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The Art of Personal Transformation
– “Alchemy of the Soul”
In all
Personal transformation, we don’t actually change in the real sense, but rather
remove what has prevented us from being our true self up to this point. We
literally burn away the residue that has dimmed our inner light, preventing it
from shining fully. We are all born into this world as souls with two basic
forms of DNA – physical and spiritual. Our spiritual DNA is our energetic
qualities that represent our capacity for self-expression. We are born as a form
of “seed” which has all the intelligence and energetic information to become
something specific and specialized. We are born as a kind of “perfect design”
for a specific type of expression.
The way to tell what
kind of seed we are, what our design is perfect for is by recapturing our
“dream” or vision for our life’s story. Our soul’s purpose is naturally revealed
to us through our dreams which live in us as our imagination. Our dreams are
designed to give us the larger pattern in which fractal patterns emerge
naturally. All of our stories about our self and life are an expression of our
greater story, the one we are telling with our life. We have within us the
archetypal qualities, talents and gifts to ideally fulfill our destiny by living
our purpose with a sense of devotion and passion. What makes a story great is
not so much the story itself, but rather “how” it is told.
Our destiny is the
vision as our greater desire expressed within our current reality as a scenario,
drama or lifestyle – our way of living and being in the world. Our purpose is
the desire that motivates the dream – it’s the reason for the dream. So all
transformation begins by identifying our soul’s capacity for expression as a
cluster of archetypes that are imprinted with potential that when called forth,
fashions our character making it ideal for telling a certain type of story.
Everything we need to fulfill and express our destiny is within us waiting to be
discovered, intentionally chosen and called forth through the story that we
first tell about ourselves, then about the world in relationship with, or in
contrast to us.
So to transform our
current expression, is to explore inward and rediscover our true nature.
Recapture our original dream; give it life by placing our attention on it, and
imbuing it with rich feelings of love, wonder and anticipation that create a
natural devotion to its reality. Fall in love with the life we were born to live
and “act it out” making it an actual experience. All art brings an inspired idea
into form by how it interprets it. In order to reform our life, we must learn
how to take the same inherent qualities and re-interpret them in such a way that
they serve to reshape our character, creating a sense of our self that will
allow a new story to spontaneously emerge and flow effortlessly with affluence.
Linda Gadbois, Ph.D. |
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Personal Transformation –
"Birthing our True Self"
Personal
transformation becomes a natural process when we pursue our passion, it's not so
much about changing, but rather discovering how we have deviated from our
original path and become surrounded with personal illusions of our own making.
We have to go through a kind of the purification process where we shed the
delusions that have concealed our true essence. As we move through life,
through the primary conditioning of our formative years and various life
circumstances we get diverted from our true self and go off into what can be
endless variations of hypnotic trances.
Personal
transformation is a form of spiritual healing that is spontaneously produced by
removing conflicts, blocks and contradictions that naturally restores our system
to a state of harmony, an alignment that re-instills balance through a form of
inner peace. We experience it when we are no longer conflicted, restrained or
holding back but rather find a sense of true purpose that forms feelings of
enthusiasm.
The very feelings
that cause us to deviate from our original path, offer us the ideal opportunity
for realignment. Feelings are whole patterns that once activated run whole
programs that create certain types of experiences. Experiences that have strong
emotions attached to them, can be thought of as whole patterns that produces
corresponding thoughts and emotions that motivate self-fulfilling behavior. The
experience the feeling creates can be recognized by the story it naturally lends
itself to which is associated with various compositions of past memories that
when acted out will give you the same feeling that motivated it. This is the
true meaning of “self-expression”.
When these feeling
states are activated or triggered in us they cause us to go into a form of
trance, they entrain our mind to a specific brain wave pattern that literally
causes us to fall asleep or go unconscious and imagine it as if it were real.
The pattern is complete in the sense that it is based on a natural assumption,
which sets our intention, which then determines our focus that then
spontaneously unfolds in a predictable manner that ultimately produces a
pre-conceived conclusion our expectation as a specific type of outcome. Because
it contains strong emotions and vivid sensory details, it hypnotizes us and we
perceive it as real and unavoidable. It can seem so real that some literally
refer to it as destiny.
Yet if we identify
our own tendencies as habitual perceptions based on intense experiences as
reenacting living memory we can see the real opportunity to change how we
respond to the same stimulus. We can exercise our will to resist our own
tendencies and choose a different response by resisting the temptation to revert
back to the habitual emotional responses long enough to change the patterns to
produce a different outcome. But the whole time we're doing this we experience
a kind of anxiety or pervading feeling of dread where new thoughts and emotions
seem more like fantasy than reality. We have to commit to our passion and
discipline ourselves to act it out even when we are filled with self-doubt and
constant feelings of apprehension.
The process of
alchemy which is geared towards human transformation starts through purifying or
burning off residue that has modified the chemical structure and therefore
changed the appearance of the base metal, making it visible as pure and
tangible. So in this sense we are not changing our self but rather engaging in
the process in which all of our self-delusions fall away and we can sense our
true self as we really are. We never really change our souls essence as our
true nature, we simply shed what has prevented us from expressing it. We
dissolve the illusions that have kept us from experiencing our self by way of
our natural passion which is designed to keep us steadily moving towards it
through a form of compulsion. All true goals are not mental constructs but
rather feelings of enthusiasm for certain states, types of experiences, or means
of self-expression. To find our passion and intimately commit to expressing it
as fully as possible is the real definition of personal transformation that
reveals our true nature as our ultimate destiny.
Linda Gadbois, Ph.D.(c) CCHt., RMT |
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Vision & Vitality –
“Breathing Life into our Dreams”
They
say we can only truly change when the pain of remaining the same becomes greater
than the pain of changing.
I
believe we change when we truly learn to believe in the beauty of our dreams and
learn to master our desire for its actualization. We have been trained to
respond more to pain than to pleasure, our fears outweigh our desires and tend
to govern what is possible and what remains unrealized. When we take the steps
necessary to unplug from the fear and give our full attention to building on the
desires of our dreams, we give vitality to our visions which set the ground for
expanding and actualizing our true potential.
Our dreams are like seeds that contain magical formulas for our maximum growth
through attainment. It is only when recognizing our dreams and our sense of
purpose and application that we can truly call forth and bring into living
expression our souls capacity and potential. We have to call forth aspects of
ourselves that are unknown to us in order to express our dreams. In reality,
the challenges we face are necessary to stimulate and call forth the necessary
aspects of our character in order to overcome them by first choosing to, then
applying our will with a sense of deep intention and purpose.
Without a dream, we have no
story. Without a story we are the seed that never gets planted but sits on the
shelf waiting for the next season, withering and deteriorating. Our soul is
perfectly designed to create the story that lives in our heart relentlessly
calling us on . . . to come and know me, step into the experience yourself, and
tell it with the greatest passion we can muster up. Our dream creates our ideal
story for living a life that will require us to apply ourselves with a deep
sense of purpose and devotion. It will require us to utilize our ability to
choose and strengthen our will in bringing it forth by believing in ourselves no
matter what. Our desires are the attractive force that reveals our purpose. When
we commit to our dreams with a deep love and devotion, we activate our potential
for a higher expression that will fill us with the deep satisfaction and a
pervading sense of well-being through internal peace that comes as the sweet
aftertaste of a desire fully known and satisfied.
“The need of expansion is as genuine an
instinct in man as the need in a plant for light, or the need in man himself to
go upright, to rise. The love of liberty in man is simply the instinct in man
for expansion.”
Matthew Arnold
Those who live by higher
ideals are not endlessly striving, they are simply not content to remain in the
same place. Their desire is to know them selves as the “best they can be”. They
are not content to shrink back, play small and betray the lover that calls to
them in night, beckoning them ever forward with the craving for deeper meaning
and a sense of aliveness.
We
have to choose to believe in the beauty of our dreams and the clarity of our
purpose in order to tell the story with our life that we were born to tell. We
have to become action oriented and determined. Rise up to challenges in a way
that stimulates latent potential, calling it forth by applying ourselves in new
and untried ways, instilling us with confidence and the moral courage to never
give up. We discover who we are in the moments of our greatest challenges, when
we have to reach deep into the darkness of our own soul, hoping like hell we
find what we need, while not knowing for sure. What we discover is that life
never brings us more than we can handle, it simply requires us to rise up, and
expand into it, and in doing so, apprehend our own creative powers with a sense
of anticipation and confidence.
We
realize . . . we can do if we simply believe we can, and take an attitude of
going for it!
Linda
Gadbois, Ph.D., CCHt., RMT |
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The Miracle of Love – “A Mother's Intuition”
My son was born full
term at 4 pounds 10 ounces, in the early morning of November 8 after a two hour
drive lying in the back seat of the car, starring up at the night sky. I can
still hear that doctor’s voice say “we've got a preemie” as he laid his warm wet
body on my abdomen and I thought to myself “he's not a preemie, why are they
saying that?” But as I looked down at the small trembling body, reddish and
water-logged, his eyes were wide open with a panicked look in them. I reached
down, took his small hand in mine, caressed his tiny fingers and he turned to
look at me. When our eyes met, we fell into a kind of trance that seemed to
sooth both of us. He stopped crying, became motionless and just gazed at me. I
was amazed as to how small he was. I remember thinking he was the most beautiful
thing I had ever seen, it was love at first sight.
Then I remember the
commotion as they cleared his air-passages, wrapped him in a blanket and rushed
him off for tests and further examination. As I laid there starring up at the
ceiling, my mind faded and subsided from sheer exhaustion, and slowly slipped
into the silence. I woke in the recovery room a few hours later, and reflecting
back on what I had just experienced, it all seemed like a dream. I felt my body,
aching and throbbing, which now seemed empty and void somehow. I remember
thinking “that wasn’t so bad”, even though a short time earlier I had been in
excruciating pain while wondering if I would survive it, I now laid momentarily
longing to do it again. It was one of the most painful, beautiful and profound
experiences I had ever had. I had to just lay there in the silence and take it
all in. Attempt to comprehend it within all the emotions I was feeling.
After a while the doctor
came in to inform me that despite his low birth weight, he was actually
well-developed and appeared quite healthy. He said “we don’t normally allow
babies under 5lbs. to go home, but he seems perfectly healthy, so we are going
to make an exception.” I felt relieved and excited to go home with my new little
boy.
As we got home and
settled in, I was still recovering from birthing, and was totally consumed with
the experience of being a “Mom”. I began noticing that he was having trouble
breastfeeding. Though he loved being at my breast, as he drank my milk he seemed
irritated and anxious somehow, he would pull off, cry and clench my nipples with
his little hands, then, relax and go back to sucking. I then noticed that he
didn’t seem to be having bowel movements, and when he finally did, they were
more like squeezing toothpaste out of the tube. Concerned, I took him in to see
the doctor three days after he was home. This began a nightmare that would last
for over a year that would challenge me in ways I never contemplated before.
At first I was told that
he was allergic to my breast milk, and he was put on formula. Then it became
about him being constipated, so we put Karol syrup in the formula, then it was
the wrong formula and we began experimenting with different ones. Within the 15
days following his birth I sought medical help and advice 18 times. I gave up on
the Pediatrician after 6 visits, and proceeded to take him in to the emergency
room of the local
hospital. After about the 4th ER visit, they began talking to me
about Post natal depression, paranoia, and delusions. They started recommending
“psychiatric” help and anti-depressants, and would shake their head, and even
made “new mother” jokes and sarcastic remarks when they saw me coming. Even my
husband withdrew his support and began trying to talk me into seeing a
psychiatrist.
The whole time this was
happening I was going through a kind of mental anguish and torment. I had a deep
pervading feeling that something was seriously wrong. I felt extremely aware of
it, and it slowly developed into a kind of inner anxiety that led to feelings of
panic. My mind would sense that something was wrong, and I would notice what I
thought were clear symptoms. I knew in my heart my baby was struggling for his
life and yet no one seemed to hear my repeated cries for help.
On Thanksgiving morning,
after spending the night in the ER because I could see his abdomen was not only
swollen and extended, but starting to turn a bluish color, only to be ridiculed
and sent back home, I finally got him to drink 4 oz. of formula at around 6am.
He seemed peaceful and was finally resting. After holding and rocking him for a
couple of hours, feeling relieved, I began preparing for Thanksgiving dinner,
when 4 hours after eating, he threw-up. I thought to myself, there is no way
that formula should still be in his stomach to throw-up. At this point I was
overwhelmed with a feeling of internal panicked. I could feel a rushing
sensation deep inside that had immediacy to it; it was overwhelming me with the
need to do something quick. My heart began racing and I felt frantic. I knew
that everyone thought I was crazy, and I searched my heart trying to figure out
what I needed to do. I finally decided I was going to take him to a different
city, and to a different hospital to see if they could help us.
I randomly opened up
the phone book, selected a hospital that stood out, and called the ER,
explaining my concerns. They told me to bring him in, and they would take a look
at him. When I announced to my husband what I was going to do, he shook his
head, sighed with frustration and tried to talk me out of it. When I decided to
go alone, he reluctantly agreed to drive me down there, even though he was sure
of what he was going to hear. At this point he was convinced that I was having
problems.
When we arrived and admitted
him, they quickly examined him and handled it as if it were an emergency. They
rushed him away, and the “wait” began. They emerged periodically to ask all
kinds of questions about my pregnancy, our family history, any traumas or infant
deaths, etc. By 2pm, they had diagnosed him with Hirshsprungs Disease and I was
being informed and advised as I was signing an endless amount of paperwork
necessary for “emergency surgery”. They told me if I would have been 2 hours
later, he would have died from perforated intestines, which were on the verge of
“popping” when we arrived.
I was beside myself, as
everything began rushing through my mind and I was overwhelmed with emotion, I
felt as if I was caught in a whirl-wind. I had trouble coordinating myself to
think clearly about everything that was happening. By 4:30pm, he was undergoing
a major surgery in a hurried attempt to save his life. All I could think to
myself was, “thank God I didn’t listen to any of them, thank God I followed what
I knew in my heart to be true and real, and I believed in myself even though I
was being told I was crazy”. I felt overwhelmed with intense feelings of
gratitude, as I silently waited in the strange and sterile surroundings of the
waiting room, anticipating the outcome. He had been given a 4% chance of
surviving. Four percent! All I could think of was the papers I signed that told
what type of death he would most likely experience, praying in my heart for a
miracle.
After 6 hours, I felt a
noticeable calmness and relaxation come over me, and something told me, it was
going to be okay. Ten minutes later the surgeon walked into the room with a
surprised smile on his face and embraced me. He looked me in the eyes and with
excitement in his voice said . . . “he made it. He’s a little trooper, made it
with flying colors.” Hearing those words, I felt as if the room was swirling and
I felt my knees buckle, next thing I knew, I was on the ground crying while
laughing uncontrollably.
What would follow in the next year, and 12 surgeries later would be the most
profound transforming period of my life, followed even by the murder of my
husband which would come seven years later. Within the next year I would undergo
experiences that were deemed miraculous on two separate occasions, and led me to
my first experience with what I later encountered as “Reiki”, the healing power
of loving touch. In the moments that followed, my whole life would crumble
before my eyes, truth would reveal itself in extremely profound terms and I
would learn the true meaning or courage. Not the kind that comes from facing
fear, but the kind that gives us the fortitude to carry on the face of complete
devastation and loss of all hope. The kind of courage that miracles are made out
of.
An
interesting thing, the hospital that I randomly chose to take him to just so
happen to have the chief surgeon who only five years earlier had discovered the
cure/treatment for Hirshsprung’s disease. He was the leading authority in the
country for his condition. I had unknowingly selected and placed my son into the
best possible hands I could have, all without even realizing what I was doing.
Clearly a case of pure intuition, the unknowing that silently guides our
actions, only to be realized in the aftermath and seen for their profound
implications. This experience brought a whole new meaning to “Thanksgiving”. To
this very day, is my favorite holiday.
J
1st of a 3 part series: “The
Miracle of Love”
Linda Gadbois, Ph.D.
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