Who Are My Guides?

Posted on by riverflowhealing

I’ve been connected with my guides (beings who work with me to help me find my way through my life and experiences) since I was a very young child. I’ve been told that it’s rare for someone to connect with their guides as early as I did. In my case, it was because the humans around me were either overtly dangerous to me, or those who were intended to protect me chose not to. I needed help and protection, and so subconsciously or unconsciously reached out for those things.

I was very fortunate. Many people who open to channeling and to their guides are permeable, which means that any being who chooses can connect to and communicate with them. Sometimes that results in them connecting with beings who are not what they claim to be, and do not have the person’s best interests at heart.

In my case, the beings who responded to my call were my genuine guides, and they put protective measures into place to prevent other beings from connecting with me. This makes me an impermeable channel, since only my own guides can connect with me unless I request otherwise, or another being receives consent from me and from my primary guide.

My earliest memory of my guides comes from when I was about three. Two of them manifested to me as “people” whom I called Big John and Little John. (Hey, I was three. Names weren’t my strong suit.) My parents called Big John and Little John my “imaginary friends.” I was very adamant in correcting them; my friends weren’t imaginary, they were just invisible.

Big John and Little John, whom I now know as Dominic and Blake (though they’ve given me other names to use for them over the years), are spirit guides. Once, they were human, but they completed the incarnations they needed in order to learn what their souls had come to learn. They stopped incarnating and instead took on the role of guides. Dominic and I knew each other in one of my past lives, which was his final lifetime as human, several hundred years ago. Blake hasn’t been quite as forthcoming with why he’s chosen to work with me.

When I was about four, “Jesus” came to play with me quite a bit. This wasn’t the Christian Jesus, nor was it the being some know as an ascended master. Nor, for that matter, is Jesus one of the names this being generally uses. I was brought up in a nominally Christian household. A being with extremely high energetic vibration, who manifested as protective, safe, and loving, wasn’t something I could conceive of outside the “Jesus” I’d learned about in church.

That being, who I now know as Shiva, though again he’s had other names, is my primary guide. He’s a being of light, which is one of the highest-vibration beings among those who choose to work with humans, and he’s the guide I channel.

Some pretty horrible things happened to me as a child. Although my guides protected me to the extent they were able, free will plays a role in beings’ dealings with humans. My soul chose certain lessons to learn and patterns to address in this lifetime, and certain events occurred because of those soul-level choices. Since I was unaware of these choices on a conscious level, I wasn’t able to ask my guides to help or protect me from the events, and without that request, they could only be with me, support me, and try to ensure that I survived. At times, they advised me on courses of action that might prevent trauma, but if I chose not to listen, they couldn’t do much else.

With each subsequent traumatic event, my energetic vibration decreased. In order to work with a being of light, a human has to have a proportionately high vibration. By the time I was seven or eight, my vibration was too low for Shiva to work with me safely. He never left, but he “stepped back” and observed and protected me from a distance, figuratively speaking, so his vibration wouldn’t become painful for me or cause me harm.

For nearly thirty years after that, I remained connected to and communicated with my other guides, often wondering why what I’d come to believe were imaginary friends (because that’s what I was told by everyone around me) didn’t disappear as I “outgrew” them. Then, around 2005, I became friends with a man who channeled; he was also the one who taught me Chios Energy Healing. Through channeling sessions with him and his guide, I learned techniques for raising my vibration, and his guide, working in concert with Shiva, restored the connection Shiva and I had had when I was a child.

It took work for me to believe I was “worthy” of channeling a being of light, and to be honest, sometimes I still struggle with that lack of belief in my worth. But he is my guide, though I’m not the only human with whom he works directly, and I did learn to channel him.

Beginning on June 3, Shiva and I will be offering relayed channeling and trance channeling services. We did this together over a decade ago, but then life, including raising my children, got in the way of my practices. I’m thrilled to be able to offer it again.

Why Change?

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Why change? Good question.

Life is a constant, ongoing process of change and growth. Unless you’re really, really determined, it’s pretty much impossible not to grow and change as you move through life. But some of that growth and change isn’t a conscious choice. It’s in response to things that occur in our lives, or simply the result of getting chronologically older and gaining more knowledge and experience. Change happens.

Conscious change, though, takes work, and to do that work, most people want a reason. That’s where getting tripped up and tangled in others’ opinions can happen. Changing solely for others doesn’t benefit anyone. For change to be effective and long-lasting, we need a self-focused reason to make it.

Sometimes we recognize something about ourselves that we think we might benefit from changing. We might not know how to start making those changes, but at least we know we want to make them. We’re consciously choosing to do something about a problematic trait or habit. We might need help figuring out how to change it, but it’s our decision, and if we do the work, it’s likely to become a permanent, positive change.

There are times when something about us is a problem and we don’t recognize it. Or we think it’s a problem that doesn’t require change when it actually does. In those cases, someone else might have to point out the issue to us so we become more aware. But even then, it’s still more effective to make the change because we see a reason to. Because we see a benefit to ourselves as well as others.

Early on after my kids and I moved in with my husband, when I was still working through some serious issues and still getting a handle on emotional regulation, sometimes I raised my voice when I was angry with my kids. I didn’t realize how much it upset my husband, or my kids, until my husband took me aside and told me it was really hard for him hearing me like that. My kids also told me they wished I would yell less.

I knew I was still working on effective emotional management. After nearly four decades of not being able to display any negative emotions for fear of what other people would do to me, I was finally in a place where I felt safe enough to stop suppressing the emotions. Unfortunately, that meant sometimes the emotion came out with an intensity that was out of proportion to whatever was going on. I knew this, but I didn’t always realize when the emotional display was out of proportion.

When my husband and kids had that conversation with me, I didn’t say or think, “I need to change for them.” They were the cause of me recognizing the need for change, but they couldn’t be the only reason for the change. I needed to change my behavior, and double down on learning better emotional regulation, for myself above all.

I chose to do the work and improve my emotional regulation because my behavior was hurting people I loved deeply and wanted to avoid hurting. Because the person I wanted to be was someone who took care of and protected those I loved. Because when I raised my voice and felt my temper rising to the boiling point, I saw in myself the people who had abused me, and I hated seeing that in myself. I wanted to build a life in which I could love myself. I wanted to create a space where my children might feel the love and safety I hadn’t had as a child or during my marriage to their father. I wanted to become the person I wanted to be.

When you identify a change you think you should make, take a moment to figure out why you want to make it. Are you doing what someone else has told you to do? Are you trying to change something about yourself that you’re okay with, but someone else isn’t okay with it and you’re trying to make them happy? If it’s a change someone else brought to your attention, do you have a self-focused reason to make it, or are you only doing it for them?

Ultimately, the one person on earth whose opinion of you matters, is you. You’re the one who has to live with who you are. You can’t “make” someone else happy, because you don’t control what anyone else feels or thinks. You can only create whether you are happy with yourself. So don’t just be the change you wish to see; be the primary reason you wish to see it.

How I Learned Chios

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As a child, I was very clumsy. I didn’t have much body awareness, so I constantly walked into things, or tripped and fell. I have scars on my knees because I skinned them so often.

Cuts and bruises hurt, obviously. But when I was four or five, I realized that if I put my hand over a cut or bruise, my hand got warm and the injury didn’t hurt as much. It also usually healed faster.

The adults around me told me that was just my imagination, so, as with a number of other things, I pushed it away. I didn’t want people to think I was weird or crazy, and I definitely didn’t want to annoy my parents. Besides, adults were the ones telling me the warm hand thing wasn’t really happening, and when you’re a child, you pretty much believe adults know everything.

When I was about 35, I became friends with someone who practiced yoga, Chios energy healing, and channeling. Over time, he started sharing these things with me. The first time he did a Chios session with me, I had some pretty intense results, and I decided to start learning Chioswith my friend as my instructor.

In Chios, one of the first things you learn to do is call in the energy, which means opening yourself as a conduit for the healing energy to flow through. You don’t use your own energy to heal others; you allow universal energy to go through you into the people you work with. My friend warned me, and I’d seen for myself, that when that energy flows, it brings heat with it. What I didn’t expect was that one of the first times I called in the energy, my hands got so hot that the wedding ring I had at the time left a burn mark on my finger!

That was when I started remembering the warm hand thing from when I was a child. It hadn’t been my imagination after all. It was energy healing.

As I went on learning Chios, I didn’t feel like I was gaining new knowledge. It felt a lot more like someone was reminding me of things I’d already known but had forgotten. Regaining that knowledge was exciting, and so was seeing the results I was able to bring the people who let me practice on them while I was learning.

I don’t know whether Chios, or something similar, was something I learned in a past life, or just instinctive knowledge I’d had as a child until I let the adults around me convince me to shut it away. But I definitely feel like it’s natural for me. And I still get excited when clients tell me what they experience during and after healing sessions. That’s why I started River Flow Healing, so I could bring Chios to others.

My Favorite Things About Chios

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Last week, I told you a little about the history of Chios Energy Healing, the type of energy work I practice. (If you missed the post, find it here.) As I said in that post, I can’t compare Chios with other energy modalities, because Chios is the only one I’ve learned. I have tried learning a couple of others, but they didn’t stick with me. My brain simply wouldn’t hold onto the information. With Chios, I didn’t have that issue, which told me that for me, Chios was the right choice.

One of the things I enjoy about Chios is the focus on working with guides. While that isn’t a requirement, for me it’s a bonus. Guides are beings with higher energetic vibrations than humans, who work with humans for our benefit and, often, for theirs as well. These beings include angels and spirit guides, among others. When Stephen Barrett developed Chios, he worked with a group of guides, though he also did a good amount of his own research and refinement of the techniques.

Not everyone believes in guides. I do, and have been working with mine as long as I can remember, though as a child I didn’t realize they were guides. They were just my “invisible friends,” and as I got older, I didn’t really understand why I didn’t outgrow them the way most kids outgrew their imaginary friends. I didn’t learn until I was an adult that it was because they aren’t imaginary.

I have a guide who works with me specifically on healing, my own and the healing practices I do for others. When I do Chios healing sessions, I also communicate with the guides who introduced Chios to Stephen Barrett. For me, this is a benefit, because it gives me even more confidence in my skills. I know I’m good at what I do, and that I know the techniques, but having backup from these guides is reassuring. Besides which, sometimes there’s a need to vary the sequence of techniques I use, or use a technique that isn’t as common, and my guide tells me when that’s the case.

Another thing I love about Chios is the benefit I see my clients receiving. When a client tells me after a session that they’re feeling calmer or more focused, or that another problem they’ve been having has either cleared up or isn’t as bad, I’m excited for them. I feel really good hearing that something I’ve done has helped them. I don’t consider myself to be the one who’s healing them; I’m just making their healing easier and more accessible to them. But it’s still incredible to be part of someone’s healing.

Obviously, I think Chios is pretty awesome. It’s been thirteen years since I first learned it, and even though I’ve gone through stretches of time where I didn’t practice it, I’ve always come back to it. I would love to talk with you more about Chios. If you’re curious, leave a comment, or visit the Chios Energy Healing page for more information or to schedule a healing session.

Refocusing

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I’ve found that where I was focusing my energy previously wasn’t exactly where I wanted to be.

This surprised me. I thought I wanted to be a coach or mentor to those who are on journeys of healing and trying to gain self-love. It’s something I studied, and something that I do informally in a few venues, and I love the feeling of knowing I’ve helped someone. More, I love seeing them gain insight and make positive changes in their lives.

Deciding I wanted to coach was a change in itself. When I originally conceived this website and business, the plan was to do energy healing and guided readings. Then I realized that when I did healings and readings, I ended up informally counseling my clients anyway, so I looked into becoming a counselor. That would have required a degree I was unwilling to invest in, so I looked at life coaching/mentoring instead. And that became something I found myself more drawn to than energy healing or readings.

So the next chapter of this business was meant to be coaching, or holistic mentoring. I created an eight-week coaching program, and realized that interested me more than ongoing, less structured mentoring. Then I created a talk to go with that program, and realized that what I really wanted to do was become a transformational speaker.

So now I’m focusing more on speaking, and that’s what I feel the most drawn to at this point. That and teaching theater to children, which doesn’t seem to connect with the other things, but that’s how passions are sometimes. Transformational speaking to large groups is on hold for now while I work with smaller venues, including schools where I discuss my message of self-acceptance and living one’s truth using one of my young adult novels as a springboard.

Many of these changes have occurred in just the past month, as I’ve looked at and refined my goals for 2018. Maybe I shouldn’t have tried to do the full year in advance.

Life isn’t a static thing, and sometimes that means plans change even when you don’t expect them to. My eight-week program, which is now a six-week program, is still part of my work, and I’m building the speaking side of things. And I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next.

Healthy Eating

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I try to eat healthy. I really do. But it isn’t as easy as it seems. I always seem to get hung up wanting something sweet.

The thing I’ve learned that seems to work best is to moderate what I eat in terms of portion sizes. If I try to eat only healthy foods, I’ll end up craving sweet things, and eventually I’ll completely screw up the plan and just go nuts with cookies or ice cream or something. But if I make those things *part* of the plan, along with things that actually are healthy, it works out a lot better for me.

My Bucket List

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There are a lot of things I hope to do in my life. Some of them are not necessarily probable, but I’m hoping for them to happen anyway. Other things are ones that I can make happen, if I believe in myself and keep trying.

I want to resurrect my writing career. For several years, I was a published author, writing two very different types of things under two separate pen names. A few years ago, a combination of poor sales and some personal life things derailed the writing, and now I’m facing the first year since 2009 in which I don’t have anything under contract with, or even being considered by, a publisher. For the time being, I’m taking it easy and writing just because I enjoy it, but I hope to resume writing for publication.

I want to do public speaking presentations on my message of self-acceptance and the power to change. I was trying to build that from nothing other than some Facebook Live videos, but I found myself having difficulty finding venues to contact and, more importantly, believing in myself enough to contact them. (Yes, sometimes I have trouble believing in myself. I am, as I said a few posts ago, still on my journey.) So now I’m focusing on contacting libraries and schools to do presentations there, while I continue working on the other aspect of what I hope will become a career in transformational speaking.

I want to travel. I’ve done a little bit of traveling in my life, but there are so many places I’d like to go!

I want to sing onstage, with live musicians. So far the closest I’ve gotten to that is karaoke, which isn’t exactly the same thing.

Those are the big things on my want-to-do list. What do you have on your bucket list?

My Favorite TV Shows

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Just for something different and more light-hearted today, in no particular order, here are seven of my favorite TV shows.

  1. Goblin: The Lonely and Great God. This is a Korean drama that was partly filmed in Quebec. I kind of have a thing for Korean dramas, to the extent that I’m trying to learn Korean so I don’t have to always read the subtitles.
  2. Gotham. Because Batman and other heroes and villains. I have a thing for superheroes too.
  3. Lucifer. The ultimate antihero, except he turns out to be pretty heroic in some ways.
  4. Shut Up Flower Boy Band. Another Korean drama, from 2012, with some kick-butt music.
  5. This Is Us. I like the way they weave in the characters’ pasts and presents.
  6. The Orville. Given who’s behind this show, I was prepared for offensive potty humor, but it actually manages to be a good homage to shows like Star Trek. And some of the plots really make me think, which is always a plus.
  7. Runaways. Because superheroes again, but this time teenagers, some of whom are heroic with no special powers at all.

How I Started Writing

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 When I was very young, I made up stories that I acted out with my dolls and stuffed animals. Sometimes I shared those stories with my parents; more often, I just kept them to myself. I lived in a very elaborate imaginary world, populated by imaginary people who sometimes seemed more real than the people I knew. I learned to read early, and I was determined that someday, my stories would be in books like the ones I read.

When I got a bit older, I learned how to make those little squiggles called “letters,” and that unlocked a whole new dimension for my stories. I could put them on paper and keep them to read later! Not only that, but I could share them with more people! The first story I remember writing, when I was five, was about a girl named Maria who went to live with her uncle. I wish I still had that story, but alas, it was lost to a flooded basement when I was eight or nine.

In kindergarten, I had a wonderful teacher who allowed me to read books from the classroom library and draw pictures about the stories as part of my reading curriculum. One day, I wrote my own story based on a picture I’d drawn, and she began encouraging me to write more stories. It was the first time an adult had told me my stories were good and had acted like they were something to be proud of.

So basically, I’ve been creating stories my entire life, and I’ve been writing them down since I learned how. Obviously I haven’t been published that entire time. My first published work, a phonics-based reading comprehension program, came out in 2002 (and 16 years later is still available!), and my first novella came out in 2009 (and is no longer available). But as a child and teen, I wrote dozens of stories, some novel-length, many of which I still have. They aren’t as good as I thought they were back then, but I’m still proud of them. Especially since I wrote them all longhand…computers weren’t available to me back then!