Re: Shielding and Protection: The Barrier To Something We D...

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This article is incredible. What a wealth of wisdom! Our only true security lies in Source and in ourselves.

Love and hugs, Cheryl in GAvisit me at: www.myspace.com/senegaladyor at: www.angelfire.com/co/Senegalady/index.htmlSee my videos:YouTube - Yellow Butterfly YouTube - Reach Out YouTube - The Ripple YouTube - A Woman's Diary

May we learn to benefit the life of Earth with peace, humble in our needs,and generous in our giving.Joanne Sunshower

In a message dated 12/29/2007 3:06:56 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, butterflygris@... writes:

Shielding and Protection: The Barrier To Something We Don't Want To Experience by CormierI'm going to be honest with you. I have issues with this particular topic. Far too often the concepts of shielding and protection are filled with misunderstandings and a lot of drama. Rather than create a sense of security and comfort within Self, despite the appearance of safety, it tends to reinforce a belief that one is powerless. This in turn reinforces the fear that shapes our experience. Everything from holes in your aura, surrounding yourself with white light, prayers (beseeching), smoke, crystals, symbols, talismans, are all forms of protection that are commonly spoken of. All of these practices hold one thing in common: the faith, and more often hope, that we’ll be safe in our experience.Unfortunately, you cannot have hope of something without having doubt of it. While it is the very nature of hope to inspire against doubt, to drive it back or cover it up, hope cannot dispel that which it is drawn from. It is the doubt of our power that acts against us in our wakening to our true Self.As you think, so shall you be, and experience.Shielding and protection imply a block or barrier to something we don't want to experience. This is merely an extension of how we tend to block our pain and deny what we feel or experience in the physical world, rather than taking it as a cue for self-exploration.If we take a close look at our daily lives we can see just how much we’re practicing the art of ‘protection’ all the time. We may seek to control external events or people in order to feel in control and safe. We may vigorously strive to maintain our youthful physical appearance in order to feel safe from being looked upon as ‘old’ and to protect ourselves from those who might judge us as being undesirable.There are many uncomfortable experiences we have in our lifetimes and rather than trying to always anticipate and protect ourselves from those experiences consider that everything that happens, happens FOR US. Consider that for a moment: Nothing happens to you and everything happens for you. With regard to psychic or supernatural experiences, we feel especially threatened because we feel especially powerless to stand up to it. In our everyday lives it's bad enough feeling scared and powerless against what we can see. The feeling is multiplied when we are afraid of what we can't see. Your soul chose to come here, and it anticipated that you’d be right here, right were you are now, at this moment. Everything that has happened to you is meaningful and has purpose. As with our everyday lives, our need for shielding and protection when dealing with spiritual matters is merely an extension of the need to shield and protect ourselves from all life’s unpleasantness. The bottom line however, is that we cannot shield ourselves against the experiences our soul has set up for us to work though.If we feel a need for protection or shielding then we must have something we need protecting from. We feel we need protection from it because we feel powerless against it.What we're doing here is putting all of our attention and focus on the experience, instead of how the experience makes us FEEL. We think in order to not feel that way, we have to change the experience, or make sure we DON'T experience it, meanwhile totally ignoring the fact that how we feel might not be based in truth. We've all experienced this in one way or another. Have you ever been so sure of something? You know without a doubt that it is the way it is, only to find out later that it wasn't anything like you imagined?A need for protection is a conclusion we've made based on how an experience makes us feel. Seeing a need for protection, we act on an expectation we have of what will happen if we don’t. That expectation is usually based in fear and lack of understanding.It’s easy to develop and notice the expectations we have of others. Our expectations are based upon their past and current behavior. We can notice the same with expectations we have of ourselves. We develop these expectations from what we have to come understand about our experiences, or, what we’ve concluded about our experiences. Are the beliefs that lead to expectation necessarily true? By examining our feelings and where they are coming from we can discover if our conclusion is accurate. As with anything you encounter in life, your feelings in response to something are your own, they come from you, not from something outside of you. The bottom line is, deal with the fear you feel instead of the 'monster' you perceived to have made you feel it.With regards to psychic awareness, we want to be safe in our experience. This in itself is not difficult or unreasonable to understand. ‘The idea of safety, is actually the relinquishment of the idea of attack’ â€" author unknown. What this means is that the idea of safety isn’t about manipulation of everything outside of ourselves. It isn’t about being stronger or more powerful. In order to be safe we must let go of our expectations of being attacked, injured, or manipulated. This doesn’t mean turning a blind eye to potential situations in which one may be hurt or injured. We can be safe in the world more effectively with an understanding of it, than we can with a fear of it. In my process of self-discovery I've come to understand a few things that make shielding and protection unnecessary.1. There is nothing in creation that I can experience or imagine that isn't 'God'. God is All There Is and nothing can exist separate from God.2. I am a divine, eternal being that cannot be diminished, injured, or harmed in any way.3. We are all made of the same stuff. Whatever I encounter is 'me'.A phrase you’ll hear a lot in the spiritual community is ‘Opening up’, where a person is opening up to spirit, opening up to intuition or psychic ability, or opening awareness. People who are seeking their true nature will inevitably ask, ‘what exactly am I opening myself to?’ It’s no stretch to see how easy it is to equate ‘opening’ with ‘vulnerable’. The only way we can make this connection of 'opening' and 'vulnerable' in our minds is in the presence of fear. On some level inside us, the idea of opening is scary. We are afraid, and feel powerless in ourselves so we seek out ways to make ourselves more powerful. The more powerful we seek to be, the more fearful we become and so like a funnel we bottle ourselves up, narrowing our view and awareness and understanding of our experiences. The most obvious problem with opening and shielding is that shielding seems to be positively selective when in fact, in keeping things out it also keeps you in. Doesn’t sound much like opening to me.I believe when we open we are opening to ourselves, our true nature, our soul, spirit, higher Self. There is never anything to fear because we are only opening to ourselves. It is through the awareness and understanding of ourselves as spiritual beings that we gain awareness and understanding of all we’re connected to.Fear is a lack of understanding. Instead of seeking to understand the object of your fear, seek to understand the fear itself in your own mind. Deal directly with the idea of your fear and protection and shielding will be unnecessary for you. The purpose of opening up is to become more aware of your true Self and to use that awareness to live more consciously in life. The more connected and in tune you are to your true Self, the more conscious you are of your vibrational energy. The more conscious you are, the more in control of your experience. It works both ways. Your consciousness is both the result of your vibration and the cause of it.You can increase awareness and consciousness by increasing your vibration. Most people are familiar with this idea and know how our vibration is connected to emotions, feelings. What we tend to see as positive feelings will raise our vibration and what we see as negative feelings will lower vibration.Whatever level your vibration is at, you will only be affected or notice vibrations that are like in nature. This is where you can apply the concept of mirrors, in that we are all mirrors for each other as well as the experiences we encounter.Getting our vibration up to where we’d like it to be is never the problem. The problem is in maintaining it throughout the various distractions that pull it back down again. Have you ever had a day where nothing could get you down. It didn’t matter what anyone said or did, you didn’t let it affect your mood? That’s what this is all about. Choosing to maintain your calm, peaceful center. Choosing where and what your attention will be given to.I can’t help thinking of protection as going out into the middle of a highway, building a large barricade to hide behind, hoping that you won’t get hurt. Your barricade may not have been strong enough initially and you may have a close call here and there so you decide that you just need a better, bigger, stronger barricade. And while you seem safe behind your shield of protection, there is still the ever present fear that something big enough will come along to go right through your barricade. I would encourage everyone to consider getting off the highway.One of my favorite lines comes from the Karate Kid, “the best way to avoid a punch, is to not be thereâ€Â. Do not allow anything in your experience, your knowing, your actions, to intrude on your higher vibration. To do this you must be clear in your intention. People speak of having difficulty retaining that calm peaceful quality of their spirit in the midst of some upsetting experience. This is why it is important to consider this when you are not in the midst of an emotional experience. When you do find yourself in it, it is easier to remind yourself of how you wish to ‘be’ when you already have a clear intention in mind.One thing I’ve always wanted to know, where was the ‘evil’ before we opened our spiritual eyes? Why are billions of people not suffering from psychic attacks, dark attachments and evil, energy draining entities? Billions of people walking around literally unprotected. Are they crazy? Are they just asking for it? Some believe that it's only when we endeavor to help others that we are targeted. There are good people everywhere doing incredibly good things for others all the time, spiritual or not. And yet, they remain clear and attack free.We create our own ‘evils’. There’s a lack of understanding ultimately of self, which leads us to believe that what we fear is more powerful than ourselves. And whatever is more powerful than ourselves, we don’t understand. What we don’t understand, we fear. What we fear, we judge as evil.Guy Finley talks about something similar in his audio series, “The Illusion of Limitationâ€Â. He says that we will have an experience, and that experience may be unpleasant. I want to clarify that all of our experiences do not take place outside of ourselves, some of our experiences are internal. Our tendency is to want to prevent that experience from happening again, so we tell ourselves we need to be more prepared. Up until this point your experience may develop you in two ways. The first and more common, is to develop an expectation and fear that it WILL happen again and you begin to seek out ways to protect yourself against it. You try your best to understand it. Why? So you can either avoid it, or defeat it.Where attention goes, energy flows. In giving what you fear your attention what do you think it’s going to do? It’s going to grow. And as it grows you give more attention to it by adding more protection, more shielding, more resistance. In our minds we create this ‘monster’ then set about ways in which to destroy it. All the while having no conscious thought of having created it in the first place.The second way it could go is that you recognize what the experience is making you think, say, do, and feel. I've always maintained that our growth is never about the experience itself, it is about how we respond to the experience and learn from it. Do not confront the object of your fear, it is an illusion created by your interpretation of events, other people, and yourself. Confront the conclusions you have made about your fear. Confront your current understanding of who you really are as well as who others really are.When it comes down to living your life, do what you feel is necessary for you at any time. I will never say that shielding and protection aren't useful tools, I will however, always maintain that with a greater understanding of yourself as spirit, it will be unnecessary.

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