Dear Marilyn, 

I have resistance to embracing my flavor, my place, my uniqueness.  How do I love the version of me that I see as different?

You are meant to be different.  Your tone, your ideas, your dreams and desires are unique to you, and how you express who you are.  The person you are living as now is how you see yourself. But you are much more than the sum of the parts you perceive as you today.   Who do you want to see yourself as?  You have everything within you that you need to feel good about who you are today and, to become more of who you are meant to be as you surrender to appreciation, grace and flow of expressing your inner guidance. 

Relax, focus on you and your relationship to who you are.  Surrender into what is, accept that you have a unique expression to give to others and yourself, and try to see the perfection of this moment, you can open to discover the balance and peace that you in this moment has to offer, to learn and to expand to become more.  Train yourself to focus, to appreciate the gift that only you can give; using the conditions and situations to your benefit as a means of going deep to uncover fears, and feel your power.

This moment offers the consciousness of so many energies; you picked the traits that make you unique, you are Source energy and there are no limits to what you can do to explore who you are in this environment.  New perceptions, new experiences allow different perspectives and everyone of those experiences is valuable.  You are as you should be in order to explore what you want in order to enjoy the vibrancy of energy flowing through you and your life.  The experience of life, experiencing yourself in the ways that are unique to you is meant to give you direction, to help you have an exploration of who you are.  There is no “wrong”.  When you compare yourself to others and wish you were different you diminish who you are.  Instead ask yourself, how could this beneficial to me?  How can these things that seem less than others in my life or different help me to know more of myself, to express my purpose?

You may not know the answers to the questions but unless you make a step, a step beyond a limited perspective that may be holding you back, you will not find them.  Yet that is why you are here.  To know yourself in relation to the divine energy flowing in physical existence.  It is an interesting thought that in exploring the idea of separation and duality is the path to oneness.  When you can accept who you are, remembering and honoring your uniqueness as your gift and expression, you can accept others and understand that you are capable of different parts of your being to allow in more of who you are, to see parts of you you may not be aware of, and feel more of your inner power.  Your perspective widens and the more you remember your inner Self, the part that is Source energy – the oneness that is the link to All That Is.  You are the being in all of these lives and that will help you understand that you are Oneness.  You are more than just this one life; you are the energy that encompasses all.

Allow yourself to perceive yourself in a different way.  See beyond the labels, the judgement, the differences as barriers.  Recognize who you are, an unlimited being.  Those unique aspects of you, no matter what they are, are doorways to enter and explore to discover your powerful, joyful, unique expression.  Appreciate the path you are walking and as you become aware of how you perceive yourself, be compassionate, surrender the need to change yourself, find inner courage to dive into your fears and welcome new perspectives.   When you discover what you are afraid of about who you are, you can process the fear and move through it into relief.  You can rejoice that you are becoming aware of the resistance within, shining a light on the darkness and while it may be uncomfortable you can trust that the other side of that old energy is release, resolution and freedom.  Imagine being in the place where freedom and joy calls you forward, and you get to see what is standing the way of it so you can understand how to transform it.   If you perceive yourself as not good enough, that you should be different, then you are seeing yourself in a limited way; a fear that you are wrong.  This keeps you from your joy, from opening to the balance, healing and way of looking at life where you have the confidence to express who you truly are.  

You cannot control others perceptions but you can feel better about who you are by going  within and finding self-acceptance.  And until you do that work, you will continue to feel less than you truly are and to color your life with disappointment and anxiety.  The process of shifting your energy is something I can help you with so you can live and enjoy yourself. Reach out to me to learn about the steps you can take to have the life of ease and comfort you want.

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Marilyn Decalo offers one-one coaching sessions to help you achieve your goals! To learn more about Marilyn’s coaching options, click here. 

Dear Marilyn,

Why does life mastery stem from emotional mastery? 

Life mastery may seem like a big topic; complex and difficult.  Actually, life mastery is not as impossible as you might think, unless you make it that way. The emotional reactions and responses that we unconsciously or habitually experience is at the root of the results in every area of your life. Becoming aware of your emotions and emotional state is vital to self-mastery and integral to recognizing the divinity within, but we as a human species have not been taught to manage our emotions.  Pure unconditional love of self is the necessary ingredient but one has to develop a deep connection with the inner resource of love. If you mastered the dynamics of your emotions you could not be controlled.  We are taught we are powerless and due to that imprinting powerlessness is reflected in our emotional nature. With our emotions we reinforce beliefs that recreate behavior again and again, and so we must break the pattern by coming to a realization of all of the beliefs and fears in the way. For instance, many of us are in states of emotional triggering where the emotional energy of conflict, accusation and blame keeps flying back and forth. It seems like there is no place where anyone is willing to forgive because we believe forgiveness is disempowering. In reality forgiveness is emotionally empowering and freeing. Asking “Why” a person did what they did instead of focusing on “what” they did makes it easier for us to understand and forgive, and that is how we can start to shift emotional reactions.  If you are seeking emotional peace and choose to shift your path to accept your true nature as the creator of your life, in other words to consciously experience oneself as divine, then you are growing, evolving and harmonizing your emotional nature to birth a new consciousness. When one comes into the recognition of the worth of self through the process of emotional awareness, resistance to accepting that goodness or God-ness (divinity within) in one’s life is released and consciousness shifts.   Emotional mastery is an opportunity for a great leap forward!

What is emotional mastery?

Emotional mastery is being in tune with and managing our thoughts and feelings relative to daily life experience.  Rather than reacting without awareness, being in touch with an emotional response to a situation or person means noticing our emotions, accepting responsibility for the feelings, and going within to reflect whether or not a belief or prejudice might be informing our thinking, and asking if the thought behind the emotion is true.  Emotional mastery is an inner process of integrated work.  Each person has a unique way of filtering life experience based on how he or she has reacted to events, beliefs and circumstances. We filter life experience through our emotions, and our conditioned responses to what we deem negative or positive outcomes. Our emotions shape our perspective about ourselves, each other and our lives.  We have become used to not wanting to feel the so-called negative emotions, to resisting anything that might foster an uncomfortable feeling. In order to master our emotions it is necessary to accept each feeling that comes up as a part of who we are, to feel our feelings and ask whether it serves us or not in the moment or situation.  We have a choice to shift our emotions, but denying or burying them just keeps them hidden until they surface at the next opportunity or trigger. Ultimately emotional mastery allows us to consciously choose how we wish to feel because we desire to be authentic, we desire to feel good.  When a situation and circumstance arises the first responder is always from the emotional body and we change by shifting the beliefs that are not ours.  Those thoughts that we have been trained to anticipate or adopt. 

The value of being aware of your emotions.

Emotion is referred to as e-motion or energy in motion.  Emotions allow us to feel our own energy and they are useful as a barometer to measure how we are flowing in sync with our inner energy, the true self, or how resistant we might be to our natural alignment with pure positive love energy.  The value of becoming aware of our emotions lies in how it changes our experiences of being alive.  It changes our perception of ourselves from unworthy to worthy, from fear to love.  Can you accept yourself as you are in this moment?  Can you accept yourself when you are not feeling okay about who you are?  To do so is to relax in being who you are in this moment and to see yourself as worthy of love as you are. Life has ups and downs and though I may be on a journey of self-discovery in hopes of growing into more and more feeling good moments, I allow emotions to surface the ideas and beliefs that are uncomfortable in order to see them and shift them, to transmute them into love with the energy of love for myself.

Strengthen your divine inner compass and reorient to new energies.

Where in your life are you seeing and feeling uprooted?  Do you like how you feel?  How you feel is your experience, it’s determining the time line you are experiencing.  What and how you feel emits your vibration – it’s your frequency and what you broadcast to the universe about who, what and where you are.  If you feel uprooted in the present moment or in recent weeks, know that you have a divine inner compass with in you that can reset and reorient you to your new time line anytime you wish to go within and consciously intend your vibrational destination.  Fear may be the default vibration of many who do not know they are the divine spark of the God heart.  Fear is a powerful attractor of human experience.  Many find a resonance with this vibration because it is familiar.  But change on the scale of what is happening in our society is a call to turn to a new approach to life, one based on acceptance and love. We have outgrown our collective and individual past and have spiritually changed.  You do not fit in the world behind you and you cannot return to what you have known before unless you choose to remain asleep.  Bu you have outgrown that experience. The old energies cannot expand to accommodate this level of change.  Yet where you are going has not yet fully manifested for it is emerging in and through you.  You are creating your world through your emotions and feelings, through your vibrational choices and emissions.  That is different than the old way of pulling out a calendar scheduling appointments and then doing an activity you think you should do.  Remember, you bring yourself (your state of being) with you wherever you go.  You can change your environment, but you bring your vibration and consciousness with you

Where in your life to see this sense of deep and profound change?  Where in your life are you experiencing upheaval? How do you feel right now in this moment and in your life – in school, work or relationship?  They are the beginnings of your new earth cosmic coordinates.  Based on the vibrational emissions of energy produced by your consciousness, your “I am in this moment” you are emitting frequency coordinates.  The universe is activating on a whole new level now – a requirement to be impeccable with your vibration, your unique energetic frequency.  Your vibration is your code – you are a transmitter of energetic frequency.  Your cosmic coordinate – your location emission in the greater cosmic map of my life draws your path to you as people and conditions that are aligned to your frequency will be attracted to you.

Where are you being triggered by your own debris?  Listen deeper for their messages to you so you can convert them to soul wisdom and then release the triggers themselves that were simply acting as messengers of who you are not.  No need to push against them or judge them. Take the time to listen to what the triggers are saying…then place yourself in greater alignment with the expression of who you are – living light as divine sparks of the God-heart. Admission to this true light is by vibration.  Wherever you consciously vibrate within is where you will experience yourself to be in the new energies.  Be the vibration you wish you experience.  Be the vibration you want to template all your experiences that collectively add to your life outcomes.  Choose your timeline.

Get off the old code and old matrix train.  Choose a frequency you can align with or that is in your core…change is here.  You are the driver of your journey, the map maker of your life.  You choose the coordinates of where you want to be. Go into your inner emotional control panel that creates your vibrational footprint and select the next best thought or feeling that will move you in the direction of what you do want.  This is a global reset time.  Unity, light, love, compassion, cooperation and manifesting for the greatest and highest good of the collective is the new landscape.  Become aware of your vibrational field to navigate this changing landscape and you become the master of your life that you are meant to be. You are the creator, you are the love you wish to see in the world.  Be the master you truly are.

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Marilyn is a spiritual coach who serves as a teacher and guide for anyone who would like support on their journey of awakening to who they truly are. 

To submit a question to Marilyn, write to marilyn@marilyndecalo.com.

Dear Marilyn,

How can I come to accept loving goodness as my natural state of being when I see and experience pain and suffering that happens without a good reason?

This question comes from a deep desire to experience love, and to understand, what it means to love.  When you find yourself saying, “I should be more loving” and not really knowing how to do that, pay attention to where that thought is coming from.  Will behaving in a certain way change the conditions or the relationship so then you can feel more loving?  Are you using the idea of “love” to control how you think things should be so you can then be happy?   There is a difference between coming from a state of love or a loving consciousness and letting circumstances dictate whether or not you feel love.

The new approach to spirituality recognizes that we are divine beings having a human experience.  As divine beings we are each the dynamic expression of the Love that created Oneness – the Love of All That Is.  Love is who you are at your core. The energy of Love is dynamic, courageous, bold (not showy – that’s the ego), solemn, peaceful, humble and gives with no attachment to how its gifts are received.  In this sense love is unconditional, meaning it comes forth through connection with the inner self, not based on outside appearances.

Empower Yourself

You mistrust the idea of loving goodness because you have experienced something in your life that knocked you out of the feeling that love is present.   Some circumstances are not fair.  But fairness in the sense of an ‘eye for eye’ has nothing to do with dynamic power of love in action.  You may be harmed by someone but if you choose to hang onto the harm as a reason to disempower yourself and feel like a victim, you are choosing to feel hurt as well.  I am not saying that there is something wrong with feeling hurt, it’s a real emotion.  However, if you ask the question, what would love do allows the hurt and disempowerment to resolve.

It begins by loving yourself.  When your mind is being judgmental and critical toward yourself, you can stop and liberate your thoughts.  Feel into acceptance of yourself, no matter what the circumstances.  The first predator we disarm is the imaginary one in your own mind.  The critic in your mind is the reoccurring pain of all the things others have said to you and that you believed to be true. Know that you are worthy and deserving of all the joy your heart desires.  When your mind is overflowing with fulfillment, when you allow the love to be the dominant focus, you or anyone else in your life will no longer be the scapegoat for unhappiness.

What Would Love Do?

Love is the willingness to take a moment of your time, whether it’s with someone who has triggered you, has a conflict with you or is a great example of how quickly you can be turned away from love, and ask, “What would love do?”.  Love would see that person or situation as calling for love from you, as an opportunity for healing and forgiveness – both to yourself and to them.  Why would you offer that?  The reason is because the people who hurt you intentionally and unintentionally, wouldn’t feel the desire to hurt or abuse others if they felt whole.  Those in whom this desire to lash out or harm exists are expressing the energy of a pattern of pain and underneath they wish to be healed.  They are trying to heal themselves by projecting the pain they don’t know how to deal with onto others.

Thank them for reminding you that your light has the power to liberate you in the name of breaking the cycle of violence, abuse and pain.  That’s what love would do.   When you employ that strategy you will find a potent spiritual process of forgiveness.  For many forgiveness feels like you’re saying this is ok (nothing that has happened to you has to be ok).  If what happened is not ok, then shine your light to up-level the consciousness in both of you.  Use the power of your love to acknowledge the harm and release the hurt so this doesn’t happen to another.  Responding with love is responding with the opposite vibration.  It is possible in the midst of forgiveness to find a concern of equally helping all. In the body of a someone who is acting with unthinkable cruelty is the body of a victim who hasn’t been healed. 

You don’t need to wait for pain to heal yourself.  You can see the love, and send love, honor, generosity to all until your life is filled with a deep love that flows from within.  Your commitment to love affects the world with loving goodness. When you become the light in a darkened world, when you can bless someone who has hurt you with love, there is simply love to share.

Dear Marilyn,

How does one get started with spirituality?

By developing a curiosity about the whole self; the truth of who you are in totality.  For some of us this curiosity comes at a time we are experiencing a particularly challenging life event.  Perhaps in a vulnerable moment of feeling empty or lost you turn inward, and sensing there must be something more to life, you want answers from a higher power.  For others it might be a desire to know who you truly are after experiencing the end of significant relationship or job.  You feel it is now time to live life on your terms, and you want to understand what that means.  Or maybe a desire for release from the stress of incessant thinking, always doing for others and trying to control outcomes, causes you to seek the solace and peace of a place of worship.  You are more open to the idea of coming home to your true Self and in your curiosity about who you are, you become willing to explore perceptions of yourself and life beyond present concepts.

The meaning of spirituality is to become aware of and concerned with the spirit or soul nature; through tools, techniques and inspiration you can intentionally connect with your higher consciousness and allow more peace into your experience. Initially you may think that the purpose of becoming more spiritual is to change conditions in your life.  In reality the process of awakening is actually a process of knowing yourself as a divine creator and authentic expression of divine love.

It takes a very courageous soul to break away from the spell that holds human consciousness in the belief that happiness is found when conditions in the world conform to one’s wishes. The truth is that the world can never give you enough happiness because happiness comes from within, from your own feeling nature.  You start on the spiritual path by making peace with where you are in this moment.  Not judging yourself, not trying to change yourself, not wishing things were different, but by simply accepting yourself and appreciating everything that has brought you to this moment as necessary to being here, now.  This is your life and to deny the parts and pieces of it as wrong is to deny yourself love and appreciation for who you have become, and what has led you to decide to explore your spirituality.  So start with self-acceptance and allow everything you feel to be okay.  Whether it’s fear or love, just surrender to the moment, say, “I am here, now” and breathe.  Once you begin to take responsibility for your feelings, and how you feel about yourself, not blaming others for your feelings but recognizing you have the power to choose how you respond, you are on your way to knowing who you really are.  You are more powerful and magnificent than you ever imagined, and you do not have to struggle and suffer to have what you want.  Because what you truly want is to be the creator of more joy, peace and love.

There is no right or wrong way to get started on a spiritual path.  However, I do recommend that you learn to meditate if you do not already do so. The time spent in the peaceful, relaxing spaciousness of meditation allows you to connect with higher energetic vibrations and become familiar with inner balance and calm.   You can download my free meditation guide here.

I also recommend some wonderful healing guided meditations from my teachers, Aaron and Joseph found on their website: https://aaronandjoseph.pagecloud.com

If you are interested in exploring books about spirituality try https://www.holybooks.com

They offer lots of great, free downloads.

And if you are seeking a guide or coach to help you identify other resources, tools and techniques on your spiritual path, reach out to me to set up a time to talk: marilyn@marilyndecalo.com

Your Friend On The Path,

Marilyn