How Conscious Mastery® came to be, is a post that offers a general sweep of the mess I made of my life but, more importantly how my healing journey gave birth to Conscious Mastery®. My heartfelt desire is to help others recognize and understand what is happening in their life so they too can find their personal power and heal from whatever wounds they may have.
Through Conscious Mastery® I created a platform to share my experiences and what I learned with a wider group of people. In this way, many rather than a few, can come to recognize the energy preventing them from creating their best life.
Sharing words of wisdom can fail to reach those who may need it most. Hearing personal stories can break down some barriers because much of the pain we all go through is relatable. Not the same of course, but similar enough to know that if one can make it through the darkness then another can and another and so on. I envision a massive movement of people coming out of the dark and walking into the light of love. In future blog posts I will tell some of my specific life stories in the hope that they will inspire you, oh beautiful soul, to see that limitless possibilities to heal, to love, and to forgive exist.
Direct experience
The majority of what I share and teach comes by way of direct experience. It appears, that in this lifetime, I had a nak for doing things the hard way. I rose out of the ash like a phoenix more than once. It is my desire to shed light in such a way that you and others can grow in earnest without having to suffer unnecessarily due to a lack of knowledge, support or understanding. As always, the depth of desire and determination is up to you. The Conscious Mastery® community is growing. You are not alone.
The Phoenix
Rising out of the ash like a phoenix came on the wings of recognizing where I was and who I had become. There was no other recourse that I could see but to accept my circumstances or die in the shadows of what I could have done or could have been. I had one important question to answer and that was, do I want to live or die. After years of begging to whatever heavenly presence was listening to my plea to take me home, I discovered I did want to live after all. Next came the hardest step, the First step. Many baby steps followed, along with some great leaps now and then. The process of putting myself back together, calling home to my heart the lost fragmented parts of myself, and taking responsibility for my life had begun.
Starting from Scratch
With no road map, no idea of what I was doing, I followed my growing desire to live, and to find my voice. There were many years of a step forward, faltering, then a step or two back only to try again until I began to understand that I was responsible for the life I created. That lead to learning how to create a life worth living; a life filled with love and goodness.
Life in review
My survival instincts had gone on full alert and yet, I still had to crash and burn hitting the bottom of the bottom. No one knows how far someone must fall before making a real change to save themself, or how long they will continue groping around in the dark. I never judge.
The longer a person is in this place the more energy and determination it takes to change the situation. Momentum builds no matter the direction you are going. A loveless self-destructive path will build momentum but so will a path of love. Moving toward love felt awkward and unreal in the beginning but eventually the pull toward love took hold.
Though I have lived through many dark and challenging times I have shared very little when it comes to telling the tales. My focus was on sharing what I have learned and not much on what I overcame. The time for that level of transparency has come.
Learning to Serve Others in Some Way
In 2010 I wrote and published a book titled “Conscious Mastery®- Freedom from the Inside Out.” I state that the process of healing my physical, mental, and emotional bodies became the teachings of Conscious Mastery®. This is true and the journey continues. Since then, I have been writing blog posts on this site for some 14 years offering insights and information to help others on their journey of enlightenment.
I love writing songs. This particular love became another way that helped me heal myself. I thought if my songs can bring healing to me I could inspire others through music. To this day, I continue to write songs with conscious lyrics; a genre I call Conscious Rock, and an instrumental genre I call Intentional Groove.
Recently, I completed two on-line Courses that are now available; Conscious Mastery® Facilitator Certification course aimed toward professionals and the Conscious Mastery® Life course for all who what to take the initiative on their own to create and live a better life. See full description. Conscious Mastery® Facilitator Certification course and the Conscious Mastery® Life Course.
Intention
My intention is always to help people find their personal power and help professionals help those in their sphere of influence to consciously create a better life. When a facilitator or healer lights the way for their clients to find their personal power they have done a great job and have offered invaluable service.
Most people unconsciously create their life by default eliciting little to no personal power. Living in denial, unintentionally following patterns of behavior that are unrecognized, painful, harmful, filled with stress, disease and sorely lacking healthy self-love is living by default.
No matter where you find yourself at this moment in time you are right where you are meant to be. There is always something new to learn and a way to rise higher into the vibration of love sustainably.
The present moment holds the most power and magic. That means “now” is the best time to begin creating a better life, a life by conscious design. Begin where you are and grow to become the full expression of the beautiful “spirit filled soul” that you are.
We were born Enough. We are Enough.
When I began to heal myself, I wondered,” Why were the people in my life demanding me to be perfect, just not perfectly me? A child is supposed to feel safe. Being who you are is why we are here. We are so innocent and pure trusting caregivers to love us and have our best interest at heart.
For me personally, the learned behavior of being “something I am not” to please others grew to become a fundamental flaw that fractured my love of self. Healthy self-love is meant to nurture the authentic self in this strange new world. Without this safe space of healthy self-love, many people shun, hide, and distort or destroy their true nature. That is precisely what I did to myself. Listen to Intentional Groove, Love ThySelf to feel the healing vibration of love in Apples I-tunes.
When I believed I Was Not Enough
Consequently, a deep desire and hunger for love and approval outside myself took its place. At the time and for some time to come, I was blind to this awareness and so without fail, I would do anything, say anything, be anyone to find love and gain approval. I did so at whatever the cost to fit in somewhere, to somehow belong. Realization finally dawned showing me the cost was too high a price to pay.
This feeling and belief of never being enough had me pushing my physical body to unsafe limits. I ignored the warnings and the feelings until denial reached a pitch and a point of no return. While pretending I didn’t care how people treated me, inside I was shattering at an alarming rate. Denial kept me blind to the truth and produced a near impenetrable shell around my broken heart. Eventually, it came to pass that I wasn’t treating people well either. Wounded people hurt other people.
Recognizing Patterns
Now I can see how mean, hateful, and otherwise horrible behaviors can become the pattern from which family members carry on their brand of dysfunction. The choice to go out into the world repeating that same bad behavior energizes distorted beliefs. If they Infuse ugly patterns of behavior into the freedom of their new life away from parents or caregivers they continue the cycle of abuse. This choice literally infects their new family while adding a few twists of their own and on it goes. At some point the cycle must come to an end. The patterns must be broken.
Stop the Abuse
I did not want to repeat what I experienced and layer that vibrational signature over another thus continuing the cycle of abuse. Moreover, I did not want to live with self loathing and regret. I chose to break my family’s brand of programming that echoed abandonment, violence, along with mental and emotional abuse. As it turns out, I had to break my own added twist of dysfunction, that of addictions, created through the poor choices I made to self-medicate. Numbing and distracting myself from the pain was all I knew how to do at the time. It was survival instinct gone wrong and got way out of hand.
Two great motivations that drew me toward healing: First, I decided I did want to live and Second, I was unwilling to be the bearer of repeating behaviors that broke me knowing it would someday break someone else.
Breaking the cycle
My drive to survive began with looking for love in all the wrong places. Thankfully this transformed into the deep desire to know why I was here and who I am. My focus began with a need to heal. This lead to a desire to learn how to clear my energy field. I wanted to be free, to live my life in peace. My heart yearned for freedom, love and happiness.
For this to become real, all the changes that needed to happen made me look crazy to those who benefited from my dysfunction. There was a lot of criticism, condemnation, and taunting. The echo’s of “you will never change, you’re no good” and so on haunted me for a good long while. Through my efforts to change, I was threatening the status quo. When people benefit from your wounds, they fear losing control over you once you begin to heal. That was my experience. No longer interested in the “shut up and put up” ways of my old life everything literally fell apart and I let it crumble.
It was a hard lesson to discover that there is no support from those who say they love you yet judge you for breaking the patterns of unhealthy behaviors. Rest assured you will find supportive people through friendships and in various communities and healing modalities, as your own vibration begins to rise.
By My Own Hand
In my generation a person was considered an adult at the tender age of 18. My adulting skills were poor but there I was living as an adult already very wounded, making decisions and suffering the consequences. The greatest harm that came to me as an adult had been by my own hand. I didn’t see it that way but that doesn’t negate the truth which eventually revealed itself.
By my own hand I brought on personal harm with my self destructive, reckless behavior. I was very hard on my body abusing it in ways I would never consider today. I entertained and empowered harmful self-talk repeating what I heard as a child.
Words Have Power
Words have power and little children tend to believe their parents. I grew to believe those ugly words which spun into self-destructive thoughts and behaviors. Feeling loathsome and unsafe I buried harmful deeds imposed upon me hoping to forget that they ever happened.
There were some bright spots here and there yet so many days, months and years were spent dipping in and out of depression and despair. With no ears to hear the whispers of my heart nor eyes to see the light of day I was truly lost. I had no peace of mind. My negative self talk loops were their own kind of torture. I had to break the broken record telling me that I was hated and how horrible I was. It took considerable effort and an undying persistence. Getting a grip on the regurgitating garbage that was my brand of thinking was much like reining in wild horses. I know it can be done because I did it.
On the 4th of July 1974 I had a terrible motorcycle accident. That was when I finally discovered I was creating my reality. The “accident” proved it to me. I mention it in chapter one of my book and will write a post with more detail later this year.
Wild as it is, even that eye opener wasn’t enough. Although slow to come to it, I finally discovered what I really needed to do. I had to learn to love myself. And what a journey that has been.
Down the rabbit hole
When you travel down the rabbit hole deep enough you realize there is no one to blame and moreover blaming others keeps you stuck. That realization can be devastating or empowering depending upon how you choose to view it.
As a little girl, did I encourage abuse from my neighbor? No, of course not. I was an innocent. Did I deserve all the abuse at the hands of my mother with a father who chose not to step in and stop her? Again, no I did not. Did I choose to discover who I am and why I was suffering from self hatred, rage and more? Absolutely. We have free will and everyone can begin to make better choices no matter at what age awareness, recognition and acceptance comes.
Spice It Up
Just to add spice making life lessons so juicy, there are the players who come along to enable and enhance another’s self-destructive tendencies. Misery loves company but it is more than that. It is the vibrational signatures recognizing and attracting each others’ wounded nature. Here we have one such dance between a victim and predator.
The predator recognizes another’s light but also their vulnerability sizing up their potential victim. That right there was my story. I wanted to be loved so desperately I literally gave myself away to one energy sucker after another. I was dying a slow and painful death in the darkness of my own making. To say I grew very suspicious of people is an understatement.
Then There Are The Helpers
There are helpers too. They can take the form of earth angels (benevolent people), spirit guides, and ancestors. When the light breaks through the mental fog and pain, you will recognize a helping hand when it’s offered whether of this world or beyond. Eventually, I came to realize that all my experiences were bringing closer to my heart. All of it, the experiences and the choices I made brought me to where I am today.
Could I have done it quicker, sooner, easier? I don’t know because that was not the way it happened for me. What I do know is this, I was led to some amazing healers both earthly and otherworldly. I am forever grateful and very happy that I was open enough to accept assistance and trust those that showed up in my life. The helping hand, wise counsel and healing energy always seemed to come when I needed it most.
One such healer helped me twice. I will address this in another post. His name is Scott Silverston. Scott is a leader in the international Shamanic Teaching Community serving students and clients in dozens of countries around the world. To learn more Scott and what he has to offer visit his web-site ShamanicSpiritMedicine He published a book called ” Voices of the Earth An Oracle of the Web of Life” You can find it following this link. As always, stay open to the mysterious journey called life. You never know where it can lead you.
Waking up and reaching out
There comes a time when denial no longer works. We all hit that wall whether consciously or unconsciously through our creation of drama, accidents, disease, or some type of loss that grabs our attention.
My shadows were spilling out left and right and my life was a total train wreck. A time of reckoning had come. A choice had beckoned me to take heed and answer the simple question. Do you want to live or die? My heart was shattered, my body was broken and there was no place to hide from the wreckage I created. I ran out of time and options and discovered rock bottom is hard ground to land upon.
The look of it all
Getting a glimpse of the darkness that was my life was no easy thing to see. But once seen I could not unsee it. Change takes a world of strength and courage, but the good news is that everyone has a well spring of courage and strength just waiting to be tapped. I began to consciously put the pieces of my fragmented Self back together.
Slow but sure I learned to love, to forgive, to grow anew, expanding my consciousness through awareness and, to grow emotionally. I chose to spend much time in nature, walking, meditating and reading material that I was attracted to for my healing journey. For decades I have been writing in my journal to untangle my feelings and get a handle on my thoughts. Creative energy flowing through me has produced poetry, paintings, music and songs. All of this I still do. Creativity is a great change agent.
Shift up
I have been blessed by many who, by the grace of All That Is, came into my life at the perfect time and were gone in a flash. I have no doubt they were answers to my prayers. Never give up or give in, stay the course and miracles will abound.
I experienced shifts in my vibration and with it, what I would call miracles. It was and is important to me to understand the nuances and meaning of changing frequencies, how to anchor the new higher vibration and how to recognize the next shift in my ever-expanding consciousness.
Each time I feel a shift in my frequency I take the time to integrate and anchor this new vibration. In the earlier stages, I realized momentum was building in favor of love. This gave me increased hope and determination to continue and to lighten up as much as possible with each opportunity.
For many years my interest revolved around healing myself therefore, I gave no thought to teaching, writing a book or sharing. It just didn’t occur to me because it was not time. When it was time, I was slow to come to the starting line.
The Roots of Self Awareness
I realized that each time the roots of self-awareness thrust deeper into my heart something new was revealed while something old rattled to the surface calling for freedom. Another wall tumbles down releasing shadows that seek the light. I have experienced this many times and each time I am in awe of the workings and beauty of my inner landscape.
Conscious Mastery® was born so far from the shores of where I began and yet in some mysterious way brought me back to the heart of myself. Now I am in love with my precious life. It is a blessing I once wanted to throw away. I hope that some of what I share resonates with you so you too will lighten up enough to you see your true beautiful authentic Self.
Over the past many years I continue to take time to listen to my heart, patiently, trusting, feeling for the breeze of guidance which always comes but in its own time not mine. Then I set my sail once again to begin a new day.
The adventure continues. With love and tender care, all wounds can be healed and life gets better. A whole new world awaits. Welcome to the Conscious Mastery® community.
Love Astara
