“They Didn’t Create You…” My first experience with a Divine Creator

When I was 3, my parents divorced and it was ugly.  It has been a conflict that has never resolved, even to this day.  I lived with my mother and my father never got over the ego blow of losing to the courts. So he found every way to abdicate all responsibility for parenting and hold a lifelong resentment towards my mother. 

He was a man I never could figure out, relate with or have a deep bond with. He didn’t come to the hospital when I was born and still forgets the date of my birthday. He’s been one of the deepest sources of angst and frustration for me in my life. Our politics are different, views on life and how to treat people are on polar opposites and our integrity around meaning and work are dramatically in conflict. You see, my dad is a con artist (or as some suggest I call him “a salesperson”, which I think degrades salespeople) and I am a humanitarian.  You can imagine the discussions or right out arguments we have had.  Needless to say he’s never supported me in the way of making a good life and he hasn’t truly seen me and my heart. Just recently, I decided to divorce him because it has become one of those relationships that has very little nourishment or positivity. It feels right and good and healthy for me to do so.

My mom is someone who had to recover from my father and she did her best to keep it together personally. She housed us and fed us and tried to be a source of positivity even though she was suffering.  She is a sales person by nature and a free spirit.  She and I have more in common than my dad and I but we also have some fundamentally different outlooks and social/political perspectives.  For example, I care about conscious consumerism and personal sacrifice for the greater good while she has worked for WonderBra, stocking shelves in WalMart, even though she has many other talents/abilities and choices in her life (I don’t judge people for their work, mostly, but I believe that if you have a choice and privilege then seek out something that adds to the blessings of the world and others in it). She grew up in a privileged home while I struggled growing up with very little guidance from her or my father.  So I will say that I was a neglected child and I say that without blame and anger…it’s just a fact of my life.

Both my parents were part of the 60s movement that questioned religion, God and every institution. They were freethinkers who wanted to buck the social system and strive to push the boundaries of what is considered good and bad. They believed in science and wanted to breakdown all engrained beliefs from the beginning of time – to the point where they missed out on the fundamental quality of spiritual teachings – heart-centred love. 

Love was a notion that was balked at, without questioning their own heartbreak and ache in their lives and with each other that made them disbelieve in love to begin with. 

So as I journeyed through life, trying to be a good person doing humanitarian works and feeling the pull of making a difference in the world by carrying its weight on my shoulders, I got to a point of burnout and confusion.  I didn’t understand why I felt this strong need to take on bigger causes, to right the world’s wrongs and care about perfect strangers. I was willing to live in poverty in order to stay true to myself. Where did I get these convictions and values from and why was I so passionate about them? My commitments to equality and respect and cultural sensitivity did not come from my parents.

One Saturday, while I was working overtime at the office, I had an emotional breakdown.  I was in the bathroom feeling angry, frustrated and sad because I felt I was from a family who couldn’t get me or see me or understand my drive towards being a loving, giving and socially conscious person.  I never had a sense of a higher power or God, even though I would give oracle card readings and understood synchronicity.   I reached out and screamed at whatever was out there and I said “why don’t my parents get me, for god’s sakes!” 

Then loud and clear, as if the whole room had filled up with the sound, I heard a response back that said “they didn’t create you.”  I couldn’t deny this voice. It wasn’t gender-specific but it was powerful and affirmative.  I immediately dried my eyes, felt wimpy for even crying in the first place and finally felt supported by something out there that seemed to be watching over me.  I made a commitment to follow this presence and voice in my life, knowing that my birth and my life mattered to somebody somewhere, and being loving, kind and generous to strangers and friends is acknowledged by something.  And even the act of not taking action so as not to harm others we may never meet really do have a long-rippling effect.  Not only does being a heart-centred person improve one’s spirit, positive energy and overall sense of inner peace, but the spiritual guidance and protection that comes to someone who follows their intuition and divine guidance is something that money can’t buy.

I have had 2 other times since this incident when I heard this loud voice.  The second time was when I was walking in the woods, feeling disheartened by the state of the Earth and the world and all the destruction of the natural beauty.  I spoke out loud to “God” and said “why don’t you care, dammit? Why do people get away with this?!” and I heard a response back that said “when did you stop caring?” At first I didn’t understand this message.  Then I realized that this divine power cares so much about me, us and the Earth, more than I even care and that I could always improve my ability to care for even the smallest of creatures.  This is how deeply the divine actually cares about us.

The third voice came this past summer and it’s a whole other long story, but essentially it guided me to my current love partner, Ted, and we have found a lot of compatibility and acceptance in the last 9 months at a time when I was ready to give up on intimate partner love. 

So when someone asks me if God exists, I will say “yes” but not in the way we’ve been taught or may perceive. The divine is a personal relationship with each individual’s heart and needs and guides us every day, if only we will listen. It has a caring quality to it, a loving parent aspect and it is a creator of sorts.  It isn’t reserved to someone who is better than or worse than others – rather to anyone who is willing to connect and communicate and receive the messages in whatever way they come.

It just takes a bit to quiet the mind and heart and trusting that the answers will come. When they arise, there will be wonderful gifts of peace, direction and love that have a quality and depth that can’t come from anywhere but the divine.

I would love to hear if you have had any similar types of divine interventions and communications as I find it all so amazing and fascinating. Please send me an email with any of your stories. If you feel comfortable, I’d love to share them in my blog, too.  Just let me know...

Dreaming Our Reality

As a spiritualist and soul coach, I believe that dreams are from another world or they are reflections of our subconscious. They can also offer us healing from traumatic experiences, that traditional therapy can’t offer.

I also believe that at night time, we leave our bodies energetically and we have the capacity to go to other dimensions of reality in order to obtain healing, knowledge, creativity, deep insight and understanding, or to even send healing and help to others. 

As a child, I would have very vivid dreams and I learned to lucid dream on my own.  I still have vivid recollections of recurring nightmares, knowing that they had enough significance in my life to capture my attention and to linger with me throughout this lifetime.  I knew I was accessing levels of past lives and they showed me why there were unknown issues of broken relationships with my family dynamics.   I have healed layers of trauma within myself simply through dreaming and then analyzing them. 

One of the things I found so captivating about Mexico, is that the culture is conducive to dreaming.  Sleep time is considered to be very important in the development of the soul.  The siesta is a socially accepted norm, knowing that the body and mind needs regular rejuvenation, not just because of the hot climate. 

Indigenous Mexicans also invented one of the most profound items – the hammock.  Yes…it looks simple, but think about it.  The hammock is made of strings, yet it still holds the human body without breaking. It is shaped as a womb and rocks the body in a way that brings us back to the universal rhythm.  It also represents the web of creation, through the way it is designed, which is the belief that we are all interconnected. And it supports us in dreamtime, a time that most Indigenous Traditions believe is the true reality and our waking life is the illusion. 

It is believed that in dreamtime, anything is possible. Shamans teach us that the limits we believe about ourselves and our lives on the earth plane is not how it is on the soul and spirit plane. If we can tap into and disintegrate the illusions we tell ourselves, then we can live with more soul and its possibilities. 

Dreaming awake takes us to a whole new level of understanding about ourselves and our view of reality. It’s the view that dreams can actually wake us up to ourselves, if we are able to truly listen.

Now when I say this, it doesn’t mean it’s all an issue of the mind.  It’s actually very linked to the soul. In the dream world, the soul knows itself intimately. It is our ego-personality that we operate in that is masking our heart.  With this knowledge, we are able to recognize that our dreams are really showing us where we are split with this – that is, where we are not being heart-centred or genuine within ourselves.

Lately, I’ve been having dreams about the inner child. They say, this is the true place of the soul and reveals to us who we really are.

I had one disturbing yet revealing dream last night that showed to me that I’ve been wearing a mask of the professional. It’s been causing me a lot of suffering.  And that my truth is that I am a warm-hearted, loving person.  Now it’s not to say that professionals can’t be this way, but my culture has conditioned us to believe that success has to “look” a certain way.  It gave me incidences in my past with jobs I’ve taken, where I’ve had to wear the suit and skirt, etc., which wasn’t who I really was. It’s why I would end up in a depression when I would go into an office setting.  It just didn’t work for me.  This dream speaks to me that I have to be sure that I’m approaching my business with a full heart, not one that is trying to be more professional than it needs to be. Because that’s not who I am. 

I will give you a bit of background to help you understand this dream better and how relevant it is.

In my family, my mother was an artist and entrepreneur.  She had to struggle to define herself this way because she had the pressure to follow the path of a teacher or office worker because her brothers and father were reputable and successful professionals.  She had the disadvantage of that time of being a woman where there were limited options for her to work.  But there wasn’t much compassion in her family for this and she was seen as the wayward outcast.  My mom boldly sought out work that was inspiring, creative and matched her spirit. But it came at a cost of feeling misunderstood and rejected.

I followed suit, of course, and have moved on the “road less travelled” as a seer/medium, soul coach and author.

But it still there are still twinges, as seen in my dream, that makes me doubt myself and question if I am worthy enough because I don’t have the Master’s degree or the permanent job or the title that shows respectability.  Of course, I know that this credibility is very ridiculous in the roles that define us in our society and they create a lot of ego-division and I don’t believe in them when I interact with people. Heck, most of us aren’t professionals. And consciously, I am glad I’m not a professional because it “keeps me real” and more connected to people. But this dream has shown to me that one part of my ego that believes I have to be “more than”.

Since I adjusted my life to be something that is more me, away from offices and bureaucratic structures, I am also having dreams that are relevant to my clients. There is a synchronicity that happens between my dream world and waking world that can be healing and very relevant for my clients. Sometimes I even receive a dream from a client’s loved one who has passed on. 

They say that death is a transition into the dream world, so dreaming well and learning how to release our issues and wounded memories is so important before we actually do pass from our bodies, because our consciousness takes it with us to where we go next. And from my experience with my near death experiences, I do see this to be true.

There are many dream workshops out there, and dream pillows and dream journals that can support you with healthy dreaming.  For example, my colleague, Roxana Roshon, offers a Mexica Healing Dream Workshop that I highly recommend. It’s a great introduction into the way to work with this sacred time. 

I have also become astute at dream interpretation given my own journey, and would be happy to do a soul reading with you in order to help you get deeper understanding into challenging, questionable or insightful dreams you are having.  Just go to my web site at: www.blossomingheart.ca to book an appointment.

I am an ongoing student of all things dreams, so if you have any resources, stories and personal experiences, I’d love to hear about them.

Here’s to all good day and night dreams,

Heather Embree

www.BlossomingHeart.ca

True Love

“Training is needed in order to love properly; and to be able to give happiness and joy, you must practice deep looking directed toward the person you love. Because if you do not understand this person, you cannot love properly. Understanding is the essence of love. If you cannot understand, you cannot love…

What must we do in order to understand a person? We must have time; we must practice looking deeply into this person. We must be there, attentive; we must observe, we must look deeply. And the fruit of this looking deeply is called understanding. Love is a true thing if it is made up of a substance called understanding.” 
- Thich Nhat Hanh from True Love

This quote makes me reflect so much on the nature of love.  It is something that I’ve considered, experienced and explored for a big part of my spiritual journey.  What is love? What isn’t it? Even the question can drive one into circles and away from its truest sentiments.

Is it the smile and embrace between a parent and child? Is it the feeling you get when you miss someone? Is it having to do something out of protection, even if it doesn’t feel super kind? 

To consider true love as understanding is a whole other level.  It means stepping out of ourselves and really looking at what another needs to feel safe, loved, cared for, appreciated, seen and heard. 

I know I have failed many times in the realm of human love. It could be that I don’t pay attention long enough to someone and they feel snubbed, or I don’t take care of myself, or there is an outright fight and argument that just can’t seemed to be resolved – no matter how much understanding I claim to give.  Or I feel guilty because I have to let a relationship go, even if I still love the person but it's for the greater good of freedom and harmony.

Love is what I appreciate about doing soul readings with people. I find when I go into a meditative state with those who come to me, and really connect to them at a soul level, the barriers of our human egos disappear and the exchange of love happens. Simple understandings come through, deep wisdom about our fears, concerns and areas where we haven’t been loved show up. Total acceptance comes in and we can finally breathe with the feeling that “everything is going to be alright.”

To be with another, simply in listening and coming into a great awareness of who they are, is one of the best opportunities to grow in love. From personal experiences with friends and past partners and my current love, I have been fortunate to meet people at such a personal and intimate level which has made me a kinder, more understanding and wise person.  Through their personal journeys, I’ve understood the pain of prejudices of all kinds, their aches of illness (physical and mental), and the challenges that life circumstances like economic problems and dysfunctional family dynamics make us face.  I came to really see that we each are wanting and desiring that common feeling of being loved, accepted and cherished and most of our wounds come from feeling rejected, taken for granted or down right treated with cruelty. 

Through my work and travels, I have had the chance to meet and come to understand those many would deem terrible (and who I honestly was scared of myself).

I’ve met charged criminals and found that soft spot within their  humanity that made them do what they do. I’ve met drug dealers in Mexico sitting next to me at a local café and could see their deep predicament of being stuck in a system bigger than them and was grateful I didn’t somehow get influenced in such a fate. I’ve met people with serious addictions and mental health issues, and saw the desperation and their feelings of inner imprisonment and was powerless to help them heal and all I could offer them was respect.  These are the moments and times when I have had  to remember that the only approach to interacting with another person who is suffering is through the simple nature of compassion.

Each of us have our karmic fates, and some of them way more grueling than others, and it takes mercy to really get that we are each people wanting the same things and we may just go about getting those needs met in different ways.

So in this month of Valentine’s Day, let’s take some time to soften our hearts and gaze, and love a little bit harder to find a place of compassion even for those who seem unloveable. It doesn’t mean we’re excusing bad behaviour or needing to be best friends, but just realizing underneath the madness or suffering lives a person who somewhere along the way could have been seriously broken.