PERSPECTIVES: New Book and Workshops!

Published: Tue, 01/16/24

PERSPECTIVES
Newsletter of Shepherd Hoodwin and Summerjoy Press

NEW BOOK!

is now available! There’s an excerpt below. Amazon listing:

https://amzn.to/3REEctu

ZOOM WORKSHOPS

OPENING TO SPIRIT: COMMUNICATING WITH YOUR GUIDES AND ESSENCE Using Constellations and Other Techniques

is a brand-new seven-week workshop beginning this month with Sneh Schabel.

Communicating and working with our team of guides, angels, and our own soul can add an invaluable dimension to our lives. It is a skill available to anyone with an open mind and heart. Like most abilities, it grows with practice and instruction. Topics will include:

Making your connection with Spirit a part of your daily life
Using that to be of greater service to others and to the whole
Living with a sense of your spiritual vastness and power, and the unity of all things
Attuning to symbols and signs that arise in your life
Developing the ability to communicate with any being
In this workshop, Sneh and Shepherd will lead you through exercises and discussions to help you open to greater fluency in channeling, intuition, and other psychic abilities. They will use various techniques, including Family Constellations. In a constellation, members of the group typically represent key people in a person’s family, but elements of any system can be constellated, including parts of your personality, your guides, and Michael chart traits. Amazingly, representatives find that they can inhabit their energies. The facilitators then work with them to bring healing and transformational insights, such as what might be blocking your connection with Spirit. Other techniques will include those that come from spiritual guidance in the moment.
There will be a FREE INTRODUCTION on Sunday, January 21 at 10 a.m. Pacific. Brochure:

http://tinyurl.com/54pmyeus

THE JOURNEY OF YOUR SOUL is a deep dive into your Michael chart and the Michael teachings. Beginning September 8, 2024. Brochure:

http://tinyurl.com/56mdyp2p

BEYOND THE MICHAEL CHART is a Q&A satsang for fascinating material not covered in “The Journey of Your Soul” workshop. Beginning October 6, 2024. Brochure:

http://tinyurl.com/mtp8zw3w

EAST COAST MICHAEL GATHERING

April 23-28, 2024 • Harrisonburg, Virginia

THE EAST COAST MICHAEL GATHERING is like the best family reunion/adult summer camp you could imagine. It's a time to hang out with like-minded people, make new friends, hear interesting and informative presentations, learn how others are applying the teachings to their daily lives, take walks through the woods, meditate with a group, lead an activity, participate in fun or challenging games, relax, share your experiences with others, and make essence contact. We would love for you to join us! For those who can’t attend in person, you can participate in programs via Zoom.

http://www.ecmichaelgathering.org

HOLISTIC HEALTH
For Smarties
Idiosyncratic Tips and Musings on Improving Your Well-Being

cid:clip_image003.jpg

By Shepherd Hoodwin

EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER 20, "BODY/MIND/SPIRIT"

YOU CREATE YOUR OWN REALITY

A core spiritual principle, as Seth channeled by Jane Roberts put it, is “You create your own reality.” A simplistic understanding of that might lead someone to say, “You’re sick; therefore, you created that from your beliefs.” However, little in life is that simple.

We are constantly making choices, consciously and unconsciously, which result in experiences. We may then form beliefs from those experiences. Sometimes we jump to faulty conclusions, such as “I should never trust anybody,” rather than examining how we might have better engaged with what was happening and chosen more wisely. Those beliefs in turn influence future choices. False negative beliefs tend to create more negative experiences, forming a vicious circle. Beliefs more aligned with truth tend to create more positive experiences, forming a virtuous circle.

We’re not talking here just about superficial beliefs. Many people give lip service to beliefs that don’t actually run the show in their lives, such as those of their religion or politics. We are unaware of the lion’s shares of the entrenched beliefs that do run the show. We may be so accustomed to them that we take them for granted, similar to the way that fish probably take water for granted. However, we continually create our reality from them.

Our beliefs govern not only our choices but what we attract through our energy. For example, if we believe that we are not worthy of respect, we put that out there and are more likely to attract people who disrespect us. Becoming increasingly aware of our beliefs and improving them is a big part of the conscious spiritual path. That allows us to create a reality more in alignment with the eternal values of love, truth, and beauty.

We create our own reality through personality-level choices as mundane as what we have for lunch. We also create it though soul-level choices, including our pre-incarnational choice of parents, with its resulting body/genetics and life situations. Guidance is available so that we can choose situations most conducive to our growth priorities. Other things might come along as part of the package that aren’t ideal but acceptable to us. That could include health disadvantages.

Since perfection doesn’t exist, choosing perfect parents with perfect genetics in a perfect situation was not an option. We also did not have the option at this time of incarnating on a pristine planet with no pollution or negative energy. The collective choice of humanity to pollute may affect our health no matter what we do individually, but that’s also part of the package we signed up for.

Had we had those options, though, we would have fewer opportunities to grow. Souls generally do not set up lifetimes prioritizing ease and comfort unless it’s a rest lifetime. Instead, think of the physical plane as a rigorous school where we hope to learn as much as possible, with occasional breaks so that we can regroup. We require challenges to grow. With humanity so ignorant and out of balance, we have them in spades!

Between lifetimes, we are on the astral plane, where things are generally easier and more pleasant. We remember our physical plane experiences, but the intensity has faded. It’s like a mother forgetting just how painful childbirth was when deciding to have another baby. Sometimes, it’s just as well that we don’t remember how hard something is likely to be because we might not undertake some worthwhile tasks.

When planning an upcoming lifetime, we may choose a body that gives us valuable lessons or abilities but has significant downsides. From the astral plane, we may minimize them but find them hard to deal with once we’re in the life. A disabled body might teach us greater compassion and understanding, but be more uncomfortable or painful than we had anticipated. A body with high psychic or artistic capabilities could be accompanied by some inconvenient sensitivities leading to, say, emotional issues or insomnia that ends up seriously impacting the life. All challenges provide growth if we rise to them, but they may be difficult to endure. Yes, on a soul level, we chose that, but we don’t always choose wisely or with a full awareness of the ramifications. We are creators in training, learning to make better choices and create ever more effectively from love.

As we mature, we tend to become more skillful at making choices, including anticipating possible problems, but there are no guarantees—we can’t anticipate everything that may happen. Half of life is order, and half is chaos. Since we all have free will, not everything is “meant to be.” The good news is that the unexpected keeps us on our toes and gives us lessons. Who would want to play a game in which the outcome is always known ahead of time? We have to roll with the punches; nobody wins every game.

We generally have a pretty good idea of what we’re signing up for when we choose to be born into a particular family, but unforeseen things can arise. Perhaps one of our parents dies earlier than they had planned, for example, causing unexpected hardships.

Everyone else is also creating their own reality, and their choices affect us, as ours affect theirs. No one is an island.

Let’s say that a driver makes a split-second choice to suddenly swerve to avoid hitting an animal that abruptly rushed out in front of him. He hits another car. Let’s also say that the other driver didn’t attract that experience and it wasn’t part of her life plan or karma. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time—it was bad luck, and there would have been no way to anticipate it. She made a routine choice, such as to run an errand, and it had an unexpected negative consequence. It’s the nature of the physical plane that sometimes “Shit happens.” All we can do is be as careful and alert as possible.

Superficially, there’s no way to know whether an occurrence is a reality creation (possibly a karmic repayment) or random. I used the example of a car swerving for an animal because it is easy to imagine such a situation being random. It’s also possible, however, for it to have been planned by the souls involved, although that would be unusual.

Let’s say that a few people in public have a contagious disease. Being infected by one of them could also be either random or a reality creation, perhaps attracted by negative beliefs or karma, although it’s again more likely to be random. That’s true of many situations.

We can avoid some (but not all) of life’s mishaps by honoring our intuition, especially in cases when something negative is already in progress toward happening and our guides (or our spidey sense) might be aware of it. If it’s not in our life plan to die in a mass shooting or terrorist attack, for example, our intuition is likely to prompt us to avoid going to places where they are about to happen. There are stories of people who felt strongly that they should not get on a plane that later crashed. The question is whether we listen to our intuition. We’re more likely to listen if we’ve been in the habit of doing so.

It’s worthwhile to explore our possible role in what happens to us and what we might have done better. (For one thing, did we ignore our intuition?) It’s not fair, however, to criticize ourselves for things we could not have known at the time. If self-examination does reveal ways in which we might have helped create it, what’s important is to learn the lessons.

Incidentally, random events can just as easily be positive, such as a chance meeting with someone who becomes a friend. Life being half random and half structured is a feature, not a bug. It helps give us new experiences, both positive and negative.

We always are the primary creator of our reality because even when things happen randomly, we choose how we deal with and interpret them. There are always core choices available for us to make, and we can grow from any experience.

https://shepherdhoodwin.com
[email protected]

https://www.facebook.com/shepherd.hoodwin.author
Twitter: @shepherdh

99 Pearl, Laguna Niguel, CA 92677, USA

Unsubscribe | Change Subscriber Options