Gratitude III

Self-Love Chakra Balancing
James Dempsey
They are always opportunities to show GRATITUDE

So a couple of weeks ago was Valentine’s Day and I’ve been thinking about how many holidays we have in this country.  There is some sort of holiday or feast day in the U.S. every month, except August.  Some months even have two.  So what are all these things about anyway?

But  it is Valentine’s Day that gets a bad rap among manly men.  Before I made healing my full-time profession, I had worked in construction for years.  I can tell you that, among tradesmen, Valentine’s Day is easily the most universally loathed remembrance day on the yearly calendar. 

There were many reasons for this, and some I can agree with too.  It’s expensive for some people, and it comes at a tough time of year.  We are not even two months away from dropping a wad of cash at Christmas, and we are also paying to heat our homes.

Some men complain that it is a made up holiday that was pushed to its current level of mania by florists, greeting card manufacturers, and candy companies.  Here’s a fact: these cranky guys are correct!  However, some of us (including myself) have made the terrible error of pointing this out to our mates with horrific (and even more expensive) consequences.   So suck it up boys!!  Buy the card, buy the flowers, and either take her out or make her a nice dinner.  Smile, and pretend you like it.

But now, I am one of the lucky ones who doesn’t have to pretend any more.  I am married to a very kind and loving woman, Liz, who didn’t crucify me too badly when I was stupid enough to mention my cranky views on this particular holiday. 

In our house we do not really make a huge deal out of it, except for one thing.  We make each other a handmade Valentine – every year.  It has become a tradition.  And we both look forward to it.

When I was in construction I would do things like make her a plywood heart with an arrow through it colored with red chalk from my chalk line.  She would make me one with doilies, little heart stickers, lacy ribbons, and glitter.  We assemble each Valentine mindfully and with love, and we give them to each other with reverence.  We have each made the other over 25 Valentines by now and we still have many of them around and about the house to this day. 

Every time I see one, whether it is mine or hers, I always feel gratitude for my lovely bride.  She doesn’t want chocolates (we are not too far from 6 weeks of eating badly) and we both like our own cooking best, so Valentine’s Day for us has become a nice, comfortable, loving thing. 

So what flipped it all around for us?  Truthfully, she didn’t need any flipping around on the subject anyway –  but I did.  Well for one, neither of us is very commercially needy.  And we both believe in gratitude.  We have managed to take a lot of the trappings off of the whole idea of Valentine’s Day and we have strip it down to its most basic tenet: LOVE.

I am grateful that I am not cranky about Valentine’s Day any longer.  But it doesn’t mean I was not cranky this year.  It’s been a rough winter for many of us.  It’s an election year and the rhetoric is as hateful and full of straight up lies as I have ever seen it.  And with every day that goes by in the Middle East, it feels like we are ticking our way down ever closer to World War III. 

I am an empath.  I can feel all this fear and yucky hate in the core of my being.  I can feel the fear all around me because politicians are fear sellers, and their business is very good right now.  We are also on the cusp of a giant shift here on planet Earth.  My spirit guides have been saying so for months.  The buildup to this giant shift includes lots of junky debris and shadow energies coming up in the collective field.  My energy system has been all gooped up with the negativity being pumped out by the media and with the debris being stirred up by the coming shift. 

So why the gratitude?

I have been using many of my own energy tools to cope.  These include Reiki, shamanic techniques, MAP sessions, Resonance Repatterning and affirmations, among others.  In the past few weeks I have used all of these with varying degrees of success.  But still I still have struggled.

So I did what I often do when the tools I have don’t work well.  I made up a new one.  I have figured out a new use for the Valentines we made for each other. 

I took the Valentine that Liz made for me and I placed it over my 2nd chakra as I lay down to sleep.  All through the night, as I tossed and turned, I moved that Valentine to cover my 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th chakras for an hour or two each.  The next night, I took the Valentine that I made for her and did the same thing. 

Sometimes I would place the Valentine on a chakra and that location would hurt.  When I used the one Liz made for me, I figured there was some resistance on my part, in that chakra, to receiving love from her.  When it was the Valentine I made for her, I figured it was resistance on my part to something else.  Nonetheless, after two days I felt better, but still not yet complete.

So, then I made a Valentine from me to myself.  It was very hard for me to make that Valentine.  Putting love into a Valentine for my beloved wife is easy.  Putting love into a Valentine for myself was a lot harder. 

After I made that Valentine to myself I used it during my sleep cycle in the same way that I had used the other two Valentines.  I got a lot of deep cleaning done, and while it didn’t always feel great while I was doing it, it feels pretty darn good now. 

Now I have a new modality for my energy healing practice as well.  Maybe you can try the “Self-Love Chakra Balancing” for yourself!!  And if you do, let me know how it works.  I’d love to hear from you.

With Love and in Gratitude,
James