A New Life Choice

The other day I saw a friend I hadn’t seen for quite a while. We had a lovely conversation. At a point in our discussion, I remarked that after all these years of spiritual work I felt much more equipped to deal with the fast changing energies that are sweeping the world today.

One week before this meeting I also bumped into an old lady friend whom I hadn’t seen for a very long time, and she said to me: “It is shocking how rejuvenated you look”.

June 2004 was the last time that I held a job in the corporate world. I wanted so badly to become a manager for so long and I worked very hard to get there. I finally got my goal. It had been an interesting, exciting ride, but ultimately stressful and finally soul-destroying, or at least soul-exhausting. The lessons were invaluable but by June 2004 something clicked: I left the system.

I didn’t have a job for the next few years. It was as if the Universe had concocted a plot to close all doors of abundance. At least my husband did have a job but we did struggle for quite a while, especially when our baby was born in October 2006.

In July 2005 we moved from the UK to South Africa and I was waiting to receive my permanent residency paperwork. That was a very frustrating time: staying at home, alone with the baby, with no friends or family, just a couple of people around, enough to help me stay mentally sane.

But I decided that if the Universe meant for me to stay cut off from the world at that stage in my life, there should be a reason; and so if I couldn’t go out, I would go in.

I had another dream of getting a metaphysics doctorate degree, so I thought this was the perfect opportunity. I looked in the internet and found the perfect organisation for me, so started studying and meditating heavily in order to integrate all the information. Being secluded was the perfect situation for these studies: it wasn’t just a matter of memorizing theory – these were practical mind-body-spirit experiential ¬studies.

The Universe always has a reason for everything: since I had to spend long periods of time with my baby in my arms and in silence (she wouldn’t sleep in the cot, just like many of these new babies do as they only feel safe within the mother’s aura), the one thing I could do was to spend time deepening into my soul. This kept me centred, focused and strong during those meaningful but challenging times.

For the next 3 years, Spirit had but one single sentence that kept repeating to me again and again: drop some balls. I had stopped going out almost at all, especially during the last couple of months of pregnancy and the few months when the baby first arrived. I stopped doing almost anything that would take my focus off my baby and my studies…What other balls could I drop? What did Spirit want from me?

There are times in life when we want something than we don’t have. Then we get it, and don’t want it.

I always wanted to have plenty of time to deepen my spiritual work and raise my vibration. Well, here it was in the perfect combination. At the same time as I was raising a baby, the other thing I desperately wanted. I had two for the price of one.

I just had to trust the universe and do the work, then wait for the right universal time to allow things to move in the direction that they were meant to. But for a little human being with limited perspective, this can be very frustrating. Thank goodness when I do the right thing I feel the faith inside so strongly that I can go against everyone and everything and stay on the right track… yet, it was still challenging.

I remember vividly how I would look through the window and watch people coming in and out of the coffee shop round the corner, taking for granted their freedom, their leisure time, their body shapes (unlike mine, which felt like a big blob).

I had never seen myself in a circumstance like this before in my life: me, who used to wear impeccably matching suits, together with my Spanish lovely shoes and handbags, nicely done hair and varnished nails. Now I was lucky if I had time to have a shower every day (a minimum amount of self-dignity had to remain!).

I cut my nails as short as I could, as otherwise I would scratch my baby when handling her, and I cut my hair really short as for some reason I found hair unbearable in the summer heat, the process of breastfeeding and the extra weight that I was carrying. Everything that was in the way had to go! Beauty was the last of my concerns at that time. I had switched on to survival mode.

The world seemed a strange place to me where all the things I used to do no longer applied, and I would watch people doing those very same things and they felt foreign to me; yet I was doing a new set of activities that everyone else were describing as: unbearable, boring, un-stimulating, and other such unexciting terms.

Saying that I felt like an alien on earth was perhaps not very far from the truth (literally?). I was definitely connecting into a new frequency.

By this time, I had forgotten my old internally unhappy and externally perfectly groomed self. I felt like a nun going to a convent, having her hair (mark of beauty) cut off, given simple and plain clothes to wear and asked to stay in the silence to connect with God.

I could feel that a huge transformation was taking place inside and I knew that the set of circumstances in which I was immersed, especially with the birth of the baby, was handing me a golden opportunity to create the most dramatic and transformative shift of my life, the inner alchemy that would precipitate a pivotal point in my life, the transition into a new platform where a complete change of values and beliefs was necessary. More than that, I could feel that a change in the frequency at which my heart chakra was vibrating was taking place.

And so I settled into the pain and frustration as comfortable as I could and prepared to take the bull by the horns. In order to do this, I armed myself with lots of spiritual books, lots of colourful materials to knit and crochet (my meditation in practice) and my metaphysics course material.

I had this huge feeling of gratitude every time that I looked at my baby’s face, which I used to do at all the time; it felt like such an incredible gift, even though it might have been wrapped in this apparently very difficult set of circumstances.

With the help of the course I was studying and the books I was researching, my heart chakra underwent a break, an opening, which ultimately became healing (they do say that a broken heart is a healed heart) and so I started to review my beliefs about work, about earning a living, attracting opportunities, manifesting abundance, life purpose, life mission, etc,

I realised that up till then I had believed that finding a good job was a matter of luck and that part of that luck was that someone would care to pay me a good wage in exchange of my time, expertise, gifts, personality and energy. But unavoidably, this scenario transformed itself every time into my employers taking my light, as well as my work, and always for their benefit regardless of its negative effects on me: that’s to say, unavoidably, I ended up feeling like a soul-prostitute, selling my integrity for a wage; not wanting to be there, yet needing the money but longing for freedom.

I simply lacked personal power.

And now, in this new process of transition and integration of energies, at a new platform of understanding and awareness, I realised that in fact, what I wanted to manifest was the work that matched my natural gifts, where I could decide how much money to earn, in which circumstances and with what quality of life.

But isn’t this the desire of everyone else? So what was the difference?

The difference is that I was forced into the transition. Ok, yes. You do create your reality so I was very honoured that I had put myself in this situation in a way that I couldn’t really go backwards, so I had to keep on going forwards and finish off what I had started.

I had no intention of having to repeat this lesson ever again in my life and very much doubted that I would have a chance like this again: being in a new country, waiting for my official papers, with a new baby and little money.

We couldn’t pay someone to help me and I wasn’t going to get just any job, then get someone to raise my child for me. So the choice was made: we would struggle for as long as we had to until things turned around and a new cycle of abundance was triggered in our lives.

I could have left South Africa and gone to Spain to get my family to help me raise my child, but I was in the middle of cutting karmic ties with my clan or tribe, so I needed the freedom to create a new beginning for my child, free of any manipulation or interference, no matter how well meant.

So although it looked like a negative or unhealthy situation, I recognized the opportunity and took it on with both hands, heart and soul: I decided to accept the present or gift given to me and dive inside myself to allow myself the alchemy or transformation of negative energies into a possible turnaround which would mean the taking of my freedom and personal power. This is partly what the new children can do for you if you let them and what a new baby will do for you if you allow yourself to be reborn anew.

I studied intensely and recorded all my experiences, thoughts and shifts in my spiritual diaries, the source of my books. This was going to be an important transition from the life I had known so far into a life that I was going to construct according to my soul’s calling and deepest desires.

I accepted the baby and allowed this opportunity to break my heart open, to allow for a new love vibration in my being that I hadn’t known before: unconditional love, putting someone else’s needs ahead of yours, putting your own needs on hold until the time when the family dynamics would rebalance into a more fair share of the resources.

I don’t really recommend this to everyone. It was the hardest thing I have ever done.

But I am glad I did it because it showed me the level of inner strength, balance and grounding that I am capable of. However, I do know that if someone can’t anchor their energies with the unbreakable faith and clarity of inner guidance that I had, it could throw them completely out of balance; especially a new mum, with all the hormonal changes and emotional rollercoaster that having a first new baby means.

4 years passed by and my child went to school. I had some free hours during the day. My body had returned to its original shape. I put a few adverts in the internet and this brought me some clients, to whom I taught personal development, crafts and languages from home.

It was incredibly easy as I didn’t have to spend time driving or stressing in any way. There was no waste of resources (time, money, petrol, energy) and this was certainly a completely different picture from the work experience I had had before. It felt as if instead of me going into the world, the world was coming to me.

It felt as if instead of me having to adapt to the status quo’s social rules and regulations, a little piece of the world in the form of students and clients was coming into my personal circle of power, entering my little world in order to receive my healing. I adapted to the universe first and now the universe was adapting to me!

I decided to embark on a new adventure and joined the gym (I hadn’t done any exercise for 15 years, since my divorce!) and started to focus on a new field of research: nutrition related to energy and electro-magnetism for my next book: The Liberation Diet, a mind-body-spirit system for rejuvenation, re-energizing and body-reshaping (coming out in December 2013). I also got a part time job as a Spanish teacher at my daughter’s school, which was round the corner from home.

My energy levels raised. Everything seemed in order.

But a couple of months before these New Year’s resolutions were put in place, I had 3 dreams. In them, I was doing tests and exams. Spirit told me: you have passed. It didn’t matter whether I passed with flying colours or just about passed. It seemed that the important thing was to pass.

Then Spirit told me that I had earned Ascended Master Status. And in order to show me this (title which I very hesitantly accepted since I thought that you had to be dead in order to become an Ascended Master) 3 things happened:

Throughout all these years I had begged, asked, demanded and implored Spirit for a new job. I wanted money, a new status and the opportunity to reintegrate myself into society once more. I remember that at the end of my stage in the UK, when I was unemployed and seemingly unable to get a job, I would look at the masses of people taking the underground trains, wishing I could be one of them as this would mean that I was employed, that I was a useful member of society.

It didn’t matter that only months before I loathed this very same thing but I suppose it was a very powerful comfort zone.

I also remember that these same people were wearing grey or black coats, just like I used to. Their heads sunk in due to the cold and to the fact that they were doing what they had been doing for many years and they still had many more years to keep doing the same thing. Yet, I felt so isolated and out of the system that wished I could be part of this sad, grey picture, even though I knew that being in the system would destroy me.

This way was no longer in integrity with whom I was becoming but I didn’t have a reference point of where I was going, yet.

This was the beginning of the transition.

A transition that opened in the form of a door that took me to a new country, a new baby, family karmic cleansing challenges (both my husband’s and my own), a reshape of my energies and my body, my mind-set and my very soul essence.
But deeply inside I was asking why, oh why, was all this taking so long... and why, oh why, this was happening to me…

I was asking what I had done to deserve all this… I am sure you have been there: the very well- known victim mentality.
The bouts of anger were there, the self-pity, the sadness. The many, many tears cried in the process of cleansing my soul were also there. The voids, the loneliness, the doubts… I felt it all and I went through it all.

I did not once avoid the pain: I became acquainted with the pain. I even made friends with the pain: I accepted, worked with, felt and went through the pain, as this is the only way I know to transmute your shadow into light and reach your potential.

I even started to enjoy the pain when I noticed the first shifts and transformations taking place. It was the door to freedom, and I knew it.

I had read in all the self-help books that one should grow through joy, not struggle. I had grown through struggle so far and I firmly intended to change this. I was now struggling much more than ever before (what an irony!) but somehow, somewhere, I knew that this was a good struggle, the last one, the storm before the calm: the great transition.

It took years, many years. But the last 5 years I could only describe as completely insane and even inhuman. I was tested to the limits of my strength in all areas. I held it together, but by the skin of my teeth! There were moments I didn’t think I could keep it all going. I wasn’t sure whether I still had any more balls to drop!

So one good morning in 2010, I got an email from a friend of mine who had created an Institute for personal development. He asked me to help him delivering workshops and it seemed a dream come true. It didn’t work out in the end but the important part was that the Universe was starting to bring opportunities my way or, looked at in another way, that I was starting to manifest with creative intent.

The second offer was to create a Toastmasters (public speaking) group for the directors of an international organization in exchange of marketing my business. Another offer from heaven.

But my family set up didn’t have the structural integrity to cope with the investment of time and energy that a project like that requires as my daughter was 4 years old and I was running my life around her schedule.
The offer wasn’t attractive enough for me to get stressed by any job, no matter how exciting. I couldn’t afford to get burnt out again, not with a young family depending emotionally and physically on me.

The 3rd offer involved creating a Spanish program for a school and its surrounding areas. Again, this school was quite far away and working there would involve a lot of driving. It would also mess up my daughter’s school schedule in the morning as it required getting up far too early. I would have to find someone to pick my daughter from school and stay with her until I finished work, something I always said I wouldn’t do.

Although this job was exciting in the sense that it required to use all my management, leadership, teaching and public speaking skills, I didn’t want to break the wonderfully safe and happy routine that we had at home. I thought that soon enough she will be grown and then I could use my time in any way that I liked. My priorities were clear. My choices had already been made.

The Universe always talks to me in three’s and this was the final message. The doors of opportunity were starting to open but they had been created by my previous mind-set so they no longer applied to who I was today.

I had moved on, my consciousness had evolved and these jobs were of the old kind I used to desire, highly demanding on your time and energy, stress-producing, imposing KPI’s and targets to be fulfilled and a high social profile.

The new job I was after with my new level of consciousness was the total opposite: flowing with the daily energetic changes, being my own boss, earning money through joy instead of struggle and efforting, and none of those unreasonable external expectations. Finally, it had no high profile but it would be work done under cover: working with my clients and students on a one-to-one basis or in very small groups, aligned with Spiritual law and my highest potential at each time.

And the KPI’s were inside my heart: I knew whether I was doing a good job by keeping my finger on the pulse, by watching the progress and the reactions of my clients, by feeling the energies and clicking with the magic in the short, spontaneous and intense moments when healing would take place… and see people blossoming right in front of me.

But the Universe always knows how to test you to the very bottom of your being, just to make sure whether your reasons are real or whether you are lying to yourself: next, my mother calls me and tells me that in the Basque Country they are creating 3000 jobs for teachers to work for the Basque Government for the first time in many years.

If I ever wanted to go back home, this was my chance!
However, I felt that the time wasn’t right for my family now. I had promised my husband that I would stay in Cape Town (South Africa) for only 5 years. This was 8 years now and no vision of when or how coming back to Spain. How frustrating! All these missed opportunities!

Then I got a call from an international company who needed me as an Spanish agent for their firm. Again, the same old thing. Exciting in the outside but dead in the inside…
I said no without even asking what kind of company they were, what industry or what the job required. It was my way to tell the Universe: stop tempting me! It is not going to work!

Why? Because I felt at deep soul level that I was in the right place, doing the right thing.

My mind was set. I had struggled so much and survived. Now I could feel that my priorities had shifted: it was not about the money at all. It was about my family life and the harmony that we had created. Nothing was worth breaking that peace and everything new would have to fit around us, rather than the other way round!

Many of you, reading these lines, will think: What is wrong with you? You should jump to all these wonderful opportunities no matter what the cost!
Exactly, no matter what the cost is the cost: your own life, your own sanity!

I have learnt to recognise bad opportunities wrapped in wonderfully bright and colourful gift paper: money traps, position and ego status that lock you into a situation where you lose your freedom, self-dignity and integrity for the sake of money.

As you realise that you are in trouble, a void is created, a pull, a tension, due to the fact that we are not aligned with our highest path, and so we create unhealthy habits and patterns in order to compensate for this. These seemingly big doors normally lead you to dead ends.

However, I have also learnt to recognize great opportunities for growth in joy and happiness, which come wrapped in the most unexciting brown, shabby-looking paper: small doors that take you to great heights.

These small doors shift you with the power, passion and love of the Universal energies. They put you in touch with your life mission and they make you unbreakable as you are supported by the cosmic energies.

Like a surfer, I am prepared to wait for hours if necessary until the perfect wave arrives, the wave that will take me forward faster than the wind, overtaking all sorrows, hesitation, doubt and lack of clarity, allowing me an experience of exhilaration and speed.

And there are no external signs to these opportunities:

just an inner knowing. When the right energies are not there I simply don’t take that apparent opportunity on. But on the same token, I take on any challenge that has the right inner signature, that which my inner guidance or my heart recognise as home.

All these wonderful job offers were old dreams that had come true after all this time.

They felt out of integrity for me today but it was wonderful to know that I had finally I created the inner space to receive what I had asked for all those years ago.
Passing this test was what Spirit had called achieving Ascended Master Status.

However, the moment of arrival of these opportunities was too late because I had become someone different. The realization that these old dreams didn’t really excite me was sad and wonderful at the same time: sad, because it was like saying goodbye to an old friend. Wonderful because I could now finally drop these balls and happily move onto a completely new future.

So the little part-time job round the corner in my daughter’s school and my clients at home were perfect for me. The money wasn’t fantastic but I could smell the potential if I took it slowly and allowed the Universe to play its cards from a bigger perspective that I didn’t yet have.

I could sense that by having said no to all those other opportunities, by having dropped all the balls, I was allowing a higher level future to come my way.

People ask me: “How do you get so much done? How do you accomplish so much, even in the direst of the situations?”
The answer is that I have learnt to recognise timing and the opportunities and situations that are in integrity or resonate with whom I am today. And to everything else, I simply say no.

It is a ruthless approach as the world has so much to offer and you may fall into the trap of feeling that you are missing out. But I know where that road leads and I have decided to conserve and protect my energy reservoirs, the silence inside me, the balance and centeredness I have achieved and my happiness and that of my family.

It is all about balance and about not getting lured by fame and money, greed, desperation, a survival mentality… and I am always guided by Spirit.

There is no way I could do everything I do and produce at this level without this approach and without Spirit’s help.

This may also be the reason why, if you haven’t seen me for a while, you may find that I look rejuvenated: I feel that the stress created by not being aligned to our highest path, or highest potential, ages us before time. Being in an energy highway, like I call this fast moving, free flowing path, definitely keeps you younger, fully alive and energized.

So when you feel trapped in life by something that you thought was going to be a great thing (the guy, the job, the holiday, or anything else) and then it turns out that it wasn’t, realise that maybe the reasons why you took this challenge on were not the real ones.

Maybe there was a basis of fear or a self-doubt hidden there somewhere, so later on in the process, this fear would manifest in all its glory to teach you about yourself, to teach you that at some level, you were out of integrity with the challenge and that if you had been honest with yourself, maybe you would not have taken it on in the first place!

I don’t tell you to do what I did, because it took me many years to get there and one does have to eat to live every day. I have been lucky that my husband is a solid, hard-working person who has always provided his family with the necessary basics. Or is it Spirit bringing him into my path so that I can focus on my work? I truly believe that you are always given what you need even when you are not given what you want!

Sometimes one can’t wait for the perfect opportunity in order to drop all the balls that life has handed to us and which, consciously or unconsciously, we have taken on, until we don’t know where to put them, what to do with them or how to keep them all in the air.

But in a smaller scale, I tell you that if you can say no, if you feel that sometimes you are taking something on because you think you should, or because you think that you must prove something to someone… or because someone is expecting it from you, or what would your mother say, or you owe it to someone… you need to be true to yourself and say no.

Then wait for the real thing. Close your eyes and feel that it is true for you. When it arrives, take it on, no matter what it looks like. No matter what the cost!
Because this could end up becoming the greatest opportunity of your life: a new life choice.