4 Easy ways to increase your spiritual abilities

1. Clearing chakras. Get some energy work done. In any energy healing practice (reiki, crystal healing, pranic healing, etc.) attention is paid to the state of the chakras and clearing them of residual, stuck or stagnant energy that resides in them. As these old blockages are freed through the channeling of energy through each of your chakras and in turn through the entire chakra system, energy that no longer serves you is released, thus clearing you to be open to the information constantly flowing to you from Spirit. Learn more about how to clear your own chakras here.

2. Open your ear chakras. How do you differentiate the voices in your head? Well, for one thing it is helpful to begin to notice all of the different ones you’re hearing in there. A great way to practice this is to listen to classical music. Really? Yes. A symphony is a combination of different musical instruments with their own lines of music interweaving together to produce one multilayered sound. Try listening to the same Mozart piece a few times, focusing on a different instrument each time. This really trains your ear to hear the difference between what your ego, your Spirit and your Guides and Angels all sound like, as they are all unique sounds and different vibrations, just like instruments.

3. Get better at noticing details. Noticing signs and communicating with Spirit is all about learning to recognize subtlety. Spirit communicates using visual and audio cues and gives you impressions and sensations that can be easy to miss if you aren’t paying attention. So the more you can increase your ability to notice details, the more you will hone your Spirit communication skills. When you are able to clearly remember and explain things that you see, hear and feel, you increase your ability to identify your experiences with Spirit as well as communicate what you are receiving from them, whether that is for yourself or others. Easy practice: in the next conversation you have with someone, try to remember and repeat the conversation word for word after the fact. Challenge yourself to recall every item of clothing, as well as the facial expressions and vocal intonations used. This is a great way to strengthen your ability to pick up detail and subtlety, which are essential parts of any communication with Spirit. By default you also will improve your communication skills with your friends and family still here on Earth, which is always a plus!

4. Fine tune your ability to sense differences in energy. One of the most overlooked abilities is clairsentience, or the ability to feel Spirit. An easy way to heighten your sensitivity of the energy you feel is to practice holding your focus on different objects at a time. Try this with things that exude natural life force – crystals, plants and rocks are great objects to use. Try closing your eyes and holding one of these in your hands for 3-5 minutes. Just focus on what you are receiving from each object. Describe each one either on paper or out loud. You will be surprised at how much you pick up! You can also practice this using other people’s jewelry and keys – items that are handled frequently hold a lot of energy.

The key to all of these exercises is to do them with a sense of play, fun and imagination. The more you allow yourself to relax and enjoy, the more you will get out of it!

with love,

Ashley

Dark night of the soul

I recently found myself at a bookstore and as I was wandering around I heard my Guides say "Sonia Choquette". OK, I know who she is, in fact I read two of her books  "The Psychic Pathway” and "Ask Your Guides" when I first began my Spiritual path, but I hadn't really looked at her latest book "Walking Home". But I listened to my guides, picked it up and read the intro over some tea.

Well, the first bit of the book illuminated something truly fundamental to what a spiritual path is all about. Sonia Choquette recently experienced a time in her life when suddenly everything was in question. After the death of her father and then her brother, she began a period of deep inner reflection. She explains that her life, her priorities and even her marriage were no longer honest representations of her Spirit. She felt disconnected from her self, so she decided to walk the famous and ancient pilgrimage in Spain, the Camino. She committed to walking this trek to help herself find forgiveness and healing but most of all; she was seeking reconnection to her true self, her Spirit. Sonia was facing a dark night of the soul.

I believe that we all have these moments of reckoning, and they come no matter who you are, how evolved you are or how successful or not successful you are. For me, this moment was also precipitated by a death, the death of my younger brother to a drug overdose. When he was gone, I realized that I had been living my life by defining myself by all of the hardships I had overcome. I was suddenly tired of all of those old tales about pain, fear and hardships of my childhood. I realized that all of the time I spent with my therapist rehashing the past was essentially reinforcing all of the things, people and events that I most needed to release. I began to question myself: wasn't there more to me than just an accumulation of experiences, triumphs and hardships? Every time I looked in the mirror or talked about my life I heard the same stories, saw the same images, felt the same relived over pain again and again. Why was I doing this? I could feel it was time to let go of the past. But I was afraid – I didn’t know who I was without all of my familiar stories. How could I let go of everything that I thought made me who I was? But I knew I had release the past to in order to go on. I was facing my dark night of the soul.

A dark night of the soul is often the beginning of a spiritual awakening. The soul will arrange the circumstances necessary to get you to become conscious of yourself and your life in a new way. Often these circumstances are a series of extreme events that challenge you to your core. Your soul creates events that force you to see more of the picture of who you are than you have been seeing – it makes you break down the images, thoughts and narrative you have constructed about your life. Often these challenges come in the form of illnesses, deaths and the dissolution of relationships.  Your Soul does this not to punish you, but to help you discover how much more there is to you than the stories you have been telling yourself. It makes you find the light through the darkness.

A dark night of the soul is about opening to the truth behind the truth-it is about looking beyond what you think you know about yourself and opening to the real truth that your Spirit is wise and powerful and has so much more to offer than any self-victimization or aggrandizement that your ego could ever invent. When you begin to reach down within and question everything about yourself; when you can be honest and see that there is something missing in your life; when you sift through the layers of half-truths and when you feel the darkest; is when your soul is reaching for the light.

Why does it need to be so uncomfortable? Well, think about your belief system before you opened to Spirit. Was there room for belief in your Spirit as an eternal soul on a path of growth? Was there space for your Guides, Angels and Loved Ones? Probably not. Chances are there wasn’t much room there at all to accept that you are a Spirit inside a body, that you have a team of Spiritual supporters guiding, assisting and loving you towards your Highest and greatest good at all times. Sometimes our Spirits need us to break down our existing belief structure in order to build it anew from the Light within.

Sonia Choquette's pilgrimage is a great metaphor for the path we are all on: heading towards that unburdening and revelation of the soul within. It is also a poignant reminder that no matter where we are on our life path, here on earth we are all here to grow, to evolve and to learn. Sonia is wise enough to admit that the Spiritual pathway is a life long one, for all of us.  When your life reaches that critical moment where everything seems like it is just falling apart, try to remember that is precisely when you are closer to your Spirit than ever before. If you feel yourself in this place, take heart and know there are many who walk those dark hallways with you, and we come out the other side.

Remember, it is through these trials that we find our real truth about the power and the Light within.

with love,

Ashley

Changes in relationships when you open to Spirit

When I first began receiving messages from Spirit and sharing them, I had a mixed bag of reactions from my close friends and family. Some people were eager to hear all about it and even more. Some cautiously opened up to it and then became enthusiastic and others...not so much.

One of the most challenging lessons I have learned as I embraced my Spirituality was that not everyone was going to like it, and I had two choices: I could go back on myself and hide or I could just own it, step up and brush off the negative vibes and disapproval.

One particular instance stands out for me as a challenging one, but one that ultimately helped me to see both my friend and myself in a new light. One of my very dear and long time friends had lost her mom a few years ago. Since then she and I discussed my work as a medium, and she was fine with it in principal. Our friendship pretty much stayed as it always had. Then, it happened. Her mom came to me with beautiful messages for my friend. I received them and held on to them for a little while before saying anything. I knew this was delicate and I really pondered whether it was a good idea to tell my friend about it. I wasn’t sure if she would be receptive. I also understand that it is one thing to know someone’s a medium, but it’s another to personally receive messages from a Loved One you said a long and painful goodbye to years before. But ultimately I felt responsible as the holder of sensitive information, I trusted that the messages had come for a reason and I felt my friend should at least have the opportunity to decide whether or not she wanted to hear them.

So, I broached the subject with my friend and asked her if she wanted to hear what I received. I told her it was fine with me if she did hear them and fine with me if she didn’t. Either way no matter what, it was OK. She said OK, why not? So I gave them.

Well, her reaction was not what I had hoped. She turned on me and attacked me personally. She wanted me to apologize for giving them to her, that the messages didn’t do anything for her and that I forced myself on her. I was really hurt by her reaction and I immediately felt what we all feel in those situations – a desire to instantly react and give my side of the story. But, I asked my Guides and Angels what the best course of action would be. They told me to wait. To not rush into action – to give myself time to process the information and then decide how I wanted to respond.

This was the best guidance I could possibly have gotten. It was so counter to my natural inclination and my habit of behavior that it was actually really difficult for me to follow, but I did. I waited. I let my emotions run their course. I talked it out with my husband and with another trusted friend and medium who had been through a very similar situation.

What I realized by taking some time to process this situation was that my friend was reacting to the messages, not to me. Her emotions were stirred up and she was having a lot of feelings about what was in those messages and the only way she knew how to process them was to lash out at the messenger. This realization gave me the understanding I needed to respond to her compassionately and not to react in anger.

As you begin your path and eventually tell others in your life about your belief system and experiences, you too may experience different reactions. Understand that this is to be expected and try to keep in mind that this is not only and all about you. Remember that other people’s reactions are usually a reflection of their own ability or inability to accept something new to them. They may have a belief system that simply cannot entertain yours. You know what? That’s OK – respect them for where they are on their life path, open your heart to forgiveness and compassion and try to see that maybe their reaction is telling you about them, not so much about you.

When you feel personally attacked it can be hard to take a breath, step back and not react. But Spirit consistently guides us to see the larger picture and to give others room to be themselves. This doesn’t mean you tolerate abuse, but it does mean you can give others the space for their beliefs and ask them to do the same for yours.

Cultivate some new friendships. Ask your Angels and Guides to lead you to new to like-minded people, and they will!

With love,

Ashley

What are Guides and Angels REALLY for?

You have heard about Guides and Angels and you probably have been working on opening your connection to them. Let’s look at what they really are here for and how they impact our lives beyond the first steps of connection.

Welcome Home!

The first thing Guides and Angels do is to usher you into the world of Spirit. It is by learning to communicate with them that you begin to open your entire awareness to the world of Spirit and all it has to offer. They are your first contact, your home team, your spiritual base and foundation. When you begin having regular communication with your Guides and Angels you figure a lot of things out about how you specifically receive information from Spirit. You discover what your Angels and Guides’ preferred signs are and what their specific energy feels like to you. All of this information lays the groundwork for your Spiritual practice. Getting to know your Guides and Angels is a bit like meeting relatives you always heard about but have never met. They are family – your family. Your Spiritual support team love and support you no matter what. They can help you find the best choices in all circumstances and they never tire of helping, guiding and sending your love and support.

What’s next?

As your connection with them deepens over time and as you begin to ask more and more guidance in different areas of your life, Guides and Angels respond in kind. They work to cultivate their connection with you by providing more insight, greater explanations and more opportunities to see your life from a higher perspective. This means they start to give you more and more information about area in your life that are ready for growth, expansion and change. This is not always easy to hear, or to follow.

The Big Picture

Often times when we seek guidance from those in Spirit we are trying to understand an issue in our lives, trying to resolve something or are attempting to gain greater insight into a situation that lacks clarity. Guides and Angels help us see the forest through the trees; they help us to see the bigger picture at work. Because they are in the Spirit Realm, they have the great advantage of being in the position of seeing the array of choices laid out in front of us. They have shown this bigger picture to me like as from a bird’s eye view: they can see how everything interconnects. They can see which rivers connect to the ocean and which end in small ponds. With their higher perspective, Guides and Angels assist us in seeing that our lives are actually intricately woven tapestries, as opposed to a series of isolated events. They come through to connect the dots; to help us see the larger patterns and reasons for the conditions and relationships in our lives. With our eyes open to the whole picture, we are then able to see the through-line, the patterns, the interwoven fabric of our lives and choose our actions with this larger picture in mind.

The Truth behind the truth

Oftentimes we think we know why things are the way that they are in our lives, and that we know the whole truth about the events that happen and the people close to us. But usually there is another deeper truth behind that first truth. Spirit helps us to see that real truth. They help us find the real reason why things are the way they are. They are able to look beyond the surface, the obvious, and the things we tell ourselves to explain why things are the way they are. For example, I have a client who is constantly finding herself in situations where she feels not valued by others. She has a really hard time feeling any self worth for herself and feels constantly mistreated by others. For many years she had looked to her parents for the reasons behind this and she blamed a tough childhood for her lack of self worth. In a reading, her Guides and Angels came through to show her that in fact her soul has chosen to repeatedly put her in situations and relationships where she had to go within to find and insist upon her self worth. They showed her that her soul had chosen her unloving parents because her soul knew they would offer her precisely the challenge she needed in order to truly find her inner strength, her self value and worth. In this way, Guides and Angels can help us to see the larger soul truth behind the surface truth we so often can’t see beyond.

As you deepen your relationship with Spirit; as you listen and follow and ask again for what best serves you and how you can see the value in your challenges, you may find that following Spirit guidance pushes your boundaries and challenges you to go beyond your comfort zone. This is because your Guides and Angels see how truly beautiful, magnificent and powerful your soul is and they are here to help you be true to your real self. So like good coaches, their guidance pushes you to be the best you can be on every level.

As you work through this, keep in mind that the saying “you reap what you sow” applies here. As you move beyond those first amazing steps of opening on your Spiritual pathway when all is flowers, light and love, you learn that there is another layer of more fertile soil beneath those flowers. As your relationship with Spirit grows and deepens, the work you do with your Guides and Angels reaches deeper into your soul and the transformation you experience grows in richness and depth.

Take your work with your Guides Angels to the next level in a private reading or coaching session!

With love,

Ashley