I’m living in a cluttered space. Assailants enter the home. I’m on a rocky ship & the rooms start to spin.

Dreams like this often leave me feeling confused, disorientated, unmotivated & somewhat powerless.

With a complete FLIP from the way most self-empowerment approaches do things – I’ve learned to GO INTO the NEGATIVE, instead of avoid it. Some people may call this Shadow Work, or Trauma Therapy, or Raising My Vibration. I just go with Transformation since I tend to be a minimalist and like to keep things as simple as possible when possible.

Approaches such as Law of Attraction, or Mindfulness, or even the practice of reciting Positive Affirmations can be affective, of course, but there are limitations to those techniques which my Transformation method supercedes. What are the limitations? How do I delve deeper into the change work? The key is to consider the negative emotions as TEACHERS and to stay WITH them for a while so that understanding and insight emerges. Now, this is not to say it is healthy or appropriate to feel a deep sadness and stay in it for weeks, months or years; if that is the case, then some assistance to move through the sadness is needed and there are many great supports & therapists out there who can help.

No, what I mean to say is to stay close to the sadness or grief or fear or whatever the negative emotion is, in order to understand its origins, its roots, and its source. When this is more clearly understood then it becomes clearer just how to open up the positive energy that the emotion is presenting. I like to think of negative emotions as keys or clues to open the doors to the positive energy which is waiting to be discovered. The process is like mining for gems, digging for gold, hunting for treasures. We must move through a lot of darkness before we find the diamond. We must shift through a lot of dirt before the valuable totems are found.

That is why it’s useful, or even necessary, to go into the difficult shadowy places within ourselves – so that we can develop understanding and awareness and grow. If you think of the process like being at the entrance of the cave, when you go into the dark entrance and begin digging then you find the treasure. If you turn away from the cave, towards the sunlight and say, “It’s brighter over here. I want to stay and live in the light and keep attracting more light,” then you close the door to the potential that lays awaiting.

So when I dream of cluttered, chaotic places I know it’s a signal for me to go into the cluttered spaces in my mind to start finding the treasures. It’s messy & uncomfortable. It’s disorientating and frustrating at times. But it’s worth it!

We all have cluttered areas in our lives; it’s natural. Where in your life are there things that you are ignoring, putting off, telling yourself you’ll get to it tomorrow? See if you can go into the chaos whether it’s a metaphoric mess or a physical mess in the real world – see if you can do one thing to bring order, balance, harmony. Let me know in the comments how it goes for you. I’m looking forward to reading the progress.