Capítulo 9. PROFUNDIZANDO TU CAPACIDAD DE AMAR.

 

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9

Deepening Your Capacity to Love 

Deepening your capacity to love is central to emotional and spiritual growth. It necessitates self-acceptance, which is based on your ability to overcome doubt and to forgive yourself for past failings or transgressions. It includes trusting yourself. It involves honoring yourself for who you have become and for all that you have been through, challenges overcome, and victories achieved, whether small or large. It requires dispelling the illusion that you ever needed to earn your value and instead come to realize that you had intrinsic worth all along. It then entails applying these lessons and prioritizing and caring for yourself, learning to say no, and setting boundaries.

 Your deepened capacity to love eventually blossoms into self-love. It is neither easily achieved nor permanent and must itself be cultivated and reinforced. But once you have reached this point, you begin to awaken to your divine essence.

 *  *  *

In the cases that follow, you will see the importance of self-love and the role it plays in the process of deepening your capacity for love.

But first, we hear from Tina's spirit guide who tantalizes with the bliss that awaits as you awaken to your divine essence.

 

Tina

 Demetri, a spirit guide working with a woman named Tina, offered the following to further an understanding about awakening one’s divine essence.

  Yes, you are correct that God is absolute love.

It is God’s intention that you manifest love through your relationships. God works through people, not things, and thus interactions are essential. It is intended that through these associations you will connect as one.

As humans, you are sent into life to have interactions with others, to learn to love yourselves so that you can remember your divine essence. That’s why you are created.

Human interactions and relationships provide an excellent way to develop your capacity for love. They offer an opportunity to learn about love and how to function within the continuum of love. Doing so brings you closer to God.

You need to remove emotional blocks, as well as stop being afraid. You need to learn to be okay with yourself. Self-acceptance is important. Stop being dismissive of yourself. Learn to value and trust yourself.

 Demetri’s parting words amplify his earlier more practical advice.

 Each person holds the energy of a supernova. Feel that connection. So much change can happen if you connect to it.

 *  *  *

In this next case, we are introduced to Gabriela. Like Ofelia, who you met in the previous chapter, her soul plan has been designed to deepen her capacity for love by learning self-love. 

Gabriela 

Gabriela is a 42-year-old human resource manager who is planning to launch her own professional development firm. She is single, after an eight-year relationship with Xandru ended. It had been her hope that they would marry. This most recent loss cascaded on her father’s abandonment decades ago, leaving her distraught and struggling to comprehend the spiritual lessons she had planned for this lifetime.

 In the first of a series of sessions, Gabriela visits a past life on the American plains in the early 19th century. Early in life she established herself as strong, courageous, and fiercely independent. Her life was filled with many richly rewarding experiences before marrying in her mid-forties. Her husband became gravely ill. This caused panic and fear that he would die before her. She is aware her worries seem incongruous with the independent spirit that has been the hallmark of her life.

 In soul state, she is greeted by her soul friends who are laughing, saying see, we told you so. The inference does not escape her. She remembers that she is still trying to heal from an even earlier life in which she died very young. It was a happy life in which she had planned to accomplish great things, but tragically, it was cut short. She notes.

 I am being held back. Death is cheating me. Either I die before my time, or someone I love dies before I am ready to lose them. It’s just not fair! There is this bigger plan, but I don’t know what it is. I just wish I knew. I just want to make sense of the bigger plan. My guide tells me I must be patient, but I’m impatient.

 Gabriela’s higher self admits that she sometimes wonders what is the point of living and what is the point of loving if it leads to loss. She sees how in her current life these beliefs may be playing out.

 I’m always scared that if I love someone too much, they will die.

 At the same time, Gabriela’s higher self acknowledges that she needs to be more patient and accept that she can’t control everything. Strength and courage will enable obstacles to be overcome.

Gabriela returned several weeks later for her life between lives session. She moves easily into a deep trance. In the womb before birth, her higher self shares that her upcoming life will be filled with challenges. But it will also be a life in which she will find happiness.

 I know that I will set an example for others and help people understand what love really is.

 Other details unfold as the session progresses.

Before moving into the interlife, she briefly visits a past life on a Caribbean Island. She is a man named Xelu living with his wife. They are slaves on a sugar plantation. Their two small children were taken and sold as slaves and sent away.

 We will be killed if we rise up.

 Xelu moves ahead to his last day. He is 50 years old and lays dying of an infection in the presence of his loving wife. Released from his agony, he floats out of his body. Looking back on his life, he shares:

 I feel satisfied with my life. Although I wasn’t free, I chose to be kind to others and did not wallow in anger. I learned how to be happy despite my external circumstances.

 Reaching the interlife, Gabriela meets her spirit guide Scion. She learns that she has had 70 lifetimes, mostly on earth. She sees the five souls who are a part of her study group. They are very close and have been working together for some time.

We hear from her higher self.

 We are working on understanding love and acceptance. We formed as a group to study the theme of love. We have been studying it for a long time. We all have different views. My view is different from the conventional understanding of what love is.

 I am exploring how labels change our expectations of love. Outside of those labels, we must allow love to take its own shape and form. It includes acceptance. For example, if I call someone my spouse, it comes with certain expectations and obligations that should not be a part of what love is. Because love is freedom, and it is also truly accepting people for who they are and not trying to change them.

 Love cannot be defined by one thing, one person, or one view. It has many sides, both good and bad.

 In my prior life as the slave Xelu, I was looking for perspective on how to feel empathy toward someone who did not know what he was doing. It took me a while to work through my feelings of anger and my beliefs that it was unfair. Eventually, I realized that he just didn’t know any better.

I had to learn acceptance and forgiveness toward those who took and enslaved my children. I overcame my bitterness because I knew that otherwise it would lead to continued suffering.

 After this lengthy discussion with Gabriela’s higher self, Scion shares his view on her soul’s plan relative to love and relationships. His tough love approach to being a guide becomes apparent as he matter-of-factly rattles off a long list of challenges facing Gabriela.

 She wants to learn not to place expectations on others and to let others be free to take their own journeys. She needs to be less impatient. She needs to let go of the desire to control outcomes. She has trouble understanding and making sense of the bigger plan and would like to control things more.

She hopes and wants things to happen on a certain schedule. But the more she gets impatient, the longer it will take her to advance her patience. It’s about learning to let go and to be patient.

 This incarnation is an opportunity to work on love. The experience of losing love is just another way that you learn about love.

 Through Scion’s comments, Gabriela has come to understand that dying of a broken heart in a past life is just one example of a way that we learn to deepen our capacity to love. So too is a life in which love is lost through death or abandonment. There are many other examples, and all are opportunities to learn about love in relationship with another. As we do so, our capacity for love deepens.

 With prodding, Scion adds.

 In her relationship with Xandru, she worked very hard on these lessons and has made a lot of progress. She will have a lifelong partner when the time is right.

 Gabriela secured an understanding about her life plan and how it fits within her soul’s eternal interest and journey. She uncovered specific information about the spiritual lessons she had planned for this lifetime and the cohorts who are helping her acquire this wisdom.

Although the hope of finding a life partner was reinforced, she was frustrated that the detail on this was limited. She knows that patience is not yet a strong suit.

 Although she experienced Scion as far from warm and comforting, she found his insights valuable. With his help, her current struggles and disappointments were placed into context.

In the future, understanding what her soul hoped she would accomplish in this lifetime will serve her well. She knows to achieve this she will need to step back and allow her higher self to direct her decisions and actions.

Like many, Gabriela’s experience with love has been in relationship to the others who she has loved. Although she and her soul group are working to understand love and acceptance of others, they have yet to learn self-love. As she deepens her capacity to love, loving herself will take center stage.

 *  *  *

Ishtok, who is Gertrudis’s spirit guide, both of whom we met in Chapter Five, offered his thoughts on this very issue.

 There is a difference between the love you experience as a human and the love you experience at Home. For the majority, human love manifests as familial, romantic, or friendship. In terms of romantic love, you have the added influence of the sexual energy. The mix can intensify both the yearning and grasping.

There are some who can bring the higher, unconditional love from Home into human life. There is a sweetness to it when this happens.

In the world of contrast on Earth, this is a much more challenging thing to experience. Conditional love is relevant in the earthly world and necessary to help you make decisions, to know right and wrong. Unconditional love is relevant in the spirit realm. Both are precious.

         The remembrance of unconditional love from the spirit realm leads humans to yearn for it and in turn to try and find it in their relationships. They look for it, but it is very rare to find it. Even though the sweetness of unconditional love cannot be experienced fully on earth, the recall of its joy and wonder fuel incessant searches.

During incarnation, we are educated by our group. We are told what is good and what is bad. We also come in with memories that are imprinted in the history of the lineage of our DNA. You come into human life to work on certain things. Confidence, for example, is a sign of self-love. Fears are a reflection of the lack of self-love. You combine these things together, and you can understand the challenges to being able to love yourself in this realm.

It’s a decision that must be made by the person to accept whatever the circumstances that lead them to a lack of love. If, for instance, they made some mistake but refused to accept that they did the best they could, that is an example of not being able to love oneself.

 In the spirit world, there is just no problem with that. We are showered with love. Even when we come back broken, we are showered in love from the Divine. Self-love is not a challenge in the interlife.

 There are millions who have yet to awaken to their divine essence. Remembering is not automatic. It takes motivation and concerted effort across many lifetimes. Many things get in the way. Some are struggling to survive. Others are working to overcome challenges or trauma. While still others are distracted by the joys of the human adventure on earth.

 Regardless of your individual pace, you can be comforted knowing that the journey you set out on eons ago is destined for success. Whether you dally in the joy of earthly distractions or get confused and lost because of mishaps and setbacks, know that your final destination is one and the same. As your capacity for love deepens, you will begin to realize and awaken to your divinity and the peace and happiness that is its essence.

 *  *  *

Even those who are well along their spiritual path must continually work to balance love and compassion for others with love and compassion for self. The next case is instructive in this regard.

 FRANCISCA

 Francisca is a 60-years-old corporate consultant. She is very close to her one daughter and sister and is very involved with members of her large extended family. This has been the source of both joy and frustration, given the natural tendency of adults to welcome but not follow others’ advice. Her marriage ended years before. Her desire for a long-term relationship has not manifested and has been the source of disappointment.

She was raised in a structured religion that she rejected, given its rigidity, but she is highly spiritually oriented and motivated.

Six years ago, she left her career in health care, guided by her sense that she was meant to help others progress on their spiritual journeys. Although she freely counsels others about spiritual matters, her interest in making this a career focal point has yet to manifest.

 She has had several regressions, including transpersonal journeys, past life, and life between lives sessions over the course of several years, coupled with spiritual counseling. Most sessions focused on securing spiritual guidance relative to life decisions and overcoming general feelings of malaise.

 At times, a sense that she has not fully realized her soul’s plan for this lifetime has left her anguished. It is also clear she has carried forward the guilt that in prior lives she failed to live up to a set of standards that few humans could meet.

 Of her numerous regressions, her life between lives session offered the greatest insight about the interrelationship of these topics. The wisdom she gleaned from this session built on the information from several past lives in which she was a spiritual teacher and leader.

Given her experience, Francisca easily moves into trance. She reports from her vantage point within her mother’s womb that her higher self chose to wait until immediately before birth to join with the fetus. She has selected a family to be born into that will force her to become more independent. In prior lives, she has been suffocated by tradition and rules.

 Even in the womb, she knows that as her life unfolds, there will be many challenges to realizing her soul’s plan.

 I am supposed to bring the light to help others escape pain and fear. I am supposed to teach others how to let go. I am supposed to demonstrate love, to show love, to be love. We need to fight to bring the light. The light brings freedom.

 Her perspective expands to include the experience of her life to date.

 I thought it would be easier, but it wasn’t. They bound me. They held on tight. They said I was wrong. They threatened me. They said I could not be myself and do what I wanted. But I knew that independence is important.

 Francisca experiences a brief recall of a past life and then arrives in the interlife. She is welcomed by her spirit guide Sara and several high beings.

She identifies her spiritual purpose, a path of service.

 I have a very strong knowing that I am to help others. To teach others to be strong, especially those who have had horrible experiences in life. I am very strong. I want to do for others. I want to work with those who have not done well in prior lives.

 Francisca’s desire to help others is not without a cost to her. She has modeled strength through adversity so that others might learn to do so. The result has been personal suffering.

 When I suffer in this lifetime, it is to show others that we are not alone, and we are not to give up.

  We learn from Sara that in this lifetime, Francisca is working to balance her compassion for others and compassion for herself.

 She is learning to balance, to let go, and release all of her suffering. Through her own growth, she will continue to be a role model for others on their spiritual journey.

Francisca can help those who are ready to open their minds and hearts to learn about their own spiritual paths.

She is angry, feeling that she has been held back from accomplishing her mission. This has caused her much pain and disappointment. She is disappointed with those she has helped, believing that many are not progressing spiritually. She needs to suspend judgement and to learn to let go of her expectations of others. She needs to accept.

 Sara notes that Francisca had lost sight of the fact that others are free to choose. In lifetime after lifetime, her efforts failed to yield similar results. Wrongly, she had internalized the failure of others to advance spiritually. The work that she began several years before to fortify herself is producing results. Hers is not a solitary mission. It is one shared by a legion of lightworkers and reinforcements are on the way!

 Francisca is driven by spiritual love. Her search for a loving partner in this lifetime has been frustrating. She has always focused on spiritual love and connections. At times, her plan was to include grand romantic loves, but her focus is always her spiritual work. Francesca’s deep desire to be in communion with Source has triumphed over her search for romantic love.

 But soon she will find someone. It is time for her to have a partner, someone who will care for and support her. She will no longer need to worry or struggle. They will share friendship, companionship, and love. She will be free to spread her light and to bring others to the light.

Humans forget their spiritual nature and get confused trying to replicate their connection to Source in relationships with other humans. When they follow society and tradition, they are told that they will find a great love and marry. That is an experience of the human personality, but it falls short of the experience of divine love. They are seeking to re-experience fully the love of the Divine. This desire motivates the search to find human love. It is an attempt to create what is experienced when they return Home.

 Francisca chose to share the depth of the Divine’s love with others through her many lives of service. She suffered greatly due to her dedication to others. The belated decision to prioritize her own needs over the last several years is finally achieving balance.

Perhaps you too have shared this view of what following a spiritual path means. Maybe you have embodied the tenets of a religion that holds that your suffering serves others. If so, like Francesca, you may view your own needs and desires as unimportant.

What’s important to remember here is that the path to self-love requires balance. It entails having love and compassion for yourself, as well as for your loved ones and the greater humanity. Perhaps an easy question to lead you to your answer is the one I pose to my clients.

 Would you treat God the way you treat yourself? 

The honest answer to this question may help accelerate your own spiritual journey and final return Home. 

*  *  * 

In this next section, we hear from another spirit guide regarding the importance of developing self-love. 

Antonio 

In his counsel to Antonio, another client I have worked with, his spirit guide lovingly refers to souls as particles. 

Self-love is an appreciation of the particle of God that you oversee. You are its guardian. Unless you start appreciating that you are part of God, you cannot appreciate the other particles. It must be a full appreciation of who you are, without the other extreme of selfishness. It is a very subtle difference, appreciating who you are without thinking of yourself as separate from all else.

Self-love includes appreciating yourself as part of everything, and as everything, not seeing yourself as separate. You should love yourself as you love the Universe. You will naturally love yourself if you can stop making a distinction between yourself and the Universe.

Mastering self-love can be tricky because there is a risk of becoming selfish. As you develop love for yourself, you should concurrently pursue love for other individuals and humanity along with love for the Universe and the oneness. These are natural processes that should be done in parallel.

 There is no separation, no border between loving yourself and loving others. Once you understand that you are one with others, then love for yourself flows naturally. Loving yourself and loving others is all the same. Conversely, if you hate yourself and you constantly criticize or punish yourself, you cannot truly love others. Acceptance is important.

 Like many others, Antonio has just forgotten that he is one with the Universe. And when he separates himself from the Universe, he has lost his connection to the love. Separation is undermining his self-love. He must remember the interconnection.

In a sense, it is concentrating on the oneness through his spiritual practice that will keep him loving himself.

 This brief exchange has underscored the need to find balance, including between your love of self and love of others. It is also a reminder to not lose sight that loving relationships are a vehicle for getting the balance right.

 If you were asked to name all the people and things that you love, how long might it take you to name yourself? Imagine how different your life might be if you focused on what you love about yourself. Or, if you understood that how you love yourself is how you teach others to love you. 

*  *  * 

In the following case, we are introduced to Mariana. Her impatience to awaken fully into her divine essence resulted in a soul plan that is as challenging as it is unusual. Ignoring the counsel of the higher beings, her personality is now left to cope with the pain and longing that are an outgrowth of her life plan.

 Mariana

Mariana is a 51-year-old, married, cardiac surgeon. Several years ago, during surgical rounds at the hospital, she felt an immediate strong connection with one of the residents. His name is Daniel.

 It was as if we were already dear, close friends. I had felt a similar sense of connection before with one of my closest friends, but the experience with Daniel was more intense. I felt a deep romantic attraction to a degree I had never experienced before. Because of our hierarchical professional relationship and my marriage, anything beyond a collegial friendship was out of the question.

Mariana scheduled a life between lives session in hopes of understanding the lessons her soul incorporated into this lifetime and her inexplicable feelings for Daniel.

 I am very interested in gaining a deeper soul perspective on my relationships to help me to move through the associated emotional difficulties. I want to know what I came here to learn in regard to these relationships.

 Mariana also hoped that she would find a way to cope with what, over the course of several years, had become an unbearable longing to be more than Daniel’s friend. She also hoped to discover the soul agreement she made with her husband and her spiritual connection with her friend, Celina.

 In a first past life regression, Mariana identifies herself as a young slave girl who is overcome with grief. She has lost her beloved Rau, who was beaten to death in her presence. She is locked in the horror of seeing him cruelly treated as he attempted to protect her from the master’s mistreatment. She is carrying guilt for being unable to intervene. In response, she has run away without a plan for her own survival. Understandably, she is terrified.

 As is sometimes the case when a person is prompted to move to a different point in the life that they are reviewing, Mariana finds herself in yet another lifetime. She is now an older woman sitting in front of a fireplace in a cozy bungalow. It is the early 1900s. She lives a simple life, living by herself with her dog. She is happy and content. Others consider her eccentric, which pleases her. She knows that she has one treasured possession, a gift from a dear friend who Mariana recognizes as her close friend Celina in her current lifetime. She has a vague sense that she may have had a female lover who has already died.

Once again, while intending to move ahead to the next most significant scene, Mariana again goes to a different lifetime. This time she is an older man who has just died of natural causes in the presence of his wife and three adult children. A fourth child died many years before. He was a farmer who had a hard but satisfying life. He is known as a reliable and loving family man. Mariana recognizes the man’s wife as her close friend Celina, and one of his children as her current husband.

From this higher vantage point in soul state, she can look back through the various lives just revisited to uncover the common theme and to glean the wisdom that each has to offer. It is that love only appears to disappear.

 Once the experience of love seems lost, we must go within to find strength and courage. We must trust ourselves. Love is never gone. Love is deeper and stronger than the human experience of it. It is eternal.

 Mariana returned a month later for her life between lives session, having prepared an autobiography and her list of questions and issues that she was seeking insight about. The process of writing the autobiography is a means of honoring yourself for what has brought you to this point in your spiritual development and exploration. The list of questions provides the focus for the session.

 Mariana moved into a deep state of trance quickly, as a result of her experience in the first session. She vividly recalled her time in her mother’s womb. Her higher self joined the fetus during its sixth month and immediately felt her parents’ intense love and their excitement about her upcoming birth.

 Mariana shares that her plan for the upcoming lifetime will challenge her to know who she is at her core. The plan also includes building emotional strength and confidence, overcoming fear, and bolstering personal power. To facilitate this, she has selected a body whose nature is timid and sensitive. The role of good girl will launch her toward goal achievement.

Like many other souls, the path to accomplishing life goals will unfold through contrast and opposites.

Before heading to the afterlife, Mariana moves into a past life. Once again, she is revisiting the lifetime of the young slave girl who has run away. She is being hunted by a group of men. She is not able to outrun the dogs that they have brought to track her scent. They find her hiding under a hollowed-out tree and drag her through the forest. She is resigned to her fate.

  I just gave up. I didn’t care. They killed me.

 Floating out of her body, she says that her plan had been to develop strength and courage in that life.

 Both propelled me to run away and to try to free myself. My life didn’t matter without freedom. I demonstrated that I had strength and courage even in this short life. I didn’t let them beat me down.

 Before moving on, she connects to the mother of the slave girl. She instantly understands the deep connection she felt to her mother in the womb. In her life as Mariana and the life of the young slave girl, the same soul assumed the role as her mother. Her connection is very emotional, bringing Mariana to tears.

Mariana experiences movement through a vast field of countless lights, each light the manifestation of a different soul. Upon arrival in the interlife, she is greeted by Tesio, one of her guides. Tesio greets her by her eternal name—Serin.

 Serin floats peacefully through a wonderous garden of healing.

Tesio tells us that the slave girl and her lover Rau were one and the same soul that split its energy in half to concurrently experience love from this dual perspective. It is the same for Mariana and Daniel, although their soul plan did not assure that they would experience love as a couple.

 Tesio elaborates.

 This has not been a common choice for incarnating souls, although now more are planning such an experience. It is quite challenging for humans.

Mariana and Daniel are one and the same soul. They are of the same energy. This decision is related to how love is experienced differently on the earth plane and on the spiritual plane. On earth, love is experienced in relationship with others. On the spiritual plane, love is the oneness.

The choice Serin made enables one to bring more divine love to earth. Serin decided to experience both simultaneously to integrate the two experiences of love.

Humans experience love as a positive feeling and as attachment to the subject of those feelings. Accomplishing the integration that Serin planned will require moving beyond attachment. It is not by being united with Daniel, although that might become a part of their future experience. It is found in the wholeness and completeness found within one’s self. It first must be found within before it can be shared. Everything is within.

 

This path to self-love is among the most challenging, it is akin to a triathlon for the soul.

 The sadness that people experience when love is lost or not reciprocated is the soul’s yearning for completion within itself. It is a part of deepening its capacity for love.

 Since it individuated to have separate experiences in human incarnation, the soul has longed to fill the void created through its separation. Similarly, it has yearned for remembrance of its divine essence and the experience of absolute love. After the long and unsuccessful search to find it in myriad lifetimes, the soul realizes that it can only be found within.

 The scene shifts, and Serin finds herself surrounded by a brilliant light. She identifies it as the light of Source. She is filled with its loving presence. She lingers in the bliss.

In time, Tesio escorts Serin to meet with her council of senior advisors. They are gathered in a vast space. She sees a group of seven light beings. One of them begins.

 Serin chose a challenging path. She planned to develop self-reliance and self-confidence, unconditional love, and love of self. She wants to develop trust in her higher self. She is doing well, despite the challenge and complexity.

She is learning to look within for her answers. In doing so, she is becoming aware of her strength and power.

The challenge is within, less with external circumstances. She is moving away from depending on others to depending on herself. Initially, she looked for answers outside of herself. When the people in her life didn’t deliver, she turned inward.

She planned to heal the insecurity and self-doubt that have fed her need to depend on others. Her relationship with her husband showed her one way of not being attached and not needing others. Although it isn’t her way, it prompts her to find her own way. She showed him that he didn’t have to be so completely detached from everyone. These are the lessons that they incorporated into their soul agreement.

 Her relationship with Daniel is a hurdle, it’s her Mt. Everest. It requires patience, perseverance, internal strength, and not giving-up, especially when she doesn’t have the emotional strength to keep going. It pushes her past her spiritual limitations. 

Serin is in the process of fully awakening to her divine essence. Ultimately, she will discover that all along—she has been one with Source. 

This is Serin’s goal, but there were some remaining obstacles. So, she chose to split her own soul energy into two. Turning inward is accelerating her spiritual growth and clearing the path for her to come back to oneness. It is pushing her past what she thought she could do.

Specifically, Serin’s relationship with Daniel provides a way to develop greater openness and authenticity, strength, and courage. It is not yet time for Daniel to know about the role he is playing in Serin’s soul plan. This forces Mariana to work harder to achieve the objectives set in place in the plan. She is handling it by herself for long-term gain. Serin set it up this way. She knew that otherwise, Mariana would have looked to Daniel for answers. This will expedite her spiritual growth.

Serin is being given the assistance she needs. Her friend Celina is an example. They have been together through many, many lifetimes. She and Serin are soul intimates who enjoy a deep loving bond. Their synchronistic relationship provides each mutual support.

 As the session drew to a close, the council members offered these closing thoughts.

 We are not just going to hand answers to her magically. But assistance is there each time when Serin needs it. She must continue the work. She needs to keep going, she is close to getting there.

  Serin is stronger than she realizes. She is like the caterpillar who is in the process of emerging from the cocoon. She is whole in herself, as well as a part of the All.

 Once out of trance, Mariana described that a dramatic energetic shift had taken place. Most notably, her sense of desperation regarding her relationship with Daniel had evaporated.

The insights she gleaned from her sessions freed her to concentrate on the spiritual goal she set for herself. Her follow-up note says it best. 

I sought out past life and life between lives regression in the hopes that it would help me to deal more effectively with a complex and emotionally difficult life situation. While I had obtained a considerable amount of spiritual assistance already, and had cultivated a regular meditation practice, I continued to struggle with a level of emotional despair that was intense and pervasive, seemed out-of-proportion to the situation, and at times impaired my day-to-day functioning. 

In both the past life and life between lives sessions, I discovered information that helped to explain the reasons for the intensity of my emotions, and the growth my soul was seeking to obtain.

But the transformation I experienced cannot be explained by this information alone. Something about the experience itself created an energetic or spiritual shifting. There was a lifting of the emotional heaviness; a greater perception of connection to Source; a deeper awareness of who I am. I am experiencing greater equanimity, and I feel more empowered and capable of taking on the path that my soul has chosen.

 The clarity the council provided about the process and lessons contained in Serin’s plan have applicability for all.

 Once birthed as separate souls, each person reincarnates through a long series of lifetimes. In most of these lives, you are embedded in families and communities and experience much of life in relationship with others. These relationships help you to grow and expand your emotional capacity.

 Over the course of many lifetimes, you become consciously aware that something is missing, and your soul yearns to fill the void. You try to fill it through loving relationships with others; relationships that are expressions of divine connection. Some of these relationships are satisfying, others are not.

As you grow spiritually you awaken to the idea that what you had searched for externally could be found within. Over time, your sense of this grows, and you begin to prioritize deepening your capacity to love yourself. , In doing so, you are beginning to awaken to your divine essence.

*  *  * 

In this next case, we meet Luciana. As you will see, she is well along the spiritual path and has begun to enjoy the benefits of awakening.

 Luciana

 Luciana is a 54-year-old physician whose holistic practice is geared toward the integration of body, mind, and spirit. She is happily married and has two beautiful and gifted teens. Her current family life is markedly different from her own childhood. Her mother abandoned her, and she was raised by her grandmother and an unmarried aunt. Her memories of her father are dominated by his molestation of her on a visit to her parents, who resided in another country.

She coped with the emotional trauma of her childhood and youth by excelling in school, a choice that directed the course of her adult life, including graduation from a prestigious medical school. Despite outer indicators of success, she never felt as if she fit in. When her first romance ended, she experienced it as yet another abandonment.

Luciana realized during her medical internship that she excelled at diagnosing and feeling other people’s disease and pain. As this acuity increased, she became fearful and prayed for it to be shut down.

 She is an active meditator and found, as her practice deepened, that the visions that she blocked decades ago returned. She considers herself spiritual and hoped to explore her spiritual lineage during her life between lives regression.

 Once in trance, Luciana finds herself in the life of a man named Mauricio living on a Greek island. He is married and has two children. He is employed as a writer for a journal focused on societal issues. He is passionate about ideas and is involved in promoting the well-being of his fellow villagers.

Mauricio moves ahead in life and finds himself on his last day. He is 84 and has enjoyed a long and happy life. He shares that he had a strong sense of belonging with the people and enjoyed a rich family life.

 I have sadness leaving all of them but a sense of completion for having lived a fruitful life—through my heart. I feel that my heart is so big.

Mauricio shares his reflection on his life in hopes that Luciana will carry this wisdom forward in her heart.

 Love is everything. Appreciate the simplicity of life, love your family, love your neighbor.

 Luciana returns for her LBL session two months later and descends into a deep trance. From her mother’s womb, she easily shares her early experiences, including the merger of her soul self with her mother during the fifth month of pregnancy. The physical limitation of the womb prompted her to use the time before her birth to allow her consciousness to reconnect with the souls in her soul family.

 I am ready to leave the womb. I have been out and about, spending time with my soul family.

She connects to the energy of her soul friends.

 They are like small angels; they are sparkling and playful. There are so many of them. They want me to know that I will have company on my journey into this upcoming life. They want me to know that I will not be alone. They are so rambunctious; they are going to have to quiet down. They are reminding me not to lose sight of the levity that can be found in life.

 Luciana understands that her upcoming life is intended to give her more opportunity to develop independence.

 This is not so easy, because I am docile and dependent on others. I am excited about the life ahead.

 Luciana moves quickly through a past life. She is a woman in her twenties, enjoying life in the English countryside. She writes poetry. She is visiting her dying grandmother who has had a long and happy life inspired by her faith.

 She is not sad, nor am I. It seems others don’t understand, but I understand why she is happy.

She moves ahead to the last day of her own life. She is 62 and surrounded by her children and has been ill for some time. As she floats out of her body, she shares.

 I understand something about death that my grandmother shared with me. It’s like changing clothes.

My form is changing, it's disappearing. I have become a being of light. It’s so airy. As I go fast, I lose my density. I barely recognize my form, but I know who I am. I see the lights of twinkling angels. Everything is so ethereal.

I am being shown the way by a very strong energetic being. I recognize her as my guide. She is very strict. Her name is Pem. She radiates a blue light, and it is like a magic wand.

I have reached the interlife.

She is enveloping me in a cocoon of light, harmonizing and calibrating my energy. She’s scanning and repairing my energy. I can feel light going up and down my being.

I am becoming bluer. The blue is becoming stronger. I have two stripes of blue.

She is telling me that I am more advanced than I think. Even though I have two stripes, I have been working with less than one blue stripe so as to fit into the earth energy.

 Luciana learns that she brought 35% of her energy into her current incarnation. She bilocated, splitting her energy and sending it into a concurrent incarnation. This is not the first lifetime she has done so.

 I am also living as a peasant in Tibet who is deeply connected with spirit. I did this to sustain quietness, a still point in my life. Part of me has to be very rooted in meditation. The other part of me is active so that I can function with the collective.

 Luciana’s higher self explains that she is part of a collective that is connected to a different realm. The collective cultivates silence and quietude in the Earth energy. In this current incarnation, her Tibetan-self is the direct link to the collective. Luciana elaborates about her incarnations, 27 in all, most of which have been in other worlds.

 I am from a different realm. It is mostly an energetic realm, but there we can direct energy to manifest at will, including in physicality. In other dimensions, souls do not follow the same evolutionary path. Life manifests without biological evolution, without physical procreation by a mother and father. Some souls are already mature with no need to be raised by a mother. These souls do not need to go through a mother or father to experience.

 The energy from my realm is different than earth’s. The vibration of the energy is higher. I can’t bring all of my energy into an earthly incarnation. I only bring part of it. It would be too much, and it would not prove useful.

I was sent to earth to help the transition of the planet. My purpose is to serve, to help humanity leap to high levels. I have been here several prior times, during times of transitions, two thousand years ago and four thousand years ago.

 Questions arise about Luciana’s current life, given the context and purpose of her incarnation. We learn from Pem that Luciana didn’t need a mother in the same way humans imagine. However, she did have to rebalance the beliefs and feelings around abandonment that were residue from an earlier earthly incarnation.

 Once in human form, she had the experience of needing a mother. Her mother’s abandonment caused her much pain. But it also provided an opportunity for her soul to bring balance to her beliefs and feelings, thus furthering her spiritual growth.

Pem elaborates.

 Once you incarnate on earth, there are things that likely have to be cleared up, to be healed and balanced. This was the case for Luciana. Her experience with her parents set the stage for this to happen.

 

Whatever is created on earth must be balanced on earth.

In one earlier earth life, Luciana was being persecuted for her religious conviction. To save her daughter’s life, she gave her daughter to someone else. Although she escaped death, she mourned the loss of the daughter she abandoned for the remainder of her life. This emotion needed to be balanced. In that life, she died at peace, sustained by her faith.

 As the session progresses, we learn from Pem that Luciana’s higher self chose her career path because healing is transformative. The energy of those she treats is transformed through her care. She agitates old energy to move out and bring in new energy. It makes use of her spiritual charisma.

 Luciana hoped that her LBL would provide her direction for how to heal the negative emotions that she carries for her childhood experience. Pem would not disappoint.

 Luciana must go deeper and tap into her essence. She can then use that energy to feel more fulfilled. When you enter the earth energy, you risk getting trapped into the lower vibration. If she taps further into her essence, she will actualize more energy from her soul, and she will experience more fulfillment. Her soul expects this of her. It was part of her agreement to bring more light into the earth plane.

 Pem elaborates on the universality of Luciana’s experience to all humans.

 You must remain vigilant in order to perceive feedback from your soul. When you incarnate on earth, the density of the energy can trap you. You lose sight of your essence because you get trapped within your sensory experience. It is not so easy to allow your essence to unfold.

 The essence of the soul is love and light. The journey of the soul is to know itself as love and light.

 Pem has gifted all who seek spiritual growth with a clear reminder that when you incarnate on earth with blinders on, you are seeking to remember your essence as the love and light of the Creator Source. It is a message which resonates with those who intuitively sense that they walk the spiritual path.

 In a follow-up session, Luciana expressed tremendous gratitude to Pem for the insight and wisdom she provided. In the months following her LBL, Luciana found that she was calmer, more confident, and happier. She shared that her patients have reported that their healing sessions have had more profound impact. She also discovered that a path had opened to forgive her mother. In deepening her capacity for love, she was able to do so.

Most profoundly, connecting to her eternal self and being reminded of her spiritual path has given her a sense of inner peace. After all, as Pem reminded her, her essence is the love and light of Source.