Shielding and Protection: The Barrier To Something We Don't Want To Experience

[Guest guest]

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€. 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€. 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.