Our Spiritual Journey: Finding Our True Selves

"You are...a dancing vision of your own dreams. " Do not think you know who you are. You are so much more than your personality. You are a soul. You are connected to the sun and the moon and the stars. You are a child of the earth, a gift to humanity, a dancing vision of your own dreams.  ~Karin M. Keyes

We have a tremendous power within ourselves to create the inner experiences that we want to have.  It isn’t always easy at first, but few things that are worth our time are easy.  As we create these new inner experiences, we become a gift to everyone’s life that we touch. ~Karin M. Keyes

    "Anyone who has ever told you that you are not  a unique and beautiful spark of the Divine,  does not truly see you." If no one had ever had any thoughts about who you are, who would you be? If no one ever told you anything about yourself based on who they are or their own personal perceptions of the world, how would it have freed you to discover your own truths? We did not start from this place. We have each been around for eons. We are our own individual spark of God, having our own point of awareness that has nothing to do with anyone else. Know that everyone who has ever had an opinion of you that doesn’t sit right with you, or doesn’t resonate with your own personal truth, is probably wrong about you. Anyone who has ever told you that you are anything less than you are is wrong. Anyone who has ever told you that you are not a unique and beautiful spark of the Divine, does not truly see you. ~Karin M. Keyes

After a lot of work, time and love, I’m happy to announce that my new book Journey Into Awareness: Reclaiming Your Life is out and available for purchase on Amazon.  I began writing this book a couple years ago, writing about different realizations I was coming to about life during a major turning point in my own. I found that the things I had been carrying for much of my life were becoming too heavy to continue to carry and, through my private practice, I was seeing that many other people were feeling the same way. We were all beginning to question, on a deeper level, all the things we had been told and all of the things we had been telling ourselves. We wanted more. We all did. We wanted to be happy in our lives. We wanted to feel peaceful. We wanted to enjoy good relationships with the people around us. We wanted to move toward our dreams unafraid. We wanted to release our anxiety and feel safe in our own bodies. We wanted to learn how to open our hearts and to approach life fr...

         We have a choice to make about how we choose to feel every single day. We don’t necessarily get to feel however we want to at any given moment, but we have a say in what we choose to feel.Turning our attention to gratitude instead of focusing on hardship brings us into an entirely different place. Choosing to be strong instead of weak transforms our experiences. Being positive and seeing the good all around us puts the rest in a different place and we can see it from a higher perspective.  "Whichever emotion we choose to feed  strengthens in its life-force energy." Whichever emotion we choose to feed strengthens in its life-force energy. It is not enough to think positively, to act in a strong way, or to feel gratitude instead of self-pity once. We need to make it a regular practice. We need to be conscious of our thoughts and to notice when our thoughts are carrying us in the wrong direction, and to move our attention to who we want to b...

Everything we want in on the other side of fear. Think about what frightens you. What are you afraid of? Now, look at the things that frighten you as golden opportunities, a vision of what you need to overcome to get to where you need to be. In doing this, you open to the potential of becoming your highest expression of yourself.  "Look at the things that frighten you as golden opportunities, a vision of what you need to overcome to get to where you need to be." Rarely do our fears have nothing to do with where we actually want to go. Rather, fear generally has a great deal to do with what is in our hearts to do. Fear says we aren’t good enough, prepared enough, and so on. But, there is the essential question, good enough for what? What is it that you mind keeps going to, again and again, that you are telling yourself isn’t possible or practical, that could lead to your ultimate failure? Answers to those questions have the ability to transform your life.       ...

             People will let you down.   They will fall short of being their best selves. They will be selfish and mean and manipulative and deceptive. They will use you, even if they care for you, in order to get what they feel they deserve.   They will walk away from you even when you are being your best self.        Don’t take this personally. It is not a reflection of you. It is their way of continuing to navigate their way through the darkness because they are not in touch with what it means to unconditionally love.   Our ability to move into a place of pure love didn’t come easily for us either.   We battled our way through the darkness, as well. We did not have evil intentions. We simply didn’t know. We knew we were looking for something better but didn’t know what that was. We have been in survival mode, too.   None of that had anything to do with anyone else.     It was our own search...

      Honor other people as souls. We are not just human beings. We are souls. We are not just what meets the eye. We are all so much more expansive than that. If we could truly see each other not as human brings, but as souls, as divine, infinite beings, without race, beyond family or origin or personal appearance or visible circumstance, our experience of life and of each other would change beyond measure.    ~Karin M. Keyes

           So many of us have become so disheartened by a broken system that we used to think we could count on. There is no system in place that will take the place of who we are individually. There is no one “to take care of us.” There is no greater entity in the form of institution that is greater than us, no degree that puts someone in a greater place of importance, no education that lifts someone up beyond where other people are.       We ask ourselves what qualifies us to step up and act like we are someone who can make a difference. What if we are wrong? What if we don’t know what we are talking about? We look at the state of our lives and ask why we think we have earned the right to act like we have something to say. All the while, we are do desperately needed. There are people who are so alone, feel so alone and scared who couldn’t care less what degree you do or don’t have, whether your life looks ...

         This is not the endpoint of your existence. This is not the final “you.” This is only where and who you are at this particular point in time. Imagine how you want to feel in your future.   Not what you want to do but how you want to feel.   Then maybe images will come to your mind. Maybe not.   But imagine how you want to feel and then look at what either needs to change to be able to move into that or what requires patience.   You may already be doing exactly what is in alignment with your soul.   It may just take a little while for it to all come together the way you would like so that you can feel the way that you want to feel.   "We have to be in charge of navigating our lives  and of setting our sights on what we want our future to look like."       We have to be in charge of navigating our lives and of setting our sights on what we want our future to look like. There is no final prod...

            Cut ties with your past. Whatever you have learned from it has the ability to help you create a more fulfilling future based on a deeper knowledge of who you are and what you want in your life.   Anything that hurts you can only be healed through forgiveness. There is nothing anyone else can do to take away that pain.   And the rest needs to be let go of if we are to be able to live our lives fully in this present moment and in the future.         "Anything that hurts you can only be healed through forgiveness."      We can find so many reasons why we “just can’t let go,” but our inability to let go exists only in our minds. Letting go does not mean no longer feeling pain. It doesn’t mean the grief ceases to exist. But it means that we let go of our constant battle to try to make sense of it in our minds. It means that we let go of the illusion we have held onto that we are somehow...

Being conscious in the present moment is so much more important than what we strive to achieve. We are surrounded by so much beauty. Everywhere we turn is an opportunity to express and receive love and to go deeper into our experience of life.     ~Karin M. Keyes "We are surrounded by so much beauty."

           Allow your boundaries to be non-negotiable. We can be so focused on keeping the peace that we sacrifice our well-being in the process. We don’t want to make waves. We don’t want other people to think we are selfish. We want people to like us or approve of us, and we say yes when we mean no. We tell ourselves that we can overcome whatever harm may come to us. We tell ourselves that it isn’t that big a deal. But it is.  Anything that we do that betrays our own well-being is a big deal. It matters tremendously.      We have to commit to taking care of ourselves. We have to protect ourselves and know clearly where the lines lay with us.  It will not kill us if people are upset with us. We were not put on this earth to make other people happy at the cost of ourselves.  We don’t matter less than a single person on this earth.   "We have to...

Let people have their limitations. No one is meant to be perfect. No one exists to make us happy. We all have our strengths, and we all have our baggage. We all have our points where our behavior does not meet the needs of others. Let that be okay. We meet each other wherever we meet each other.  "No one is meant to be perfect." When we can acknowledge each other’s shortcomings and make room for them in our own lives and our own thinking, we can love each other far more deeply. We need to stop wishing someone would just stop doing something that bothers us.They don’t need to stop doing anything. Everyone is on their own journey. It is for us to love them and not to change them.Trying to change anyone only leads to their misery and our own.   ~Karin M. Keyes

     We have to be able to let go of the old to make way for the new. People can have such a hard time with the idea of loss.  We have already lost so much, we tell ourselves.   We have lost relationships, we have lost ourselves, we have lost countless things that were so very important to us.   This can make it so much harder to let go of what we have gotten used to, even if what we have gotten used to is harming us.    "We need to have the courage to let go of anything that is taking away  from our quality of life if we are to make room for what  really works for us."      We need to have the courage to let go of anything that is taking away from our quality of life if we are to make room for what really works for us. There is so much waiting for us to experience. There is so much that is in alignment with who we are today that we wouldn’t have been able to make happen years ago. We have grown so...

           The relationship that we have with ourselves is the most important relationship we will ever have.   We need to learn how to build that relationship.   Part of that process is learning how to trust ourselves. We need to take what we say seriously. We need to follow through on what we say we are going to do.     Even if no one will ever know if we followed through or not, we know, and that is the most important thing      If we tell ourselves we are going to make ourselves a cup of tea and then we never get around to it, it is sending the message to ourselves that we are not really very important. If we have an impulse to try something and we tell ourselves that we are going to do it, but then never push ourselves, it is sending ourselves a strong message as well. The same holds true if we say we are going to call someone, if we say we are going to relate something that we feel deeply about to another perso...

     Value your own true nature. There are so many sides to who we are. We are all so unique. There are things that move us and make us feel alive inside. There are things that we appreciate on such a deep level that other people might not react to at all. There are talents that we have gifts that we are given. There are things that we just know that other people don’t seem to be aware of. There are the things that nurture our souls that may range from having a cup of coffee in the stillness of the morning to climbing a  mountain.   "When our souls light up with our own joy and inner fulfillment, we light up the world..."      No one can tell us more about our own nature than we can. No one can tell us what will mean the most to us. We have to listen to our own souls and to build a relationship with ourselves. We have to bring in the elements of life that will allow us to thrive without looking to either side of ...

        There is no one in the world who is more important than you are.   Each of us has a responsibility to make ourselves happy. We are the only ones who can know what means the most to us.   There is an inner rhythm that each of us has that is unique to us, a certain balance with the universe. Let yourself move into the quiet place within you that connects to all that is around you.     "Feel yourself connect to what makes  you who you are, to what makes you feel alive."      Feel yourself being a part of the greater whole. Feel the hum of life around you.  You are a part of that. Feel yourself begin to wake up from that deeper core of who you are.   Let yourself take in the sunlight.   Let yourself listen when there is no one around you. What do you hear? Feel yourself connect to what makes you who you are, to what makes you feel alive.                  ...

             Be there for people.   Let them know you are there. People can put on such a strong front when, inside, they are crumbling.  They don’t know where to go or what to do, or how they got there, and they often feel so ashamed that this is where they are that they don't tell anybody. Questions of “How are you?” are quickly met with “I’m good” and sometimes even a funny story to illustrate that things are going well.   But inside, they are barely holding on.        There is no way for us to know what is going on with anyone behind closed doors or within their own minds. But if we make time for the people we care about, setting aside our busy schedule or our tendency to run from one thing to another, to really sit with them and listen, we may change that person’s life or entire experience of a painful situation. When we open our hearts with someone and let them know that, right at that moment...

Always be a student. There is so much to learn. There are so many people who have had such vastly different experiences from us and have a great deal to bring to our lives from those experiences. There are subjects that we may have an interest in, from spirituality to art to farming to any number of other areas.  Take fifteen minutes out of every day to learn something new. Find random subjects to expand your knowledge on. It hardly even matters what these subjects are. There is a whole world out there and within ourselves. By continually taking on the role of the student, we allow ourselves to be more present within ourselves and to remind ourselves that we don’t have all the answers.  "Take fifteen minutes out of every day to learn something new."  The benefits far outweigh the simple material we are learning. By being the student, we move into a place of receptivity where we can soften around what we have believed to be our limitations and to learn that no such limitat...