Practical Tools for Life

Here we are back in another eclipse season. I have already written about eclipses in this blog, so I am not going to cover old ground, what I do have to add however, is that the power of the energy of the eclipses has more than doubled in the last few years. This means we can expect even greater and faster change on a personal and planetary level, than ever before, and it will be intensified over this period.

I think it’s important to remember that we signed on for the most exciting and difficult time in the history of planet earth, just by being here. It’s equally important to remember that only the best of the very best are here at this time and if you are reading this, THAT MEANS YOU!

Right now we are right in the centre of eclipse season. The movements opened up with a partial lunar eclipse on the 25th April. The second eclipse takes place on the 10th May, it’s an annual solar eclipse on the new moon. The third and final eclipse in this series is on the 25th May and it’s a penumbral lunar eclipse.

We are all exceptionally tired and stressed from dealing with our own energy changes and those of the people around us. I call this the apple cart syndrome - The weariness of dragging yourself around, energy sapped, from carrying your own and other peoples stuff. The cart has just got heavier and heavier with time until we have had to make a decision to lighten the load. The solution: Give everybody their apples back, no war, no arguments, just NO! I am not carrying your stuff anymore. We then need the moral courage to stand in our truth and utilise our free will and discernment to CHOOSE where we wish to invest our energy and time, preferably into those spaces with people who will work with us with love, respect, truth, bravery, courage, honesty, wisdom and compassion. The caveat is that while we have the tools of free will and discernment at our disposal, we are not free from the consequences/responsibility of our choices.

A friend of mine, who is going through a tough time in their personal life and I were chatting last week, and I shared a few practical tools that I have come up with over the last decade that have helped me through some tough times. I was asked to write them down so here goes: Here are three practical tools that will work irrespective of your age, religious or spiritual beliefs. Feel free to share them with your friends, family, kids and co-workers.

Ego Management:
The first technique of managing ourselves, because that is essentially what we are learning to do here, is learning to control our ego. This is the first and most important lesson in our spiritual and personal development and it is usually the hardest to master.

The energy of the ego can be felt in your solar plexus. Once you feel this energy rising, you will feel the tension in that area of your body, know that it’s time to act. My technique here is to personify my ego and see it as an entity all of its own during times of conflict, give it a name if you have to. Usually I consciously instruct my ego to sit on my right shoulder and NOT to get involved in the disagreement/discussion or anything else. If your ego ‘jumps off’ your shoulder and gets involved I can pretty much guarantee that it will not only throw the first metaphorical punch, but it will also dominate the proceedings from there in. Once you are having an ego to ego dominated discussion with somebody else, nothing positive is going to come out of the situation. So work consciously. Keep your ego on your shoulder. Practice!

Putting it in Perspective:
Arguments and disagreements with others can get rapidly out of hand when energies are swirling around us. Very often it’s difficult to even discern which energies belong to us and which belong to somebody else or whether or not the conflict is worth having at all. Try the following technique to help you decide:

Go outside and pick up one grain of sand. Just one. Now balance it on your thumb nail. Have a really close look at the size of the grain of sand in relation to your thumb nail. Then compare the size of the single grain of sand to your whole body. It’s tiny isn’t it?

Now let’s put the size of that one grain of sand in a comparative relationship with earth. Imagine that that one grain of sand represents planet earth. Planet earth is a star just like all the other stars above you at night. When we look at them from earth they look like tiny glittering specks in the sky. If we could look at earth from another star, the planet would also look like one tiny little speck of light glittering in a much greater universe, way beyond what even our most sophisticated telescopes can see from planet earth.

Now let’s have another look at our grain of sand on our thumb nail. That grain of sand compared to the size of our bodies is similar to that of plant earth in relationship to the whole universe. Much smaller than you thought?

The question we need to ask ourselves now is where the issue of conflict we were about to have stands in relationship to our grain of sand, which represents earth. If it’s still huge and can change life for the better for all on earth, then by all means, go for it! If not, in my mind, it’s just not worth the effort.

This leads me to our third technique for those of us who decide to ‘go for it’.

Anger Management:
We all get angry; it’s part of being human. How we manage our anger towards ourselves and others is part of our humanity. Do we allow conflict to escalate? Do we know when to walk away? Do we drag conflict on for days making everybody around us miserable?

This next technique usually works best in the heat of an argument. Learn to rate your anger on a scale of one to ten. Ten represents ‘going ballistic’ and one represents ‘cool calm and in control’.

If you find yourself in a disagreement, STOP and make a conscious decision to check where you are on that scale. Better still, ask those who usually get into disagreements with you, after you have taught them this technique, to ask you the question: “Where are you between 1 and 10 right now?” If your answer is 4 and below, keep going, you are still operating with control. BUT if your answer is 5 and above cease and desist immediately, WALK AWAY. Go and cool off! You are not going to have any kind of productive resolution at the current time. You can come back and continue arguing your points AFTER you have dropped your anger to 4 and below. Take however long you need to do this, an hour, a day, a week, it doesn’t matter.

Now I would like all of you to please do something for me: I work with the basic principal of “learn one, teach one” - what this means is if we find a technique or something that helps us in tough times then share it with somebody else and help them. The person you teach needs to pass on what they have learnt and teach somebody else. If we all utilize this principle then we will change the world into that more loving, gentler, compassionate place that we all dream of, in no time at all.

Love and peace to you all.