Soul

Welcome to a journey of self-discovery, self-management, and a complete change in the way your life will start to unfold as you apply some basic principles and truths to becoming a spiritual being.

You have chosen this book, yet you may not entirely be sure as to why you have been drawn to these pages; however, these pages may have been drawn to you. An awakening is occurring on our beloved planet Earth, and within this time, a great change has been slowly washing over us, yet at times we have not known exactly what this was or even meant.

You, my friend, are part of a bigger picture, a plan that is so unique to just you that during our relationship between these pages, you will start to truly see how magnificent you and your light can be.

My journey began several years ago in Perth, Western Australia. I discovered a great gift hiding inside me for all these years, and on further examination and then development, my gift of vision, sight, hearing, and a knowing of our world and the world beyond became very clear to me. As a spiritual teacher, Reiki master, intuitive healer, and medium, my work offers such a diverse range; a beautiful spectrum of people seek my counsel, knowledge, and guidance. It is during these past years that I have become more aware of the need to have basic training, a deeper explanation as to what is occurring within each person, hence the reason behind this book. However, at this point, I must thank some of my guides, for without their direction, these words would have not started to take shape and provide you with a book to use as a reference, universal knowledge, counsellor, and friend. It is this, all thoughts and questions that I hear every day, that I wish to explore further with you. By giving yourself these gifts, you are giving yourself the greatest present in your life: you.

These pages before you will contain a deeper understanding of how best to access and use your hidden gifts — yes, the ones that perhaps you don't think are there at all, yet we will discover them, pull them out, and start to make them work for you. To fully appreciate just how unique you are, let's take a closer look at your life to this moment, for shortly everything you thought you knew about yourself will alter. A fresh and unique perspective will show you another way, a brighter, happier, and more comfortable way to be you. At this moment, you are likely aware that you are interested in spirituality, some may even say curious. Others may be thinking borderline crazy. Yet something has driven your attention to look at this book — perhaps the cover or the back page. It all started to intrigue you somehow. I don't take offence to those that perhaps wanted to read this to throw their own judgement out to the universe or even to me directly. This is your life. It is time you started to live your life as you wish. Whichever mindset you are currently in is perfect; the result will be the same. As you're reading this book, you can absorb the information and then choose what you like or don't like and move along in your life just as you always have been or perhaps something will resonate with you. You may just say, "I get it. I can understand something from someone else's perspective."

In writing for you, I have deliberately chosen not to slowly start off with pages of information about me and my background. You are, at this moment in time, more important, and I am sure you did not intend to pick up this book and waste your valuable energy reading all about someone that you probably don't know too well when in fact, in your mind, you're screaming at these pages, "Will you just get on with it? Get to the point!"

You are such a remarkable being. Your DNA is solely unique to you. You have your own personality, your quirky little things, a different way of looking at life. You are so very unique that you must congratulate yourself on just being you. There is no one in this world just like you — even if you are a twin or even a quad, you will still have your very own little spark that makes you the person you are. It is this little spark that intrigues me, for it is this, an essence, an energy deep within us, that makes us so unique. You know the feeling in your tummy when you make a decision. If it feels right, you feel happy and elated; your tummy talks to you. Yet if a decision feels wrong or uncomfortable, we feel it perhaps as a sinking or heavy feeling within our tummies. This is the real you. This energy deep inside is what makes you so unique. We know it as your soul, an everlasting aspect that is here to explore, challenge, and understand this crazy place called earth and, even deeper, the meaning of life.

For those that are already feeling a little overwhelmed, I would like to backtrack just a bit to explain my perspective on what a soul is. You see, we choose our lives; we choose our families. As souls, it is our job to experience as many things as we possibly can, so we are perhaps sitting around on fluffy clouds and just chilling and hanging out with all the other souls. One soul — who can only see, hear, and sense what is happening here on earth — turns to another soul and suggests that it would be fun to actually experience what it feels like to do what it can only see and watch. The other soul puts some thought into this and agrees, so together they decide what they would like to experience. The first soul says that it really likes watching those boats on the water with the big sails; it would like to feel the wind on its body. The second soul, now a little more excited about the whole process, decides that although this one experience might be nice, what would the other soul learn from it? This conversation keeps going back and forth. In fact, the first soul decides that to really experience this boat thing would perhaps be a good challenge to start with and then they would see where things go. At this point, the second soul decides to help its friend and agrees to go to earth and be a person who will assist in making this dream of sailing on a boat a reality.

Now, this is the childlike version, and I do not mean to be disrespectful to your intelligence. It is just that when we are learning new things, sometimes having them explained in an easy to understand manner helps cement the rest of the information. At this moment, we are building the foundation, so it is critical that your foundation and this information are clear.

For this exercise, as our souls have chosen to come to earth together, we find a deep desire within us to be on the water, a yearning that is so strong but we don't know why (part of the deal upon coming to earth is that you have to get your "soul memory" wiped. Bummer!). All through this soul's life was a deep connection and desire to be on the water, then along comes soul two, perhaps as a mate that shares a same passion or perhaps a partner. This is where spirits start to get clever. All of our lives are focused on what we want to achieve, what we want to experience, and all of those experiences, including the other souls that signed up to help us, will be there for us.

If we start to expand on this concept and if we use your life, you already might be able to pick a handful of people that are with you to help you learn something, to help you experience and grow, including those family members that may not be your closest friends. They came to help you, to start shaping you into being the person you want to be. If you did not have these experiences, perhaps you would not be where you are today. Also, you may still be waiting for something to happen, something to change, but this is where our soul stories really starts to become alive. As this soul, you get to choose what you want to experience. So as we said, we gave soul one just one experience, and then we said, let's try that and see what happens next ... Are you still with me? Do you understand why the foundation, our concrete, is so important? As this soul, you chose one thing then you get to choose what you want to experience next.

In actual universal law, it is a little more complex than this. We not only come to experience but to learn to grow and move on from these experiences. We may have a few experiences on our lists, and they may also cover more than physical or emotional experiences. For our souls to grow, we may need harder challenges, more than what seems like a normal fair share in one lifetime.

The basis of this is to understand that many of our most challenging experiences on earth were pre determined while we were a soul in spirit. Therefore our actual life challenge is how best to learn and move through these challenges as a human being.

Feeling

Part of being a soul here on earth is to grow, to take on new challenges and also experience as much as we can or choose to. Some of you may be saying, "Well, that's fine. So we are little souls that come to take on challenges on earth. How is that going to help me pay the rent, find a relationship that is meaningful, and so on? You see, this is the next part. We choose what we want to experience, and I literally mean this. Your mind is so incredibly powerful, and the universe is set up like one giant computer. You put a thought in and then the computer receives it, analyses it, and sends it back to you! That is quite literally how we work; the complexity of it comes when we can fully appreciate just how accurate this giant computer is.

Let's start with what could be a typical human day. Perhaps you wake up in the morning feeling a little sluggish. It's cooler weather, and you may have stayed up longer than expected the night before. So already your physical body is complaining to you, "I don't want to get out of bed. I'm cold and I'm tired." Because our physical bodies are connected to our emotional bodies, this energy starts to act out even more of what we have physically felt so emotionally that we become snappy or grumpy. Our emotional bodies are connected to our mental bodies, so this starts to become aware of these feelings — feeling unhappy, tired, and cold — and starts to send this out to the big computer, yet before it reaches this computer, it must go through our spiritual bodies. So your spiritual body hits the send button and off goes your request to the big computer. And you haven't even gotten out of bed yet!

All day you are walking around tired, cold, and grumpy, and the coffee isn't working. Then your whole mental picture that you gave yourself for the morning starts a process for the rest of the day. Work is tiring, this person is grumpy, I'm late, that car is getting in my way, all these red lights ... Argh!

Now let's just breathe. I don't know about you, but I'm exhausted just reading that stuff! Yet you live this; every day you live in your thoughts, your thoughts literally creating your experience.

Let's see how we can change that morning and what will happen if we do. To be fair, we will still give the same scenario. We went to bed a little too late, and perhaps it is raining and cold. On waking, we snuggle down into the Doona before that snooze button really starts to get serious. We take a moment, a simple moment of ref lection for us. Wow, it's cool and wet. At this point, we are still just waking, taking a moment to feel how we are today. My body feels all right. Tonight I will make sure I get to bed a little earlier so I am fully rested. I feel cool and cosy under my Doona. Wow, I can wear that great winter jacket that hasn't had much attention. Physically we are still sending the same message that it's cold and wet; however, we have altered the attitude. Saying that we can now wear that great outfit puts a positive spin on the weather, so then emotionally we start to feel excited, which triggers our mental bodies to start processing to the computer. We feel excited. Our spiritual bodies then hit send, and we start our morning feeling excited.

So can you see how a moment of ref lection, just you time, asking yourself how you feel today, having a little conversation with yourself mentally, even if physically the cat is scratching you and the kids are jumping all over you, can mentally put you in wonderland. Physically you may need to book a massage!

With a simple process of stop, feel, process, act, we can alter a turn of events. Our days can go from chaos to peaceful sanctuary depending on how we think. Understanding this great power of your mind can truly make life- changing realities possible.

Most of my clients, if given a similar scenario, will of course state the obvious: "Oh, that's nice for you, Nance, but I don't get that kind of time for me in the mornings." Well, even in my wonderland waking, I am conscious that my kids haven't quite learnt these skills yet and the cat seems to think if there is no food in the bowl. My chin will be second best to food! You create; you are the master of your thoughts and your mind. Helping to see how the process works will help you to slow down, giving yourself permission to have a moment to yourself. If you consciously choose to change, you will reap the rewards. A day started by being conscious of what you are saying to yourself in your head can make a difference. Of course, your kids will still be themselves, but when you start to alter your thoughts, others pick up on this information and start to notice the changes within you.

Mum isn't as grumpy in the mornings. Have you noticed she doesn't get mad anymore? I've caught my kids almost conspiring together — they start to feel the positive benefits of my being calmer and more aware of myself in the mornings. You can try this exercise in the morning and it will probably be quite fitting, as you will have read way too late because you are so enthralled with these pages.

At this point, you may have also become aware that I make reference to your body and also your feelings. This is how we are. We have lost this ability over time to actually feel our way through a day. We tend to go straight to the mental, which is getting dangerously close to the send button in our spiritual bodies, quickly creating what we want. When we slow down and allow time to feel, we are better able to process or make an informed, more accurate decision. Then we have more confidence to act because we are not second-guessing ourselves. How many times would you hastily make a decision and then spend a good majority of the remainder of a day worrying if you made the right decision, wasting valuable energy and computer processing time, when you could have slowed down the whole process momentarily, allowing yourself to feel, allowing a slight stillness to give you guidance that this is the correct decision. Then you are more easily able to let the entire experience go. You have nothing to hold on to for the rest of the day because you took the extra time to make sure you felt comfortable with that decision in the first place.

So if we move beyond our waking experience and start to consciously be aware of our thoughts for the remainder of the day, we find an easier way to live. Let's go into an office situation and experience the interaction with other people. It may be easier to be calmer in your morning, yet add the pressure and frustration of other people and our day starts to crumble. We cannot change other people. We can change ourselves, and as we have already discovered, it is in our thoughts that we start to make this change, so give yourself time. The first day at the office may not go exactly as you would like — that idiot from the other department is still giving you grief — but we consciously start to become aware of what we are thinking. Break it down. What are you sending your computer? It hears "idiot." Your computer sends you what you think so guess what ... Idiot! (Allow others the same respect you would give yourself. You are not an idiot, so why should some guy you don't even really know be one?)

So stop yourself. Staying with the computer theme, Control-Alt-Delete. Change how you word your thoughts. So consciously you say, "Gee, that guy from the other department is a challenge." Computer gets "challenge." So you may find your day becoming more "challenging." How can we create a better day? That guy from the other department is trying to be helpful. Computer gets "helpful." Can you see how what we say is so important?

This is not easy. We are already programmed a certain way, and now we need to reboot and start all over again. The good news is that we get time, another unique gift on earth. So what we put in takes a little while for the computer to process and get back to us, hence the reason Control-Alt-Delete is so helpful. We are basically becoming aware of our thoughts and cancelling any negatives and replacing with a better option.