to do.

Side note, in my opinion; the tarot is an advisor, at best, and a good advisor will never TELL you what to do; they will offer suggestions and help reveal the paths that you have available to you along with the pros and cons of each. Ultimately, the decision will always fall to you to act or not act on that information; it’s your free will, it’s your choice how you utilize that free will. 

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Free will is a beautiful thing ya’ll; don’t you dare leave home without it or be giving it away to anyone or anything. That my friends, is giving your power away. Side note over.

Your default emotions and behaviors do not necessarily have to be as unhealthy as mine tend to be. I just want you to keep in mind that even something that is viewed to be “healthy” or “normal” in your family or even collectively can still be unhealthy for YOU. For example; in the United States, the entire economy is built off of manipulating people by way of FOMO to buy more than they really need, but there has been, until recently anyways, a serious lack of accessible resources on financial literacy available to people who can’t fork over money for a financial advisor. 

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However unhealthy impulse shopping may be, it’s still viewed as a normal behavior here and is consciously enabled. Does it make it healthy; not by a long-shot, but many of us perpetuate it anyway unconsciously because it’s been so normalized. We create hoarders in this country because we glorify having a lot of stuff with importance and respect. Some people can shop for fun and not go into excess doing so. Most people, however, shop to fill a void that has nothing to do with the stuff they’re buying.

The Why Cycle can help you not just identify that you are impulse shopping, for example, but if you continue asking yourself why, you’ll get to the root of exactly why you do it and what triggers you, that makes you default to this behavior.

Hopefully that makes sense.

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I don’t share the things I know, my experiences or messages I get with the intention to frighten anyone; but I’m not going to lie to you and help you lie to yourself either. If you have been skipping over those check-ins and lying to yourself like everything is okay, all bets are off on what you experience in the aftermath of The Why Cycle exercise because it’s intention is to get to the root of the emotions, habits, and any thoughtforms you may have.

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The point that I hope you gain from this post is to not put this exercise off. Check-in with yourself at least once a month, everyday is better. Pay attention to how your body reacts while you are thinking about these things too. Doing this helps you learn how your body communicates with you when you are anxious, angry, or even just a bit scared, and digging into the “why” of each of these emotions helps you get to the root of them so they lose power over the actions you take in your life. 

There is nothing inherently wrong with any of these emotions though; they’re normal and in my opinion, healthy. They only become a problem when you start acting on those emotions unconsciously. The same can be said for many habits; it’s performing that habit on autopilot instead of with intention that can make it a problem. It’s the lack of intention that can prevent us from truly evaluating our present circumstances in life and stepping forward on the road to ascension for soul growth.

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This post was kind of a beast. Thanks for hanging in there with me.

In the next post I’ll be discussing how to return to your center state. On that note too, after free writing this post for over a month; the editing process has let me know that it’s time for a little check-in of my own, lol.

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Don’t forget to follow the blog and check out the message for the month on the home page before you take off. You landed here for a reason; there’s probably more information for you somewhere on this website, so feel free to poke around. I’m not doing a zodiac season guide for Cancer season but there’s plenty of videos in the archive on YouTube for you to check out if you’re looking for more insight into the energies playing out in your life right now. All readings are timeless so if the title calls to you, there’s something in there for you.

Your Peace Is Your Power

Till next time

The Tipping Point

In my last post, I discussed the trigger cycle and defined the types of triggers I believe exists. Kind of putting a name to the behavior. This post will discuss different things that you can do to prepare for potential triggers as well as what to do when in the midst of an episode.

Your body will often warn you that your trigger is being activated. You may suddenly get flushed, your heart starts beating fast, some may even have their voice or body tremble as this is occurring. It’s at this exact moment that self awareness is so important. You see, what’s happening during this moment is your physical reaction to the fight or flight response. Whether fight or flight, the physical approach is the same; the difference lays in where your mind is at when this is happening.

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If your thoughts are to run or remove yourself from the situation you are in flight mode. This can sometimes happen with The Rubbing Alcohol Trigger. These seem to happen more so when the situation has the potential to stir up violence. Someone intentionally trying to pick a fight with you; like the gaping wound trigger folks can do. In this case, their desire to fight actually has nothing to do with you at all; they are an energetic pressure cooker looking for the steam valve. They think that fighting will make them feel better and it does, but usually only temporarily before the shame cycle steps in.

Either way, if you find yourself in a Rubbing Alcohol Trigger situation, listen to your body; you want to leave for a reason. The flight response saves lives, don’t ignore this one.

When your mental state has you in a place where you want to curb check the person/issue, for example; you are in a fight response. THIS is the response to pay attention to in regards to your triggers.

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The tricky thing about the fight response is that there are just a few seconds in this process that can make the difference between an assault charge and an ascension lesson. It’s the tipping point. To recognize this moment, you must be able to slow down long enough to observe this moment. Here are some of the tips that I have used over the years to help me achieve this level of awareness.

#1 Meditation- This is the top recommendation I make to anyone who is looking to get into a deeper relationship with their higher self. Slowing down the mind allows you to be intentional about observing your thoughts and also what comes out of your mouth. I still struggle with that second part; flying off at the mouth is kind of my specialty.

It’s a little intimidating to really be aware of how connected the emotions and the body are. The amazing thing is that you don’t need to be a meditation master to be able to pick up these changes in yourself when faced with a trigger. I noticed a small difference in awareness after just 2- 15 minute sessions over the period of a week. It’s almost as if the more you meditate and the deeper you get into this practice, the more your response time improves when faced with these situations.

The other great thing is that even if you fall off the meditation practice, you don’t lose what you’ve learned about yourself but I’ve personally noticed that when I fall off, my response time is not as good when faced with situations that can cause triggers in me.

Either way, consider meditation like prep work to pass the tests of life.

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#2 Deep Breathing Exercises- When I say breathing exercises, I’m not talking about counting backwards from 10 in the heat of the moment; although, this can sometimes help. The breathing that I am talking about is done from the belly with the intent to slow yourself down. This allows the adrenaline to also slow down which means no assault charge for you. YAY!

Deep breathing allows you to slow down enough to navigate through the fight or flight response so that your response is a balanced one instead of knee-jerk. I find this one to be particularly helpful when I know I’m about to fly off at the mouth.

Now, deep breathing is not the same as meditation, at least not in my mind. Meditation requests that you eliminate all thoughts to be present in the current moment. Deep breathing exercises are implemented when you want to slow down your thoughts. You’re not getting rid of them, just putting them in slowmotion.

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#3 Mantras- Repeating a mantra to yourself can feel kind of silly when you first get started. I’ll admit it; I felt like a complete whackadoodle staring at myself in the mirror every morning and reciting my mantra at the start. However, this became a nearly effortless routine for me to implement in my everyday and became so significant that It was noticeable how my mood changed when I didn’t do it.

Mantras, however, are not just restricted to morning routines. In fact, they don’t even have to be said out loud. I noticed a difference saying them out loud but I was also staring at myself in the privacy of my own bathroom; use your discretion. When faced with the scenario to say a mantra or make someone see cartoon stars, the mantra can truly help and is possibly the most effortless thing you can do to redirect your energy.

You can make up your own or use another that you resonate with. Either way, mantras are an excellent way to shift your mindset providing a de-escalation trigger of sorts. If you’re having trouble with the concept on this one, I’ll share one of mine that I still use to this day:

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“I refuse to give power to anything that disturbs my peace”

POACreator

You’ll see the word peace a lot throughout these posts and on my channel. I even end 99% of of my videos stating that ” your peace is your power” and this is because out of all the lessons I’ve had to personally endure in regards to triggers; the most significant one was that it’s a better use of my energy to invest in myself than to pop off on someone.

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Often, some people are just trying to get a rise out of you because they feel small around you and placating their shadow is not something worth wasting your time on, . It’s like, dude; I have my own shadow to work on so Ima just keep it pushin’, It’s not my job to wake up people sleeping on me, it’s my job to wake myself up; ya digg? Other times, you just happen to be in the right place at the wrong time and the person you’re dealing with woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Happens to the best of us. Either way, I’ve personally learned to not take the side eyes and backwards comments about anything to heart anymore but it took a very long time to get to this state. Mantras made me a well seasoned cast-iron skillet so to speak, like the one passed down from your great grandparents. We all know that very little sticks to a well seasoned cast-iron skillet; marinate on that for a moment and you’ll understand why I didn’t say Teflon.

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#4 Quotes- One of my favorite places to look for inspiration and expansion of knowledge is books. Regardless of genre, when you close a finished book you should in someway feel something. Not all books have the ability to do that but the ones that do will give you quotes that you’ll easily be able to recall when things get tough. I include quotes a lot. Most of them are from books that I’ve read or some excerpt from an author but some I just simply resonate with what is being stated. You can do the very same thing. A good way to find these quotes is to get your head in a book or better yet, go down the rabbit hole on the topic of your choice.

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Lately, I find myself being pulled more and more towards a guy named Joseph Cambell. I’ve yet to read anything by this man but at least 5 quotes of his are in my journal because they just resonate SO MUCH.

Make no mistake, Mr. Campbell will make it onto my summer reading list.

The same thing happened with Khalil Gibran at the beginning of my journey; here’s my favorite from him:

” You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts…”

Khalil Gibran, The Prophet
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#5 Music- This one is tricky because if you’re not careful, the music can make your mental mood worse so when it comes to the tunes, definitely use your discretion. Generally, what I have done in the past is gone for music makes me want to shake my peach versus belt to the rooftops, AKA Dance Party In My Living Room where I pretend I’m on tour or choreographing a music video. Yo, I used to record music videos back when MTV actually played music; I was THAT 90’s kid so music and the dance party were my thing long before Meredith and Christina would dance it out full of Tequila on Grey’s Anatomy.

This one seems like it would be a lot of fun to get the whole family to do at the end of a rough week too. I suspect that this is where Meredith Grey got this from. I personally have never been able to dance and stay in a crap mood. It seems physically impossible.

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Music is the ultimate medicine for anything and the more it makes you want to move the better. You don’t have to be a good dancer to do this, you could not know how to count time whatsoever and still twerk till your heart is content.

Well that’s it for trigger tips and tricks. My next post will break down this trigger thang even further when we look into what I like to call, ‘The Why Cycle’.

Till then, Your peace is your power.

Identifying Triggers

The thing about triggers is that they are a feeling that lets you know that there is something that you need to address emotionally. Your body telling you this, in this way, can often speak to not just the volatility but also the seriousness of this thing that you haven’t dealt with.

This is probably a thing in some social science field or in psychology and probably even has specific terminology but I’m speaking from the connections I’ve found the lay person’s way and I have found no official terminology to communicate it, so I’m kind of making up my own here; humor me.

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Funnily enough, those people who don’t address these triggers seem to be feather sensitive the more they’re exposed to them when they don’t deal with the underlying issue causing that trigger. Almost like with allergies… energetic allergies. 

I’m joking; this is not funny, it’s obnoxious to deal with as an Empath and can make a terrible job worse if that job forces you to engage with the public.

Now, I’m not some kind of professional with a bunch of letters behind my name but I am an Empath who is all kinds of sensitive with a keen intuition on human behavior with trauma and I see and feel this shit clear as day every time I walk out the door of my apartment, sometimes I even feel it in my apartment. It’s been a game changing adventure turning this knowledge inward and looking at my behavior over the years too.

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Observation of this is fine, but explaining my observations in a blog post doesn’t really help solve the problem when people are looking for help with this stuff..

That said, this series of posts during May are going to take a dive on this slippery slope topic called “triggers” and how to go within to heal them. And yeah; I’m going to talk a little about my own experiences and observations, it’s not because I enjoy talking about myself; it’s because my experience is the best one I have to draw from to explain this stuff without being “Piled Higher and deeper”. I recognize that not everyone will agree with me either, but that’s the beautiful thing about me discussing this in my corner of the web; you don’t have to be here if you don’t want to.

This first post aims to explain what a trigger is and it’s categories. This post will be a little lengthy too, but I promise there’s some gold in the long-windedness execution of this. There will be more posts on the trigger cycle as well after this one, so make sure you subscribe to my blog and other social platforms.

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There’s a difference between acting out of wounding and acting out of entitlement, but the result of each is the same; they’re twins

Paiges of ascension
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So What’s A Trigger Anyway?

I use trauma in the context of triggers because I think they manifest from the same place. Trauma is the occurrence and triggers are like the energetic leftovers of that occurrence.

Whether you blame it on your birth chart, a faulty system with incompetent authorities, or people who are only family and friends by title; the outcome is still very often the same. Trauma results from an action or event happening outside of you, that is received negatively by you. Its incoming energy. A lot of traumas, I think anyway, are avoidable, some happen unintentionally or by chance and like with many things on our planet, some are intentional and nefarious. The result of the collective avoidable trauma has amounted to a very large number of people walking around with a seething rage that they don’t know how to deal with because they don’t comprehend why it’s there. Let me explain my viewpoint a bit more.

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I’m not saying that people don’t understand that what happened to them is playing out in some facet of their lives; I’m saying that many don’t comprehend why it’s playing out the way it’s playing out. I’m talking about those who understand the cause but not the effect, basically. The residual energy of trauma flows beneath the surface in the subconscious with the ego and the shadow, and many people refuse to look at this part of themselves. Can’t see something you won’t look at. This causes a perpetuation of the wounding unconsciously that ends up growing like mold. I see the ego as “fruit” the mold is or isn’t supported by.

I’m saying that unconsciousness is an energy that poisons peace. It’s this that encompasses the term “trigger” for me. Some of these types of woundings and trigger points are on like the 50th cycle here in the United States and according to the news cycle, social and “official”, we’re right on schedule for a reckoning of our own unconsciousness. Call these posts doing my part to help break the cycle.

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Slowing Down For Consciousness

2020 forced the collective to take a long, hard look at itself. The deep look isn’t done either. I’ve started to call these types of events, like the pandemic for example; Event of Precedence. Meaning a whole different timeline could exist right now as your reality if you had not experienced a particular event. COVID-19 was an Event of Precedence for the collective. It has touched and changed the entire world; nothing will be the same after it. Period. It is the event that clearly marked a change for modern humankind and set the precedent for what happens next; what we build up as well as what we break down.

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Now, the COVID-19 pandemic is a pretty extreme example of this energy, but I used it to help you understand what I mean when I say Event of Precedence because it’s affected everyone in some kind of way. In your own life, this Event of Precedence could be something that seems arbitrary to other people but still deeply affects you at a core level, and there can be multiple instances of these events in a person’s life that make up their overall wounding. It is this wound that we are feeling when something triggers us into anger, sadness, or even smug satisfaction. Not all triggers are bad per se, but for context, what I’m referring to is the triggers that make you feel downright icky, the ones that take you too far from center.

When something happens, especially if it’s generally something benign to most people and it causes you to feel anything other than centered, this is the open wound being afflicted. Without awareness, we often miss this and it’s this recognition that you’re being triggered that can make the difference in narrowing down what sets you off so you can heal the wound and ascend. Now, I look at this as different types of triggers that can happen. It will help to imagine a trigger as a physical wound for this next part.

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The first level trigger is “The Rubbing Alcohol Trigger”. This is the trigger that comes up unexpectedly for people and often comes from a difference in opinions where the emotional reactions stem from being put in situations where their voice was ignored or they felt uncomfortably dominated in some way. Usually this type of trigger will sting emotionally and activate a fight-or-flight response, but the person can quickly return to center once they say their peace or remove themselves from the situation. In some people, the burn is slow to leave, but it does leave… kind of like rubbing alcohol.

The second level trigger is what I call “The Salt Trigger”. This is a trigger that is on a specific topic, typically related to trauma and it’s something that a person knows they’re sensitive about but have a tough time regulating their reactions to it when it comes up and can unconsciously behave spitefully to prove a point. Think classic passive-aggressive behavior and “throwing salt on the wound”.

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The third level trigger is “The Gaping Wound Trigger”. This type of trigger stems from deep, suppressed trauma that hasn’t had light shined on it because the shadow is in the driver’s seat. Often this trigger has been festering in the subconscious so it plays out through the ego and leads to self-destructive behaviors. A person with this level of Trigger seems to “wake-up” with a drug/alcohol problem to those on the outside, for example, and they can be emotionally chaotic. Think walking on eggshells around an angry drunk. They can also resort to engaging in behaviors such as manipulation, narcissism, and using people to get ahead in the most negative vibrations of this trigger level. With this one it’s about the cycle of self- sabotage, which is a whole other set of blog posts at another time.

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Now, it’s easy to just think that this third level person is just a grade A jackass and you wouldn’t be completely wrong, however; what I have found through personal experience with people who have the worst parts of the Gaping Wound Trigger issue is that they are incredibly insecure, so they act this way because they don’t believe they will get what they need or deserve otherwise. Kind of the classic bully profile when you think about it.

Take this next week and spend a little time each day reviewing your behavior and interactions with other people and your environment. Pay close attention to how certain places and people make you feel and write it down. It will be useful later.

Next week, we’ll cover some exercises to identify triggers when they happen and some different methods that I’ve come up with to neutralize them.

Till then

Peace, Love, & Hair Grease

The Metaphor

There’s been a small delay with your ships coming in to dock.

The ship Ever Given stuck in Suez canal was a big ass metaphor for some of us but I feel like this was an even bigger metaphor for the collective as a whole.

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It makes me think about the 3 of Wands and how often this card is referred to as waiting for your ships to come in or watching your ships come in. I never thought about it like this before, but; this energy showing up as either stagnated based on surrounding cards or even showing up in the reverse would be this scenario that played out on the world stage of a ship being stuck in a shipping canal. Later that week when I read the title : The moon may have helped release the ship; I could not help but laugh hysterically, it made me think about the moon energy in a whole new way.

Freaking love it! Not the fact that the ship got stuck, but that as this whole scenario was playing out on the world stage; I was seeing it represented by tarot in my minds eye.

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We see the moon generally in a few ways. A potential representation of “dark” feminine/mother energy. Then we also see it as shadowy bits, like our ego or shadow-self, things that are hidden whether that is feelings or emotional based information. In taking a new approach to interpretation of the moon card ( for me), you could argue that whenever the moon is in a in a spread that it could be bringing the tide in or out, depending on surrounding cards.

In this case, the spread of of the Suez Canal incident would be:

The 6 of Swords rx representing heading into a turbulent and emotionally contentious scenario, the 3 of Wands rx representing “ships” not coming in to dock, the hanged man representing non movement; not even necessarily a blockage per say, but stillness. Last, the moon representing the tide coming in, in this case, after a time of stillness.

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Crisis Incites Revolution; Revolution Incites Evolution

I purposefully chose the word “incite” because crisis is almost always painful but necessary to motivate us into action and evolution is a violent process, even in the natural world. The physical crust of the earth destroys itself in order to relieve pressure and this changes both the visible and non visible landscape. Many generations of animals and insects will die trying to avoid a predator until one of their offspring develops a way to defend themselves and can manage to reproduce. A pack of mammals will continue to get sick and languish eating something until one of them discovers that preparing or combining that food with another one contains healing and nutrition for the body. None of these scenarios are pleasant; all are violent, all stem from a crisis.

Tearing down what has been to create what will be has to my knowledge, in the history of mankind, never been met without resistance. The same can easily be stated about our emotions, especially those we’d rather not deal with.

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In practical terms for the everyday person who doesn’t drive a ship, this is representative of stagnant energy that is being caused by the self, meaning; the solution to the stagnancy can be found where the stagnancy resides; internally. I say this because of the hanged man. The hanged man puts himself on that tree to gain:

  • perspective
  • enlightenment
  • a higher view of thoughts, events, and actions.

In this spread, the Hanged Man is trying to gain this perspective on the parts regarding himself and his connection to the greater whole, those aspects within himself that are not immediately visible; this is represented by the moon landing next to the Hanged Man. Almost as if the truth he seeks is hidden behind a layer of fog sitting right on top of the water preventing navigation because not only does he not know where the sun is; the horizon itself isn’t even visible.

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For the everyday person, the Hanged Man speaks to the need to take a step back so you can broaden your view. It’s not that the horizon isn’t there, you know it’s there; but you can’t see it because you’re too close to it. Likely because you may be too hyperfocused on it. This tunnel vision, standing too close to the horizon is also causing it’s own “back-up”. You see; when you hyperfocus on something, other things have a difficult time coming into your view. In this instance; those “other things” are ideas, downloads, divinely guided assistance that could be trying to come through and can’t.

Now, I’m not gonna even sit here on some high horse and say that I never lose perspective, I do; I’m fairly certain that I am at least in the running for Empress of Hyperfocusing.

I do that shit incredibly well; too well.

With that said however; one of my lessons in this last cycle was to learn that there is a time and a place. Knowing when exactly that time and place was had a lot more to do with me not taking the step back to examine how I was using my time. It effectively was both the problem and the solution.

Ironic much!?!

To bring it back to the ship metaphor, It was only when the moon energy stepped in, rising the tide, that the ship was able to get unstuck. A rising tide is easily equivalated to rising emotions; doesn’t mean they are good or bad, they just ARE and they exist to give you the heads up that something in your energy has changed. It’s how we learn what makes us happy, what makes us upset, what makes us feel uncomfortable. Emotions are necessary for growth which the 6 of Swords in reversed is clearly showing us because the characters are heading into turbulent water, aka, turbulent emotions.

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So it breaks down like this, sometimes; our emotions are causing the blocks because we’re not addressing them, we’re not letting ourselves heal. When we fight the healing the divine is trying to provide us the space to do, stagnancy can occur. Often, when it comes to these emotions you just have to own that you are feeling the way you are feeling for the tide to begin coming it. You can’t walk or get into the car to drive to your next destination if the ferry hasn’t docked yet so you can leave the ship. In that same instance; you can’t walk/drive on to the ferry if it hasn’t arrived because the water is too choppy for it to run in the first place.

You catch my drift?

Metaphor dude.

Also, apparently the Ever Given is now being held until it’s bill is paid. I KNOW there is a metaphor in that, but let’s save that for another time.