Month: August 2017

How to use everything (yes, everything!) in your life as your teacher and guide

By: HeatherAsh Amara

​Your inner fire is the vital energy within you, the unseen force that gives life to your being. When you take a moment to stop, get quiet, and feel deep within yourself, on a level deeper than thought, you will find this energy waiting and powering you through every moment in your life.

One thing has become clear to me as I have studied my own inner energy over the past several years. I have found that our thoughts, feelings, and actions can all affect our inner energy, and other people’s energy can also have an influence. It can be very difficult for us to keep our inner fire alight with so much pressure. One simple litmus test to see if what you’re pursuing is helping or hindering your inner fire is to evaluate how you feel when you’re in the process of doing something, thinking, or on the receiving end of any particular action. What you will find is that when you are doing things that resonate with your inner energy, the result will be that you feel good. When you neglect you inner fire energy, or otherwise do something that doesn’t resonate with it, you feel, well . . . not so good.

Some of the biggest drains on our energy are stress, fear, anxiety, and getting overwhelmed, as well as the underlying “not enough” monster. Conversely, through the experience of joy, faith, peace, love, passion, and, most importantly, the realization that you are enough, you raise your inner energy.
~ ~ From my upcoming book Awaken Your Inner Fire, Lesson 2  

So how do we shed the stress, soothe the anxiety, and silence the “you are never going to be enough” voice?

• Do more of what you love to brighten your inner fire
• Face your obstacle courageously to steady your inner fire
• Dissolve the beliefs, actions, and thoughts that dampen your inner fire
• Rest into stillness to hear the wisdom of your inner fire

But first, you must befriend your inner fire. Get to know the vital flame that fuels your life. Pay attention to what dampens your inner fire and explore what ignites your inner fire.

Keep your focus on your internal world: saying “your behavior is dampening my inner fire” makes you a victim of other people’s actions, which you actually have no control over. But you do have control over your inner reactions and choices. When your inner fire is well-tended and burning brightly you’ll be less affected by other people’s emotions, behaviors, and reactions. You may not like how other people are acting, but from your centered connection to your inner fire you’ll be able to make clear, conscious choices that nourish you, and ultimately everyone around you. In fact, you’ll learn how to see everything, (yes, everything!) in your life as your teacher and your guide.

In the coming days I’ll be sharing chapter by chapter excerpts and teachings from the new book and insights on how to awaken your inner fire. Let’s get fired up and burn brightly, beloveds!

Want more? Join the conversation on Facebook Live tomorrow at 12 pm PT, 3 pm ET.

Download a free chapter of Awaken Your Inner Fire 

​
NEW! INNER FIRE BOOTCAMP STARTS NEXT WEEK, SEPTEMBER 5TH! 

Join my brand new 7-Day Inner Fire Bootcamp for FREE when you pre-order Awaken Your Inner Fire; each session begins the third Tuesday of the month.  
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High five to you and your inner fire,

HeatherAsh

P.S. Share the goodness: share this blog to your blessed friends.

by: Leahanne Smith

When you come to those dark places in your life, don’t try to avoid them.  Walk into them with curiosity.  Even with a heavy heart of discomfort, continue your work.  You will upload things that have been there far in the background of your making.  You will see more about yourself and more about life.  You will sense farther and learn more parts of the universal language that lives within all of life.

After going through the dark we will know why the hawk cries in the sky just at the time you feel something come over you.  You will feel the meaning in the tone of the howling dogs.  You will pay attention to the feeling instead of disregard it.  You will be in the flow of the natural current of intuition, of natural information; of silent knowledge.

There are many days I’ve walked through my work with a heavy heart.  Maybe I start out the day feeling sorry for myself that I have to go to my job as a caretaker for the elderly when I feel the need to sleep or write, or hike.

After hours of cleaning, doing laundry, listening to my client, bathing them, repairing household equipment, in victim mentally, I finally become neutral.  I am neither happy nor sad, but I am alert to all sorts of things I would not normally pay attention to.  Things such as the spider webs under my elderly client’s bed catch my attention more than usual.

On my happy days when my vision is higher, I more easily bypass certain places in the darker corners of life.  But, on my lower vibrational days, depression days, I more easily see into the dark corners.  It is there that I find all I need.

I have trained myself to see with love from my brighter days, into my darker days, from gratitude.  I’ve been lucky enough to have attended spiritual growth gatherings and read the greatest self improvement books.  I’ve taken advantage of my freedom as much as possible for a lot of my life. I’ve made it my mission to find more personal happiness.  I love trips alone to the mountains or attending a juicy webinar where women talk openly about sexual pleasure, or the beauty of accepting death.  These are some of the things that make my heart dance with sparks of connection to the great living light that runs through us all.

I love my life on most days and have paid attention to myself enough to know how to love my life even on the darkest days.  I have had some pretty tough breaks, and made it through to see my way in the dark.  And, I am continuing to learn.

I have grown less afraid of failure because I have tried and failed so many times that I’ve realized it doesn’t kill me.

I spent five years trying to become a nurse counting from the prerequisites to my second year in nursing school.  I did not make it to becoming a nurse.  I am still a nursing assistant.  I clean, and do all the things for my elder clients that most people in society consider to be a lowly job.  I am not the lifesaving nurse keeping up with all the demands of a busy hallway in the hospital.  Instead I am walking slowly through dark hallways in my mind.  I am the master here.  I care for what I see that needs caring for.  I stay within my integrity.  I do my best.  I realize that this defeat has just gotten me more experience.

Trying and falling has gotten me into corners where I feel stuck.  But, in actuality I am seeing from a place in the bottom of life where it is quiet.  There are no disruptions from me seeing where everything comes from, the components of all of life.

I’ve made friends with the spiders, creatures that get killed by people rushing around in life.  I often see that the main stream world does not allow for time to listen to the old nature to the real life in the stillness.  And, it is in the stillness that we feel into our basis.  Without this we do not really know ourselves, or where we are going in truth anyway.

So, instead of being embarrassed that my job is not a glorious one in comparison to other’s, taking care of the elderly has taught me so much.  I am not afraid of dying and surrendering as I was when I began this elder care journey.  I have gotten comfortable in accepting things the way they are even when they are falling down, including myself.

I’ve realized in my basis that I can do all things because I am all things.  I am all of life.  It is all within me.  Witnessing so much more of the sweetness and the depth of life than I did before working in darkness, I appreciate all things.  I feel the miracle that is every living thing.  The cobwebs that were cluttering my inner vision have cleared away because I’ve made friends with the web makers.  Instead of racing to get to the light, I stay where I am.  I am happy to be with myself whether if I am finding my way in the dark or celebrating a major turning point.  Life is so much simpler now.  I just am.

I do not have to be anything.  I am perfect just the way I am.  I go for things that my heart beams at in life because I love life.  Life is my art now that I’ve worked in the dark.  Now I see.

One of the tangible ways that I have worked in the dark is by doing my best even when no one is looking.  I got here by using my heart because I had nothing else, no where else to go in life.  I was in the dark, so just as I became friends with the spiders, I became friends with the life force within all people.  I may see that I want to help a person and the feeling comes from that deeply integrated place within me, that dark neutral space.  I will just know that I need to help someone with something like finish a project for someone who really needs it done and either can’t do it for themselves, or would have a hard time getting it done.  An example of this is taking my elderly client to see her friend when otherwise she would not get there and no one else would know how much they need to see each other or would take time or care to understand.  Or, by placing a worm in the grass when I see it will burn in the road.  I will place the worm on the side of the road it was pointing toward so that it will have arrived at its destination.  Just things like these examples start us toward the direction of our truth in life in a more catapulted way.  When we are used to being within the current of life flowing through all, we will see, and feel all.

I believe that when we take effort to uplift one thing, another thing in our life lifts up as well.  We may not see it.  But, if we pay close attention, we will feel the life force that is running through another place within us, and from there much that is unseen is generating.  In this way we have opened the door in the dark cave that has not yet been remembered.  From here we gather more life within life.  Doors start to open letting light into those places that were forgotten.  It is revived.  It has life again.  We have life again there, which is a new extension, a new corridor to the new Self.

May we all take time to work in the dark.?