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How to Live the Life of your Dreams: 4 Steps to Freedom, by Karen Mehringer

(Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal.)

Surrounded by royal blue water extending beyond the horizon in all directions, no land in sight, I gaze at the path of diamonds dancing on the ocean's surface. The sun radiating on my skin feels like a warm cashmere sweater. It is August 19, 1998, and I am on my first ocean passage of a life-transforming journey, a journey leading to a more authentic and purposeful life.

My journey to living a more authentic and purposeful life began in Seattle, Washington, where I lived with my husband, John. Unfulfilled with our lifestyle of working full time, coming home tired, and crashing in front of the TV with little energy left to pursue our passions, our souls cried out, There must be more to life!

Craving more adventure and fulfillment, we began taking sailing lessons, an activity we both felt passionate about. Spending time on the ocean enlivened our spirits, causing us to dream and see that there were other possibilities for living. As our interest in sailing grew, we read magazines and books about it. Stories about couples who cruised around the world, slowing down to take time out from their modern lifestyles, inspired us. One book in particular, Maiden Voyage, by Tania Aebi, described her adventures at the age of eighteen as the first American woman and youngest person to circumnavigate the world. Discussions ensued. If these people could do it, why couldn't we?

We began looking into options. One was crewing boats. For a minimal amount of money, we could crew on someone else's boat and gain valuable experience while also traveling. As crew, we would share the responsibilities of navigating, helming the boat on scheduled watches, cleaning, and cooking meals. After applying for a couple of positions, we decided on a forty-six-foot sailboat in the process of circumnavigating the world. We would join it on its second leg, cruising from Fiji to Singapore for a six-month period, visiting the countries of Vanuatu, Australia, and Indonesia along the way.

After renting out our house and taking a one-year leave of absence from our employment, we up-anchored and left Seattle on June 1, 1998. Before meeting the boat, we went on a road trip for three weeks, camping out as we explored several different states. Driving east on I-90 through the Cascade Mountains, the sky was bright blue and sunny, the pine needles on the evergreens glistened, and a feeling of summer was in the air. My heart felt lighter and lighter the farther we traveled from the hustle of civilization and our old life. Gratitude welled within me for our choice to live adventurously and break out of the confines of our own limiting beliefs about how life should be lived. At last, we were free to follow our hearts and begin anew.

Are you following your heart? Are you living the life of your dreams? In order to live the life of our dreams, we need to take time out to reflect on who we are and what makes us feel alive inside.

Within each of us there is a powerful vital life force energy that resides. Like a raging river, this vital energy needs a channel to flow and be fully expressed. When we allow it to move through us, for example with our writing, artwork, or music…by expressing our passions, we allow the river of the divine to flow through us. When in the flow, we are in the present moment. Our spirits come alive; we feel at peace and can experience great joy and bliss. When we resist or block the flow of this creative energy, we experience constriction that causes us to feel anxious, physically ill, and spiritually disconnected from our source of love, joy, and abundance. Like a river being blocked by a dam, the water has no where to go and thus builds up more and more pressure.

At the beginning of the year, I created a New Year's intention for 2009. It is: "To be an open channel for the divine flow of creation and expression." Near my computer, I have a beautiful altar card with a colorful picture of a Dancing Fire Goddess, the Goddess of Expression. The card says:

"O Dancing Fire Goddess! Teach me to set myself free,
To create, to move to dance, to be!"

What is your soul's passion? What is your unique expression? Have you given yourself permission to freely express who you are without limitation? If not, try these exercises to assist you with engaging more fully in your passions:

1. Sit down with your journal or note book and begin the page with, "I feel most alive when…" Write non-stop, without lifting your pen from the paper, for at least five minutes. Then, take the items that have emerged and create a list of your passions.
2. Next, evaluate how often you engage in each passion on your list. Ask yourself, "If I were to make more of a commitment to the expression of my passions, what might that look like?" Journal for clarity. For example, I recently joined a Writer's Success Group to assist me with making my writing more of a priority. I now have weekly and monthly goals and a forum for accountability.
3. Now, meditate for five to ten minutes and visualize yourself engaged in your passions. What do you see? What are you doing? How does it feel to express your self more fully? Allow the feelings that have emerged such as freedom and joy to anchor into every cell of your being. See the energy of these feelings as a color or light to help with the visualization.
4. Pick a symbol or representation of your passions. For example, if the feeling that came up during your meditation is that of freedom, then a picture of an eagle soaring might be a wonderful representation. Since I love dancing, the altar card of a Dancing Fire Goddess is inspiring to me. Find something that resonates deeply with your soul and place it where you will see it frequently. For example, you might place it as the background on your computer desktop or at your altar or both.

By allowing the divine flow of creation to express through us freely and abundantly, we feel more alive inside. Our actions are inspired from the depths of who we are and we are able to live the life of our deepest dreams!

"The more willing you are to surrender to the energy within you, the more power can flow through you."
—Shakti Gawain, author of Creative Visualization

Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal. Copyright Llewellyn Worldwide, 2009. All rights reserved.

How do we get the spirit guides we have? I have a strong connection to one particular spirit guide, and believe that it was her choice to accompany me throughout this life. Is it the same for all our guides? Is an agreement made between us and our guides before we incarnate? If not, how do we end up with the guides we have? Thanks!

- L.

Dreamchaser:

I'm glad you asked this question, for it's something I've wanted to address in this forum for a while now. First, for those who aren't familiar, spirit guides are beings who were at one time human, who have learned all the human life lessons and don't have to incarnate on Earth anymore.

Instead of chilling on the beach or climbing a mountain, they decide to go to work on the Otherside and become spirit guides. We all have one main guide that is human and one main guide that is animal. Sometimes we will dream of an animal, and that animal will then come into our actual physical experience. Other times we are just drawn to a certain animal.

We all have a few different kinds of guides. The first is the kind that we choose. We have this pack of souls that we go from life to life with, and they come in all sorts of forms, from lovers to enemies. As with everyone in our soul family, we sat down before we incarnated on Earth and decided our paths. Sometimes members of our soul family will become our guides when they ascend, so we get these guides via mutual agreement prior to our birth.

The second is the kind that chooses us. At various times in our lives, we will come upon situations where we become blocked or just need an extra hand, so to speak. We may be ill or dealing with some kind of addiction, or have some kind of issue with something that is life-threatening or otherwise really challenging. At those times, sometimes Spirit/ God/ The Universe (whatever term you prefer) will step in to help us, and a temporary spirit guide is often the one to deliver that help.

The third kind of guide is a teaching guide. Much like the helping guides that are assigned to us, teaching guides come on a temporary basis and are very specific in terms of their roles in our lives. For example, a cat can teach us about concentration, and a squirrel can teach us about storing up resources for the future.

When we face a big spiritual lesson, an appropriate guide, be it human or animal, will come into our lives to help us with that specific lesson. When we learn that lesson, those guides leave. We may never encounter them again - at least not until we get to the Otherside.

As far as the guide you feel this connection with, she is your main guide, so you will feel her throughout this life. When a teaching guide comes in, sometimes she will step back and let that guide take the lead. She is always there though. Ask her how she came to be your guide, and you will hear her voice in the form of your own thoughts.

I wish you open communication with all of your guides!

*****

Astrea:

While I believe we are born with spirit guides who look out for us during our lives, I feel that some of our guides are acquired according to our needs as we go along.

I also believe we have guardian angels. I've had two throughout my life who have seemed to come and go, but I realize that they are always available if I need them. While those two seem to be female, I know that angels don't really have a gender - it was just comfortable for me to think of them as female when I was little.

I'm open to all sorts of wonderful ideas, so I never limited the number of guides, saints, angels, gods, goddesses, fairies, gnomes or elves I believed I could call upon as needed. As I grew older, I began to rely more on the One Almighty God than the angels, but they assure me that doesn't make them feel left out - it's just laziness on my part.

At different times in my life, other entities have come forward to help out. When I lost my great-grandmother's vase, I called on St. Anthony. (When it first cannot be found, St. Anthony, take a look around!). When I travel, I invoke the Goddess of the Blue Star to watch over me. When I'm in trouble, I ask the Archangel Michael to come to my aid.

Angels come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and since we are free to use them, why not keep a few personal favorites around? With personal angels or guides, we feel comfortable asking for favors and protection for ourselves and our loved ones. After all, if they are indeed assigned to us, then they don't have any choice but to help out when they can.

Of course, they don't have to do what we ask if it will prove bad for us. At those times, they are required to point out our own poor judgment. (Fortunately, angels have greater discernment than we humans do!) So while we're told that they're here to fulfill our hearts' desires, that's not always the way things turn out.

We fall in love with the wrong people, take bad jobs, and do our worst to others, all through our own free will. It seems to me if we listened to our guides and angels better, we would know how to live a life of perfection. Of course, human nature won't allow us to do that either. Trial and error, choices and consequences rain down on us, and sometimes it's hard to hear what anyone else is saying whether they're a spirit guide or an ordinary human.

It's human nature to reach past what we can see and hear to touch to a place where all is well. We can always access our guides through prayer and ritual. Also, by believing that there is someone watching over us, I think we're more likely to cooperate with the Universe and take good care of ourselves.

Astrea:

Many times in life we hear, "You will always have what you NEED, but not necessarily what you WANT." Your spirit must have needed to experience the feeling of leaving your human body, and the suggestion in the next chapter of Sylvia Brown's book was all it took to get you there.

Even though you hadn't read it yet, your SOUL recognized the title of that chapter as something it had been seeking, and your soul, knowing that you had that reference to read after your experience, got with it and out you went!

While I don't usually recommend her books, Sylvia Brown has a wide reaching and powerful effect on lots of people. A Gemini like you would be able to relate easily to her writing and put it to good use. Synchronicity - you gotta love it!

I like your description of "getting caught." That's exactly what it feels like, isn't it? One minute you're free and hovering above the room, and the next minute, ZAP! back down into your corporeal form you go!

As a little kid, I loved that "feeling of return." With practice, most of the time we can control that event, but sometimes, when our physical ears hear a distracting noise or something else occurs to knock us back into reality, back we go. With practice you will be able to control your return better.

I find it interesting that you were visiting your mother-in-law and not someone in your own genetic family. Evidently, you and your husband got married for reasons that are even deeper than love. His family's interest in "psychic stuff" will nurture your children in such matters and help them to grow into their own abilities.

You'll never have to be concerned that when your daughter visits them, she'll be discouraged from exploring her own psychic life and power. My parents encouraged me to develop my psychic senses in a time when it wasn't nice to even discuss such things in public. Heck, it's STILL not considered a great topic at the dinner table in some families!

Your kids will get to talk about it ALL and ask questions and read and study. This is going to give them such an edge in life! Talk with your husband about how you want to present this to your kiddos, so that you are united in your approach and ready to tell them their experiences are all natural and okay.

A word or two of warning: Geminis often have difficulty staying grounded in REAL LIFE. Don't get so strung out on your ASTRAL life that you neglect what you're doing here on Earth.

You are at the beginning of a long journey to learn where your power really lies. Try to be patient with this process and take your time.