The Early Pitfall

People who are new to this path, or coming back to it after a break, often tell me the same thing. They do not want to pick up lots of negative stuff. Many of them have tried before, and on that earlier attempt they became aware of a lot of negative events, felt overwhelmed, and stopped. They are afraid of it happening again.

That fear is very understandable. It is also avoidable, and this page is about how.

Why the bad stuff is loud

When any negative event happens in our world, a great deal of human focus goes onto it. Attention is energy, so that focus creates an enormous flow of energy around the event, and a big flow of energy is far easier to detect.

Now think about how we treat good news. As a society we tend to brush past positive events. We notice them for a moment and move on. They do not attract anything like the same level of energy, so they are much less obvious to someone who is just learning to sense.

Add to that a world that has trained most of us to focus on the negative, and you get the result so many beginners report. The first things they pick up are the loudest things, and the loudest things are usually the bad ones.

What it does to people

So someone starts opening up, and what they become aware of is a lot of negative events. They feel overwhelmed and they stop, and the next time they think about starting again, they are afraid of the same thing happening.

They have simply tuned in before learning to filter. If that has happened to you, nothing is wrong with you. It is a very common experience, and there is a way through it.

The cure is control

This is where control over your own energy becomes so vital in your learning.

Learning control is the basic skill I encourage everybody to make their first level of development. It is not critical on day one, but it becomes vital as you go on.

With control over your own energy you can learn to filter out the negative stuff, so you get to see the far greater amount of positive energy that was there all along.

Where control starts

The easiest lesson of control to pick up is breathing meditation.

Find somewhere safe and unlikely to be interrupted by kids, animals or other people. Sit in a comfortable position and relax.

Starting at your feet and working up through your legs, hips, tummy, chest, hands, arms, shoulders, neck and head, tense each part of your body and then relax it. As you do, breathe slowly in through your nose and out through your mouth. See the breath coming in as love, strength and positivity, and the breath going out as the negativity inside you.

Once every part of you has relaxed, simply be aware of your breathing. Let your diaphragm relax as it helps you breathe, and be aware of each breath as it comes in and as it goes out.

Do this for as long as you can without other thoughts coming in. It takes a little time to master. Find at least thirty minutes a day for it, and keep it up for a week before you add anything. Soothing sounds are fine, rainfall or whale song or whatever soothes you, as long as they do not distract you.

The weeks that follow build on this one step at a time. The Letting Go and Control page sets them out, and the Thirty Minutes a Day page shows you how to make the daily sit stick.

Raise the energy around you

Alongside control, do whatever you can to raise the energy around you. Together they help you avoid that early pitfall of seeing only negativity.

Some simple ways I have shared over the years:

1. Play music you love.
2. Open the doors and windows and let in sunshine and fresh air.
3. Burn incense, a scented candle or a diffuser.
4. Surround yourself with white light. Pink works very well too.
5. Hug more. Hugs are one of the best things in life for raising your energy. Even a hug from a random stranger can lift someone who is feeling low, and a hug from an animal can have a profound effect as well.

How often do you give hugs? How often do you get them?

The Clearing Negative Energy page has more methods for when something heavy has already moved in, and the Grounding page shows you how to drain off what you pick up during the day.

Catch your own negative thoughts

Not everything heavy comes from outside. A lot of it is the way our own minds have been trained.

Here is a very simple method. When any thought enters your head, ask yourself two questions, in either order.

1. How do my thoughts behave?
2. Are my thoughts useful?

Do this every time a negative thought turns up, and you will find they start to fade and are replaced with more positive ones, because the answers to those two questions encourage your mind to refocus. The Monkey Mind page goes further into telling your own head apart from what is really coming in.

One firm rule

As you open up, you may become aware of spirit. Spirit communication is a big subject, and there is one simple rule to start with.

Never allow a spirit attachment. It is like giving a vampire free access to you, and nothing good can come from it. Never invite a spirit to attach to you, and never do it to see what happens. Any spirit that wants to attach to you is never doing it for your highest good. A spirit that has your highest good at heart will only ever want to pass information on to you.

The Protection page and the Mediumship page cover this in more depth.

Balance

All of this is about balance, which runs through everything I teach.

If you put all your focus on the higher self and none on grounding, you stall. If you put all of it on grounding and none on the higher self, you stall the other way. The Spirit and the Higher Self page explains that balance. Control is what lets you hold it.

The other side of the pitfall

Once you have some control and a habit of raising your energy, you can filter what comes in, and the positive energy, which was always there, starts to come through.

So make control your highest priority. Build it first, and the rest of this Library will make far more sense.

If you would like this read against your own chart, my readings are here.