Feel like you aren’t getting anywhere on your path of awakening? Putting in lots of meditation time and still find yourself reacting to the day’s stresses and those in your environment in less than enlightened ways? Hitting inner road blocks like never before? It’s okay. It happens. We are awakening to a new way of being. Our old habits and patterns aren’t so easy to shake. It takes time, effort, discipline, and patience. Patience with others, and most importantly with ourselves. Our old ways of thinking and behaving won’t leave us overnight, just because we have awakened to our spiritual selves and are aware that we are much more than we ever thought we were. We are still human beings with thoughts, feelings, inner wounds and habitual behaviors. Now that we are aware, we are responsible for taking care of ourselves on a much deeper level. Which means we must face our inner selves with courage and determination to heal and reach our full potential, and allow ourselves the time and space to do so. I remember when I first started attending classes and group meditations. I just knew, every meditation, every next new class, I was going to be opened up and my spiritual gifts would suddenly appear and I would finally arrive! Of course, I began to catch on with each new meditation, or new class, that I still had some inner work to do before my gifts would decide to show up. I finally began to realize, it’s a process, not an event! It’s the journey that counts, not the destination. I still had loads of inner work to do. In addition to the wounds I had yet to heal from years of emotional trauma, as I was slowly beginning my healing journey, I suddenly found myself dealing with the grief of the loss of my mother and my marriage. Two major life changes in almost as many years. Yes, I had work to do. Of course, healing and awakening weren’t going to happen immediately, though in the beginning I naively thought they would. Or, maybe I just wished they would, so the hurt would stop. Walking the awakening path opens doors to awareness in unexpected ways. We begin to see ourselves, perhaps for the first time. Self-awareness is the path to true healing and awakening. We are no good to others if we don’t first take care of ourselves. If we aren’t working on our inner work, our spiritual development will not progress as rapidly as we would like. To be clear enough to connect to higher worlds, we must do the inner work to shed all of the heaviness from our being. I know all too well that facing our inner demons is a very scary prospect. Who knows what we will find lurking in the recesses of our inner being? Yet, we can’t let that stop us from doing our work. Living in that fear is self-defeating and stops us in our tracks. It keeps us in our lower patterns and from exploring our inner connections to the worlds of Spirit and Higher Consciousness. The journey requires us to have the courage to face our inner wounds, so we can heal and move forward with clarity and inner peace.