Kate Strong's Blog

I wanted to acknowledge the passing of my friend Lee Roche. I met Lee online in early May 2010 and we got on so well, we used to talk on skype alot. She was such a vivacious and vibrant woman. We met through an email group and found we had alot in common. I bought her book at her website http://www.circleoflife.co.nz which was about her journey helping her husband who had cancer, with her efforts he went into remission. Sadly he passed away August 2009. They had been together since she was 18. She died age 48.

It was like we had known each other for years. She was so grief stricken but staying positive and she was wanting to stay in her lovely familyl home and not move out due to foreclosure. She totally believed in the power of manifestation.

Late May she went to visit her daughter in Auckland and I remember her saying she was sick and going to go back home. And that’s the last I heard. I thought it strange she hadnt contacted me back but was told that she had lost her internet.

In fact she had gone straight to hospital and from reports I gather was put in an induced coma for 5 weeks then passed away. It’s horribly sad for her daughters who have lost their father and mother in less than a year. She used to always talk about how much she loved her daughters so much.

She passed away June 26th, 2010 of swine flu.

RIP Lee, and thank

Something that hurt another – maybe seriously. Or something
that hurt yourself so badly that other people were affected
as well.

Lets look at it a little closer.

First, you did something wrong. A wrong was committed.
No argument there. Any jury in the land would agree; you
were wrong to do what you did.

Well, okay, you made a mistake. But it’s also a mistake to
not forgive yourself. If you don’t forgive yourself, then
you are also committing another wrong.

Do two wrongs make a right?

Am I going to compound my first wrong with a second wrong?

Many people would. Because it’s the easy way out. It’s so much
simpler and easier to just judge yourself and punish yourself
rather than to honestly dig deep and look at the situation in
the light of day.

When you judge anything you freeze it into place. Judgments are
designed to avoid pain and avoid responsibility and to punish
either yourself or another.

It’s way too easy to judge. Responsibility, on the other hand,
seems difficult and unpleasant. And I have to be responsible if
I want to forgive myself for this crime I really did commit that
hurt myself and others.

But if I don’t forgive then I’m taking the coward’s way out.
I know it doesn’t seem that way. It seems like forgiveness is
the copout, and the ‘manly’ thing to do is to suffer for my sins.
Even if I’m a woman!

And I use the word ‘manly’ because lack of forgiveness is a
function of chauvinism. Unfortunately, chauvinism is a living,
breathing energy. It exists independently of you and me. And
it’s MUCH more than a man dominating a woman. That’s only the
tip of the iceberg!

If you look carefully at modern society, you’ll see we’re
immersed so deeply into chauvinism and domination that it’s
hard to even imagine living any other way. Whether you’re a
man or a woman…. most likely you feel the effects of chauvinism
in a profound way.

Suffering… struggling… punishing…. these are all functions
of chauvinism. Chauvinism says you’re SUPPOSED to suffer for
your sins. And forgiveness doesn’t really mean anything anyway.
Suffering holds value. While forgiveness is avoiding the
suffering and punishment you deserve. That’s the lie of
chauvinism.

And that’s the backdrop of why it’s so hard to forgive yourself
even under the best of circumstances.

Because we’ve all been so conditioned to believe the lies of
chauvinism.

If you want to forgive yourself for this very real crime, then
you’re going to have to be RESPONSIBLE for your crime. You’ll
have to ‘own’ it. Ownership and responsibility are the exact
opposites of copping out. They require you to think and feel;
to dig deep; to look closer; to make evaluations.

You bring your crime closer if you wish to forgive. You have to
understand it and FEEL it – not judge it.

And remember, there’s no understanding in judgment! When you
freeze it into place, you can never resolve it. You keep the
pain and the past alive when you judge your crimes.

Chauvinism by its very nature is always cowardly. It doesn’t
want you to think and feel and evaluate and be responsible.
Chauvinism wants you to punish and judge yourself. Chauvinism
wants you to turn against yourself – and NOT do the responsible
thing – which involves knowing yourself more, and therefore
being able to forgive and heal.

So which road will you take?

More loving and healing? Or more punishment and suffering?

The choice is always up to you.

If you’re ready to take the path of healing and growing and
changing then click on the link below -

http://www.forgive-yourself.info

Thanks to Mark I Myhre for this excerpt.

Forgiveness is a living breathing energy. It’s always around.
It’s in the air, so to speak. Accessible to all.

So while it’s important to know HOW to forgive, it’s more
important to first understand why you might resist it. Because
once you know why you resist it, then it becomes much easier
to actually TAP INTO that incredible, invisible force of
forgiveness that can heal so much in a person’s life.

Here’s why we find ourselves reluctant to forgive:

1. Seen as a weakness.

If I have to forgive, that means I’ve lost. I’ve been defeated
in some way. I really am guilty. Somebody else ‘got’ me – or
I got myself.

And now, in my defeat, all I can do is lick my wounds by
forgiving myself. I’ve failed.

2. Seen as arrogance.

“Who do you think you are to just forgive yourself after what
you’ve done?!!”

“You think you can get off the hook that easy? You haven’t
suffered enough!”

You still need to pay for your crimes. Or, somebody else still
needs to pay for THEIR crimes.

Maybe God can forgive, and maybe even others can forgive you,
but you can’t possibly be so arrogant as to believe you can
forgive yourself.

3. Seen as a shallow cop-out.

“You can’t just forgive yourself. That would be too easy.
It’s too simple. What would happen in the world if you could
just go around committing sins and then just forgive yourself?”

Forgiveness has no depth or substance. It doesn’t exonerate
you from what you’ve done. It can’t possibly right the wrong.

4. Brings up pain.

I’ve worked hard to stuff down my pain. And I’m trying real
hard to not feel it now. If I forgive, that’s going to open
up a Pandora’s box of all kinds of feelings that I REALLY
don’t want to feel.

Too much will be stirred up. I don’t want to be reminded of
the humiliation, the uncomfortability, the pain that’s down
there in my emotional abyss. I don’t want to muddy the waters
because the silt has all settled at the bottom. Better to leave
it there.

My self-punishment is just too painful.

5. Afraid of how I’ll change.

When you forgive, something in you dies. Some part IN you
that’s not really a part OF you will die.

Maybe some judgments, or blame or righteousness. Maybe a
little bit of control or manipulation. Maybe a little part
of my pity, or victimhood, or martyrhood.

But I NEED to feel like a victim. Sure, it hurts. Victimhood
is a pain factory. But I’m comfortable with the pain of being
a victim. I know it well. What kind of a person would I be
if I wasn’t a victim? That’s too scary.

Also, something will be born when I forgive. Some freedom, or
some dream. Some hope. Perhaps some happiness.

What if I start feeling too good once I forgive? Then I might
forget what happened. And then it could happen again. I’m not
willing to take that chance.

6. Afraid of demands and expectations.

If I forgive, then I’ll have to be perfect and never ever ‘do it’
again. I can never repeat my past mistakes. And I don’t know
if I can do that.

Or, I’ll have to reconcile with someone else. And I really don’t
want to. I want to be DONE with my ex-spouse, or my mother, or
whomever. I don’t ever want to see them again.

Or I don’t want to let my mother off the hook. I really was
wronged. If I forgive, won’t that make it okay – what she did
to me?

7. Afraid of intimacy and caring.

Love by itself is scary enough. But fears around intimacy and
caring are just off the charts. Because if you get too close,
then you might see my secrets. You might see ‘the real me’.

And if you only knew how I really am, you’d run away in horror.
You’d be aghast. You would have nothing to do with me.

So I HAVE to keep this protective barrier in place. I can’t
possibly forgive myself, because then the barrier might be
breached. And I could end up all alone.

I need the protective barrier to remind myself of why I can’t
get too close to those I love.

Now, ironically, all seven of these reasons CAN be true.

You are at risk of losing the barrier that keeps you separated
from others. You might end up placing demands on yourself, and
unrealistic expectations. And something inside you may die.
Some part of your blame, or righteousness.

And yes, the pains and memories of the past will need to come
up if you want them gone. You will have to feel them as they’re
leaving.

Likewise, you could possibly be hurt again once you forgive.
You’re still a human.

Now, forgiving does not – by itself – make you forget. But you
no longer have to be IMPRISONED by those memories.

And people have indeed used forgiveness as both a weakness, and
as arrogance. But you certainly don’t HAVE to. The choice is
always up to you.

So understand that while any of these reasons can be legitimate
resistances, they don’t have to be. And they certainly can’t
stand up to the power and the force and the magic of the energy
of forgiveness.

Which I won’t get into now. You most likely have a good idea of
how valuable it is.

But if you’re seriously thinking about tapping into this energy,
then it would help to first look at these resistances listed above.

Because if you don’t find and release your own resistance, it
will block the effectiveness of forgiveness. You might go
through the motions, but your heart won’t really be in it.

You’ll hold yourself back. And you won’t experience the full
wonder of truly forgiving yourself or forgiving another.

However, once you’ve ‘owned’ your resistance, then head on over to -

http://www.forgive-yourself.info

Thanks to Mark I Myhre for this excerpt.

One main reason emotions seem so difficult to work with is
because of this double-whammy: we tend to focus on the
events of the past while ignoring the thoughts and feelings
that keep those events alive in our hearts and minds.

We consciously choose to elevate certain (perhaps many)
painful events of the past until they practically sit at
The Right Hand Of God.

We exaggerate their importance while at the same time we
refuse to feel, express and release the emotional impact
they created.

It takes constant effort to keep the past alive. You can’t
just set it and forget it – like a thermostat on the wall
You have to keep remembering it.

You have to keep using today’s power to reinforce the
imprisonment of yesterday’s power.

We Invest In The Past

The past is over, yet our power remains trapped in the
emotional investment we’ve made in certain painful events
of that dead past.

The past is over.

As you read these words, most likely your parents are not
standing there twisting your arms behind your back. Most
likely, your ex is not beating you up between paragraphs.

The past is over.

But the very power we need to break free of those memories
is instead being diverted into a much more sinister goal.
We invest a lot of time and energy creating a Frankenstein’s
monster of the past, and it’s become too big to handle.

The power you need to heal the past is instead being used
to try to keep it alive. It’s become a tangled mess.

You can’t heal the past until you get more power.

You can’t get more power until you heal the past.

This is one reason emotional healing can seem so difficult.

So what’s the answer? First you heal a little bit, and
you retrieve a little power. Then, in your empowered
state you heal a little more and get back a little more
power.

It happens layer by layer.

With greater power comes greater healing.
With greater healing comes greater power.

To help you heal and retrieve your power from the past,
you need to forgive yourself.

It took a long time for me to figure this one out.

I used to be so stubborn; holding onto so much emotional
garbage. What a waste.

Forgiving yourself is like walking out of a prison.

Plus, it’s an elegant way to make a change in your life.
When you forgive yourself – truly forgive yourself -
change is almost automatic.

Sometimes all I can do is marvel at the possibilities that
have suddenly opened up for me.

And sometimes I just want to sit quietly and let things
settle inside. Because my mind has been blown apart…

For more information on forgiving yourself and healing the past go to:

http://www.forgive-yourself.info

Thanks to Mark I Myhre for this excerpt.

I’m a big fan of David Wolfe at the moment, and he’s done alot to popularise the concept of Earthing as a health benefit. I just recently watched a video from the Longevity conference and David talks about the concept for about an hour and brings Clinton Ober to the stage to discuss it further. I had already purchased Clinton’s book about Earthing.

I was so taken with it that I decided to make my own earthing device which was so much cheaper and easier than buying one of the packages that David sells.

I just got a metal rod, attached some wire to it and stuck it in the ground, and ran that wire into my house and attached it to an antistatic band that i wear around my wrist. I wore it all day yesterday and found it had a hugely calming effect on me, it quietens the left brain of all the mind chatter. And I slept last night with it attached and my usual pains from being on the computer all day were non-existant.

Ideally we can just all go outside and walk barefoot on the ground for at least 15 mins three times a day. But as its winter here and for those people with a sedentary lifestyle, having an earthing wire attached is the next best thing.

The products you can buy now are numerous, sleeping pads, sleeping bags, products for in your vehicle etc.

Fundamentally David believes that the shoe is the most dangerous thing we ever invented. Keeping us away from the natural healing energy of mother earth.

The benefits of earthing are way too numerous to mention here. There have been documented cases for years of the results achieved.

As we all know indiginous cultures have known this for centuries, the healing power of the Earth, a huge battery that neutralises so many energies that we in the western world pick up in our day.

I’m reading an awesome book at the moment called The Happiness Trap by Dr Russ Harris, its mainly about ACT (acceptance and commitment therapy)

I wanted to talk about what he describes as Cognitive Fusion and Cognitive Defusion.

As Dr Harris describes it, ‘Cognitive fusion means that the thought and the thing it refers to – the story and the event – become blended. Thus, we react to words about a lemon as if a lemon is actually present; we react to words in a crime novel as if someone really is about to be murdered; we react to words like “Im useless” as if we actually are useless…….’

Research tells us that 80% of our thoughts are mostly negative.

We have alot of stories we tell ourselves chattering in our head all day, we have memories, fantasies, whats wrong, whats happening, what could happen, like a radio blaring in our heads all day.

With Cognitive Fusion we believe those thoughts as if they were fact.

The aim of Cognitive Defusion is to tell ourselves that alot of our thoughts are just mind chatter, not important and the trick is to only put energy into thoughts that hep us. Defusion tells us that thoughts can be unimportant, are just words, dont have any power, are not commands to be obeyed etc. Kind of like just having alot of junk in the attic.

One way to do this is to identify the story we are telling ourselves and say ‘Im having the thought that……..’ Im dumb, Im too fat, they hate me etc. Or saying ‘Oh theres that story I tell myself of……’ being a victim, he doesn’t love me, I won’t succeed etc. It defuses the thought instead of fusing with it or fighting it. It takes one step back and it loses its power so you can think what you really want to think.

What I’ve always struggled with, with other techniques is that being a psychic I rely on my thoughts and images in my head, and for me to say that alot of what im thinking is garbage could make me doubt my abilities. But I realised that with Cognitive Defusion its my choice about what I take notice of, afterall Im taking notice of what’s helpful. I tend to use this method when I catch myself with my usual self defeating thoughts that affect my behaviour.

So give it a go, see the change in energy and how your body relaxes after just one application.

What thought are you having?

I wanted to share a story from my life that embodied for me that the Universe has my back.

15 months ago my ex partner of 10 years told me out of the blue he was leaving me. Of course now I see that was all perfect but at the time I was devastated, he was the love of my life, but obviously I wasn’t for him.

Anyway, after having been in some kind of relationship for 25 years I was in shock about how I was going to survive on my own. I had spent most of my time raising our kids, and supporting my partners in their jobs. The way I had been raised. Make someone else’s life run smoother. Sounds simplistic but whatever I wanted to do professionally always felt like some little hobby I had.

He didn’t leave for 3 months which was hugely challenging, but not long before he left, an old friend out of the blue emailed me to tell me he had won first division in lotto, 1 million dollars, and wanted to show his gratitude to me for how he felt I had been a friend to him over the years, and asked me to let him know whatever I wanted.

Needless to say I cried for days about that. He saw me right to get up on my feet and was there just when I needed some kind of stability.

Whenever I’m scared and worried about how I’m going to manage, I remember how Rob was there when I needed an anchor.

Thanks Rob Browning

How have you experienced the Universe having your back?

One of the banes of my existance is empathy.

If I was being PC then I should say, its one of my biggest learning curves. And I’ve by no means mastered it at all.

The best book I’ve read on Empathy so far is 25 Ways to Fly In Spirit by Rose Rosetree, and she has another book out as well since this was written.

Empathy is just so natural to me. For whatever reason I developed it, it’s second nature to me. It works to my advantage during readings but I wish I could switch it off a bit better.

So what is empathy?

It’s when you can feel another person’s feelings. Or their physical aches and pains. You’re more aware of what’s going on for them than you are for yourself. It’s walking in their shoes.

We all have it to a cerain degree, expect for psychopaths, but for alot of sensitive people, we have it to the nth degree. We over empathise.

For instance we probably all know what it feels like when you walk into a house where the people have been arguing, you can cut the air with a knife. But for sensitive people its like we were the ones in that arguement. It’s happened in our body.

I feel it when people are sitting on their feelings and denying they’re feeling that way. I especially am sensitive to unexpressed anger, just brewing under the surface.

I was always sensitive as a child, but in my 40′s it’s got worse, it might be because I’ve spent alot of years fine tuning my psychic abilities so I’m more sensitive. And hormones lol

I have to work hard at staying centred and talking myself out of the feelings I get when I travel on certain roads. Alot of fear on some roads.

And there’s no way I can go into a crowd now. That’s way too much tangled energy for my sensitive nerve endings.

Something Rose Rosetree suggests in her book is that you do exercises to keep bringing you back to your own body. I have isolated how I do this, I can just even think of a person and often times I can feel what theyre feeling. As if there’s a window and every time I peek out it I go to that place of empathy. I just have to keep retraining myself not to look. Hard though because I work this way in my readings.

So are you empathic and what do you do to reign it in?

Ive just been listening to Wayne Dyers audio cd about The Power of Intention. He has some good points that have totally changed the way I see Free Will.

He says : “At any moment in time all spirit is concentrated at the point where you focus your own intention.

Therefore you can consolidate all creative energy at a given moment in time, this is called your Free Will at work.”

He says that Universal mind is in your divine mind AND your free will.

Isnt this what some of us call Co-creation?

This got me thinking.

I saw Free Will as this naughty child who was defying her parent, like a brat having a tantrum – I WANNA DO IT MY WAY!!!!

And after so long doing it on your own you give in and say to your parents, ok, I’ve had enough, let’s do it your way, as if I’ve been bad for trying it out my way, and it didn’t work.

I saw my part as somehow being misguided. Sure I want what I want, but if I could only let go and go with the flow about what the Universe wants for me, then I will be happy, on track, life would be easier.

I never saw my free will as being a part of the divine universe. It felt like if I applied my free will then I was treading water or swimming upstream and needed to let go so I could flow down stream.

In some teachings we are lead to believe that the Universe doesn’t have any impact on our free will, but unless you are totally egotistical or travelling a journey of darkness, how can it not?

Call it a paradox, or a dichotemy, but the two can co-exist simultaneously, finally I get what co-creating means.

It’s not all my way and being egotistical and hard work, or all the Universe’s way where I feel like a rudderless ship blown wherever tides and winds take me.

Just call me Captain, setting sail where I want to go but knowing I can use the winds to my advantage!!

Last night I read this article that prompted alot of thought in me. Too bad it was at 4am lol. It got me to think, on your journey do you see yourself as flawed and needing to heal the wounded parts as best you can, or do you see yourself as whole but cant quite see through your misperception?

A lighthouse image came to mind. Where the light is focused on one area at a time, but while focused on that one area, the other areas are in darkness.

It doesn’t mean they aren’t there because you can’t see them, does it?

So what if we are whole, but we just can’t see all of us because our focus isn’t on all of us.

So all the characteristics that you wish you were, but can’t see, you are those characateristics, you just haven’t shone your light and focus on those parts yet.

I don’t believe we can see characteristics, good and bad, in others, if they aren’t a part of ourselves. After all, life is all projection. What we see out there is what is in us.

So are you your own Lighthouse Keeper? Where are you shining your light? On the parts you know you have and you keep wishing they weren’t there?

How about moving that light around a bit and shining it on the other areas you haven’t acknowledged are there yet?