FORWARD

I have a marvelous etching of a beautiful woman, wrapped in threads of energy.  Her head is bowed as she stands at the base of a wonderful old tree and it seems as if she is asking the tree to share its wisdom or perhaps, its forgiveness.

The inscription underneath reads:  

"We know so little and care so much"

This book came about as a result of something said to me by a very dear friend that emanates that inscription.  My friend had such a strong desire to help others and one day she said to me:

“I wish I could do what you do. You just know all the right things to say. You have no idea how much your guidance helps people. I would love to be able to do that; to be able to say the right thing just when someone needs  it.” 

YOU ALREADY HAVE WHAT YOU NEED

In order for your guidance to be strong and clear it must be imbedded in a sound foundation. This foundation must be of a practical fabric that is easy to build upon and one that won’t deteriorate over time. The foundation for giving guidance, as taught in this book, is primarily made up of two things: your life experiences to date and your ability to communicate those experiences while giving guidance. Once you have harnessed these two things you will then have a foundation that will not only help you rebuild your own life, but also, the lives of others.

How do I get there?

Many of the lessons in this book will help you move towards feeling confident in who you are by helping you understand more about yourself.  The more you get to know yourself, and allow yourself to go through the up and downs of learning, the easier it will be for you to trust yourself and what you bring through for others as guidance.

Guidance

Giving guidance is a learned art. Whether it is learned from life or from years of spiritual training, it is still learned.  To some lucky people it is a gift and they are able to share their life experience and give guidance easily and gracefully. But for most of us, giving guidance and doing it well involves time and effort. Giving guidance requires courage to explore the risks and face challenges involved in being who we are. Also, we must trust in ourselves that “who we are” is all we need to be in order to give guidance and touch the lives of others.

YOU ARE ALWAYS COMMUNICATING

In every moment that you are alive you are communicating on some level, otherwise you could not exist. Communication is an energy exchange that occurs as you interact with life. Often, it is the communication that occurs unconsciously between people that shape our lives and relationships without our even knowing it. Communication is in every essence of our being. Communication lies within our words, our actions, our thoughts, life examples and also, in the absence of any of these things.

What’s that you say?

We all know that, to some degree, the problems we face from day to day are due to a lack of communication. Many of us have a mythical belief that if we knew the right words at the right time our problems would be solved. If it were only that simple.

Modern version of communication

For many of us, if we were asked for the definition of “communication” or “to communicate,” we might say:

“Communication: the ability to express yourself and your views in order to influence others and get what you want.”

Though the dictionary meaning is:

Communicate – to convey knowledge or information about: to reveal by clear signs: to transmit information, of thought or feeling, so that it is satisfactorily received.

From the Merriam-Webster dictionary

Communicate – to express oneself in such a way that one is readily and clearly understood: to reveal clearly, to manifest.

From Your Dictionary.com

We are going to learn a new way to communicate with people, our pets, our world and ourselves. Let’s start by redefining the value system for communication.

×WORDS TO THE WISE Ø  

TO THE EXTENT THAT YOU CAN COMMUNICATE IS TO THE EXTENT THAT YOU CARE TO.

Simply put. The more you care about someone or something, the harder you try to help them understand.

Redefining Communication

• Good communication is not about you it is about “us.”
• To communicate well, the other person’s needs must be equal to our own.
• For our communication to be heard we must speak in terms that the other can identify with.
• Sound communication allows the other person to move at a pace that is comfortable for them and acceptable for us.
• Effective communication will give them enough information to make a decision that is in their best interest as well as ours.
• Sincere communication comes from our heart and not our head.
• For us to communicate our needs we must first understand our needs and take responsibility for them.
• Courageous communication is when we are willing to point out our own shortcomings as quickly as we would, theirs.
• Communication makes a difference when it shares the truth of a situation, as we know it at that time, whether it is in our favor or not.

Lost communication

• You cannot lie and communicate at the same time.
• You are not communicating if you are withholding facts, using niceties or changing the information in a way so that you “win.”
• Communication is not occurring if the only voice you can hear is your own.
• Your communication has failed if the other party comes away with nothing.
• Communication cannot begin if you have no interest in learning about the other party and their needs.

×WORDS TO THE WISEØ  

YOU HAVE NO INTENTION OF COMMUNICATING IF YOUR SOLE MOTIVATION FOR COMMUNICATING IS TO WIN. YOUR INTENTION IN THAT CASE IS TO DOMINATE.

Manipulation versus communication

Throughout this book we will discuss in more detail how energy works and about the exchange that occurs when we are communicating, both positive and negative. It also covers how easy it is for energy to be manipulated.  When we communicate, any form of withholding in order to win, or “stroking” to make the person feel guilty or obligated is not communication it is manipulation. Manipulation can be the “great un-doer” of communication.

TIME FOR THE TOOLS

Have you ever thrown a tizzy and been so emotionally out of control that you couldn’t stand your self but were unable stop?  And then there is the other degree, where you are so happy about something that you lose it and make a fool out of yourself? Have you been accused of being immature?

Say “hi” to your smaller self.

How about when you over analyze everything to the ninth degree, so much so you don’t even know what’s important anymore. Or have you ever been accused of not being sensitive to someone’s situation, or told, “to get out of your head.”  How about the phrase, “you’re like a machine.”

Shake hands with your middle self.

Perhaps, you don’t feel of this earth and have trouble understanding why people do the things they do? Not motivated by money and material things?  People think you are weird and out there because you talk to trees and don’t get emotional about anything?

Make peace with your higher self

These three selves are your tools, they are your teammates and they hold the answer to every question you could ever ask and they are waiting to meet you.

Getting everyone on board

In life, no matter what you do, if your three selves aren’t in agreement, the change you seek won’t take effect in your life. Your small self has to be emotionally stimulated and it has to be “fun.’ Your intellectual self has to understand it and be able to rationalize why it’s worth the time and money, and your spiritual self needs to know that it moves you closer to your life purpose.  Life purpose in this instance refers to what makes you feel content with, both in your life, and with what you are currently doing with your life. If one of these selves isn’t in agreement, after a short period of time, it will fall by the wayside. How many of us have been to a workshop or a motivational speaker and came out pumped up and ready to change the world, or at least our selves. For the next few days you are a new person and then, it’s gone and it’s back to life as normal.  This is what happens when an experience doesn’t appeal to all aspects. The same thing in life, if you are blocked on something or not able to get excited about it, even though you know it is something you should be doing or at least check out. That is showing you that one of the three selves isn’t on board with the idea. Everything you do in life needs to have something for each aspect of who we are for it to become part of our daily life, for it to become a necessity. It needs to stimulate us emotionally, intellectually and spiritually.

Speaking as an equal

In order for your communication to be heard, it is important that you speak in a way that the other person can understand and relate to. With regards to working with the three selves, this is also true.

If the person you are trying to help is emotional and speaking from the smaller self, you also must speak from your smaller self. Not meaning that you should be over emotional, but definitely let your smaller self lead so when you communicate the person will feel like they are speaking to someone who understands them.

The same goes for someone who is strictly coming from an intellectual point of view. You must also communicate what you need for them to understand from the view point of the intellect.

If someone is very spiritual then you need to also come from your higher self. For any reason, if you are not able to communicate effectively from one of the areas, it is always better to get someone who is strong in that area to do the communicating for you. No matter how you try, an emotional person will not respond to intellect, and vise versa just as a spiritual person cannot always relate to strictly an intellectual or emotional point of view if they cannot find the “higher purpose” in the conversation.

One of the main goals of this book is to help you become balanced enough in your three selves to be able to move back and forth between them, depending on what is needed at any time while giving guidance, but do know, there will always be some extreme cases when someone else will be better to speak with the person instead of yourself.

THE JOURNEY

It is important for you learn how to recognize the three selves and how they influence the way you express yourself, not only by your words, but also by your actions.  You will learn how to work with the three selves to remain balanced and centered when you communicate with others. You will also learn to recognize which “self” is motivating the other person and how to direct the conversation in such a way that the person will be able to “hear” the guidance coming to them through you.

Once more, the three selves are:

      1.   Higher self: also known as the God self, Spirit, the One or the      Light.

2. Middle self: also known as intellect, reason or the mind.
3. Smaller self: also known as emotions, child or personality.

In this book we will use the terms: higher self, middle self and smaller self to refer to the aspects but, you might want to take note of the other terms as they will be mentioned in certain instances where they will be more appropriate.

How do I tell the selves apart?

Simplified:

• If you are ruled mainly by emotions you are in your smaller self.
• If you are intellectualizing and rationalizing a lot, middle self.
• If you are seeing the big picture and have a sense of “I’m okay” you are working in the higher self.

Why should I bother meeting my three selves?

The changes that can occur in your life are amazing once you start acknowledging each part of yourself. These aspects affect you every day, whether you know it or not. Once you consciously start working with the three selves, as a team, there is nothing you can’t accomplish.

What might change?

Some of the changes that can occur once you start working with your three selves are:

• You will have more control of your emotions.

• You will be able to identify problems quickly and address them before they become too hard to deal with.

• No more buying things and taking them back because you have changed your mind. From now on, you will know exactly why you are buying something and use it for as long as you need to.

• Get the most out of seminars and workshops.  Be able to integrate all the things you learn and actually use them in your life.

• You will be able to bounce back from hurtful situations because you are able to move through it quickly, learn from the lesson and move on.

• Be able to take responsibility for your life and feel great about it.

• Make confident decisions, no more rushing because you are frightened you are going to “miss out.”

• Be healthier, physically, mentally and spiritually because every part of you is being nourished.

• Remove stress from your life because you can now go in and understand why you are doing what you are doing. Then figure out what you would rather be doing instead and put a plan into action to do it.

The list could go on and on, so let’s all get better acquainted.

UNDERSTANDING THE JOB OF EACH OF THE SELVES

Higher Self

The higher self is not motivated by our needs but by what is good for us as a whole being. The higher self knows the direction our life needs to take in order for us to accomplish what it is we came here to do.  The higher self is not clouded by emotions, and therefore, not mislead by the illusions that can confuse us and take us off our path. It is a powerful teacher and the most direct way to deliver information that will truly make guidance effective.

It can take information and gradually release it into the person’s awareness until they can understand it.

Higher selves will work together as a team. This means if you consciously work from your higher self then your higher self will, in turn, work in harmony with the higher self of others thus achieving the best result for all concerned.

The Higher self often doesn’t relate to the material world, and though the ‘let go and let God’ is a wonderful process, it is necessary to have a balance of the three selves to live within that belief.

Middle Self

The middle self is the bridge between the higher self and the smaller self. It is our voice of reason. The middle self gets more involved in the processing of information and helps to keep us centered so we are able to reason.

The middle self is great for appealing to when you want to move someone out of emotion and into reason.

If you are too much in your middle self, you will find that you may lack imagination, flexibility and spontaneity. You will also be over critical of yourself and others. The middle self needs to be the bridge between the higher and the smaller self in order to keep itself balanced.

Smaller Self

This is a wonderful part of our make up and can be our strongest ally, worst enemy or most damaged and frightened child. Our emotions are extremely powerful when it comes to the way in which we communicate.

The smaller self is a great team player once it trusts you.  If you can get someone (this includes yourself) emotionally involved in something you have a great start on the situation. Once you win the smaller self’s trust and willingness to co-operate, you are then ready to move forward to gaining the trust and co-operation of the middle and higher selves.

If your smaller self is running your life, you will be on an emotional roller coaster and constantly dealing with drama.  The smaller self needs the wisdom of intellect and protection of spirit to be able to make sound decisions that can be put into action in your life.

Who is running your life?

Do you have trouble being around people who are different from you?  If you are low key, do high-energy people wear you out?  Do you find that you do the same thing and go the same places because it’s easier? Do you have the same excuses for everything; cost too much, takes too much time, I’ll do it later when I have such and such in place.  This is how our life looks when we have allowed one of our selves to dominate our choices instead of all three of your selves influencing your decisions.

See if this seems familiar:

Your middle self is running the show if you spend much of your time trying to stay realistic in dealing with life. Paying those bills and being very responsible and having no time for fun until that is taken care of.  And then when that is taken care of, there will be something else that has to be done first.  Play never happens.

If your smaller self is in control you may forget to pay the bills because you have been out shopping. Or, you may find yourself so caught up in the drama of life that you are too emotionally stimulated that you can’t seem to come up with a plan to solve the problem and spend a lot of your time spinning your wheels or on an emotional roller coaster.

Or last but not least, your higher self. Not being grounded: as in; what bills, oh, I need to pay those?  

You will find your life will become a lot more fun and productive once you start to work with each aspect of your self. There will be times when it will benefit you to let one self be more dominant, but the important thing is that it is a conscious choice.

 Here are some situations which all of us have been in where we use one self to “run the show” to get the job done. Even though the other selves are still present, we consciously let one self dominate.  

• It’s time to do your taxes so you consciously move into your middle self, the intellect, and get it done.
• It’s time to play with your kids, so you allow yourself to lighten up and go out and play.
• You need to “be big” about something and let someone have their way even though you might not agree. You know they need to win this time so you put your ego on hold and step into your higher self and allow.

Being able to let one self “lead” is a good sign that your three selves are clear on what their task is and as a result, you are able to focus and get the job done effectively and easily.  

When each of the selves wants to be in charge at the same time there arises an internal struggle. In this situation our life can become a casualty of the struggle and we lose control over the out come of the situation. 

Some scenarios could be:

Small self in charge -

You sit down to do your taxes but have to have the television on knowing full well that you are setting yourself up to get distracted so a one hour job, takes three.  And the real kicker is you know that is what will happen and do it anyway.

Middle self in charge –

Perhaps, with good intent, when you play with your children you have an overwhelming desire to point out faults instead of letting it go and enjoy the playtime.

 When the spiritual self is not present -

Or, no matter how much you would like to let that person have his/her way you just have to have the last word as they walk out the door even though you know, doing so, will gain nothing positive.  

So, what’s going on?  Basically, your three selves are all fighting to run the show and there is no communication between the selves or with your conscious mind so there is no exchange of information occurring. Everyone is fighting over the same bone, and all are only coming away with a piece. As a result, you are having a constant struggle to get something done. 

Your middle self doesn’t trust your child to have fun because your child is not responsible. 

Your child doesn’t like your middle self because it doesn’t know how to lighten up and keeps messing things up by trying to force everything. 

Your higher self isn’t heard by either of the others because they are always fighting over who is right, and therefore your spiritual life is getting almost no attention.

And you wonder why you can’t get anything done or make a decision about what you want to do in your life! 

So, let’s fix that!

Let’s start by healing ourselves

If you feel you have a pretty good sense of your three selves and every one is at least open to moving forward you can skip this section if you like.

If you are reading this section, then I am going to presume that you recognized some of your tendencies in the previous examples and either want to change them or are at least open to learning more about them.  

In order to do that, you need to move more into your center, and in order for that to happen your higher self needs to become more involved in the processing of the information in this book,  

So, here are some tools to help you go that.

This is exciting, trust me. Scary, but exciting! 

Here goes:

If you are finding yourself, intellectually, tearing this book to pieces in order to take your life back, you need to somehow find how to lighten up and be more open.  Agree with your middle self to read it as an exercise in futility, and not take it seriously, that should buy you some time.

If you are getting angry and frustrated, then your smaller self is being challenged to grow and to do something it doesn’t want to do so tell yourself; we don’t have to do any of this, we are just reading it because we want to.

If emotionally you are sure this book is going to change your life instantly and everything is going to just be perfect from now on, your smaller self feels safe in illusion. You need to do something physical along with the book. Make lists of things you want to change. Make a collage of your new life, and bring yourself back to center by making the process more real on the physical plane.

If you are indifferent then you need to wake up. For you, something physical would be great, also. Underline sections that interest you in any way, make notes of pages to go back to or make lists of things you might want to try. Try to stimulate yourself to feel or think something. Indifference is the way we express, “why bother, nothing is going to change.”

Your higher self is an amazing being. If you are able to at least get yourself to a place of being grounded in your experience of this book, it will do the rest. Once you are able to pacify the self that is running the show to where you can at least be open, your higher self will then find other ways to support your choice.

It may happen in any of the following ways.

If you are ruled by intellect, something may come into your life that is factual that encourages you to move forward.

If you’re smaller self is angry about changing, something will come into your life that will show it how it can use this information easily while doing something it likes.

If your smaller self has trouble being realistic, something will come into your life that will point out the work that has to be done. You will then have to make sure you don’t crash emotionally. By doing the lists as suggested before, you will be balanced enough to handle it, and keep moving forward.

If you are working with indifference, because the indifference is normally a sign that you are shut down, and are having trouble seeing the point, probably in anything, you will more than likely start becoming interested in things again and becoming more optimistic about things. You need to take the whole process slow and don’t expect too much so you don’t get discouraged.

GIVING GUIDANCE FOR A LIVING

When you start helping others, in whatever way you do, to do it well takes a lot of work and a commitment of time and energy. You need to learn how to give guidance, learn about your medium, and learn about yourself, constantly living out of your comfort zone. The effort and courage it takes to reach people and educate your self at the same time is invaluable. Trust me; you will earn every penny you make if you are committed to what you are doing. So, if you are uncomfortable letting people reimburse you for your gift, let them reimburse you for all the training and conditioning you are going to have to do to be able to do this work well.