Karen Monroy

Can small things change your life? Truthfully they can change your perception, which then can change your life-if you let it.

Here is an example: I had a client put their cell phone I a drawer for a week. Now I know what you’re thinking! Barbaric! Impossible!

But let me explain.

The client and I have been working on toxic vampires.You know, those people who suck your energy no matter how many healthy boundaries you put up?

It was clear after months of work that it was time to use the ‘just say no’ approach. Client is co-dependent; she is trying to break old patterns. While there is much progress, she needs more now, quickly, to face this next episode of court, attorney’s and the process of divorce with ease and grace.

Step one was to get a new cell phone. One that he didn’t have the phone number to and would never have.

Step two was to only give the number to people who she really wanted in her new life. (also an epiphany!)

Step three was to put the old phone in the drawer. No more reading 20 texts a day telling her how awful she was for kicking his lying, drinking, cheating, criminal ass out. No more threats, berating, angry out bursts at her while on a binge.

The client had many concerns and objections to putting the phone in a drawer for a week.  To all of her objections I said, “well I guess we’ll find out if that is true”.

This is the critical thing about life. Whatever you are trying to do, you can test it. Life is a laboratory. And if you set up your tests correctly, no one is hurt and everyone is blessed.

Day 4 of no cell phone she calls to tell me, “I feel totally different, I feel like I have a huge monkey off my back. I can feel how different my thoughts are. It’s a miracle. I had no idea, this is huge. Big. Life Changing.”

Me, “So I guess it worked then?”

We laughed.

Yes, she had monkey mind, but of course she knew it was monkey mind activity so she didn’t pay attention to it. Yes, she had the fears, but realized they were imagined-as most fears are. Mostly, she had peace. Peace to have coherent thoughts, relief from the constant triggers and space to realize the importance of peace.

This strategy of being responsible for what you let into your sacred space and what is your job to filter out I use in every aspect of life.

It’s a small thing. But if you Practice Spiritual Principal you realize there is no such thing as small. That is the problem with using your ego mind and it’s interpretation of the 5 sensory world as your sole source of data. Small things are really big.

HEY! SEE THOSE BUTTONS BELOW? PICK ONE AND SHARE THE LOVE! THANK YOU!

We have so much Guidance coming to us from the Universe. Synchronicity, symbolism, archetypes and intuition are languages of the Universe. I teach my clients to “prove it” to their intellectual minds that this Guidance is a fact. Until this fact is accepted, your willingness to listen or pay attention is constrained.

We are connected to all that Is.  If we are not feeling it-it’s because we are missing the dialogue. At times we cannot understand the language, or don’t ‘hear’ it, but the effect is the same, we are blocked, circling the same goal or project or circumstance and not feeling good about the lack of progress.

The ego mind would have you ‘persevere’, but Spirit would have you first ask for Guidance.

Being blocked is a kind of separation and isolation. Blockage begins a plethora of ego responses: frustration, desperation, blame, worry, panic, and fear. Certainly these responses are ‘helpful’ in the sense that your neurological feedback is indicating there is a problem.  But we get off track and ego has us focus on the effect, not the blockage itself. Like pain from a broken bone- it’s the broken bone that is cause, and the pain the effect.

Treating the symptoms of blockage is a typical ego response and it has a perverse effect. Can you imagine taking pain killers, but leaving the broken bone untreated? Yes, I know it sounds insane-but in truth we all practice this form of insanity with blockage.

I find reasons I am blocked will have to do with timing and flow. I get moving in a direction that is either too soon, or the flow isn’t there, I am meant to be doing something else and yet I persist with my ‘goal’. Then I begin to work on removing the ‘obstacles’—which, BTW, I am very good at-and I don’t stop to ask, ‘where is the flow”? Until of course I am frustrated. Sigh.

Other common forms of blockage I see:

Stuck on what happened

Being literal

Looking for a ‘savior’ as in a human being-not the Spiritual Energy

Doing what another directs you to do, bereft of your intuition

Perception of self: victim, screw-up, nobody

Defending against ‘how things are’

So you can go get more therapy, coaching, attend more workshops, and buy more books-but let me suggest that you surrender your blockage to the Divine Universe and ask that it guide you in all of your seeking. And I also would like to encourage you to realize one thing: your willingness to see the core cause, and your willingness to work at the causal level is all within you.

So I take my willingness to practice and I undo my frustration-I choose again- and ask for the Divine help, “Show me God, the flow”, (it comes in nano-seconds these days). Three other projects completed-with ease and grace. Smile.

I have a client whose language around finding a relationship is, “when I am in a relationship, I will (fill in the blank)”.  Much of her life is blocked, because she is not in relationship.

My client is constantly invited to ‘introspective’ events (Universe telling her this is a “alone” time) but until she was finally willing to go with the flow, ask the Universe which form of exploration was a match for her, she stayed blocked. Happily a few weeks ago she came home from a 5-day retreat. Joyfully ecstatic at the epiphanies she had while on retreat.

I know we will be mining those epiphanies for her growth for months, but the first big one? She talks, all the time. Even when her lips are not moving she is talking in her head. While I knew this, because it was hard for me to get a word in edge-wise: no matter how much the Universe conspired to show her this (her cell phone would drop calls all the time—since she has been back from the retreat, not once!) she was missing it.

Then, in accordance with Universal laws, the minute she was willing to quiet down and stop talking, a date was arranged. She went determined to listen, and while she made progress she could see her talking was an unconscious response to the nervousness she felt about ‘silence’. She could see how she drove men away being uncomfortable with silence. Her date even said, “It’s nice to be with a woman who doesn’t talk all the time!”

Oh, the Language of the Divine. Thank you, God for your ever present Guidance.

Most of us understand the concept of cleaning out to make room for the new. Traveling light and not bringing (consciously anyway) baggage with us as we go down new roads. We forget sometimes when we are making resolutions about what we want to happen in the future, how we thwart those good intentions when we fail to properly ‘clean house’.

Amidst the noise of all of the things you think you have to do and the blitzkrieg from others of what you should be doing, I’d like to offer you a few moments of peace, through your journey that you can come back to again and again. You only need to try this once, to know if it will work for you. It’s that easy. Let’s begin the cleaning up and clearing out.

Your ego is not your friend. It isn’t naturally your enemy either. But if you have lived for a few years it has picked up reactions and defense mechanisms along the path of life that are not sustainable or helpful to the life you want to really live.

By the definition of change, even if you are ecstatically, joyfully happy now, the same ego things that are working for you now, will not work in the future.

Not changing is how the ego thinks. Sustainability is how Spirit thinks. Spirit knows you are a thread in the fabric of life. Other threads are always added and the garment itself is always changing. Ego has the false belief there is a finished garment waiting for you to purchase if you are good enough, clever enough, enthusiastic enough-which of course you never are.

Ego thrives on noise, information, input, doing, and attachment to results. It feeds itself with drama, and becomes more sophisticated through the years in the ways it presents itself to be ‘right’. Seek and do not find is the major dictate of the ego. Yet, it has the uncanny ability to pick the very things that will, if you transcend them lead to your release from it’s dogma.

Get clear ego is meant to be in service of your Right Mind, your Soul, your Spirit your God self—whatever name you want to call it-but  it is this “It” that is in charge. Get clear this is the one decision you need make. If you make it-it is life changing. This one decision made, there is blessing of clarity: Ease and Grace become your modes of moving through earth school.

Ease and Grace are your traveling companions because  All other decisions, you will step back and let Spirit lead the way. You have made the one that expresses your free will. This is the transcendence of the ego—not the vanquishment or conquering (as it is a part of you and life here in Earth School)  but the right use of your ego mind.

I like to keep a checklist with me about ego behaviors.  At the end of the list I will share how I use it. I do this because I can quickly transcend to my one decision and travel via Ease and Grace. This list is a compilation of over 25 years of experience, in my own life and the lives I have been blessed to work with. I hope you accept it as my new years gift to you for the one decision you may be willing to make, again and again during 2010: (BTW: another name for the list is energy leaks)

1. Incessant Wanting

2. Attachment to—anything

3. In the past with regret, or future with worry

4. Noise, distraction

5. Drama.  Invite friends to get involved in Drama, by asking ‘their opinion

6. Denial of what is

7. Doing, more, faster, smarter-but still doing out of alignment with your spirit’s mission

8. Fear, and pretending it is ‘the truth’

9. Expectations, especially of self

10. Inconsistent

11.  Lack of boundaries

12. ‘Right and wrong’ thinking

13.  Judgments, opining and supposing

14. Lack of faith, vision, narrow-mindedness

15. Demands, defending, blaming, lying, avoiding

16. Believing your thoughts

17. Passionate about something that is not your business

18. Lack of empathy, understanding

19. “What about me” mantra

20. Martyr

At any moment of ‘dis-ease’: be it a tightening of my stomach, holding breath, a strong emotion, I check my list. Yup, it’s on the list. Darn. Then I ask, “Do I want to choose again”? Mostly I do-but it has taken years of practice to be able to say that. If I don’t want to choose again—stay stuck in the ego mud as it were-then I open myself to the observer and notice this is my choice. Isn’t it interesting, I note, “this is my choice”. I watch myself in this choice, I notice how the choice continues to deliver the stream of discomfort-and then I ask again. “Okey-dokey do you want to choose differently now”?

Eventually the answer is yes. Yes, I want to pull the plug on whatever the ego game is knowing full well it will bring a blessing. I always feel a wave of peace wash over me at this moment-and I smile-it’s so good to live in a kind and loving universe.

Ease and Grace are yours, for the One Decision. Life loves you that much. Good to know, yes?

All the best in 2010-and may your blessings be more than your ego mind could ever imagine, because you have left it’s dominance behind.