part0016

As we spiritually mature into our higher potentials, increased care comes with it. Caring more is a most valid way for love to be stepped down into practical applications that would solve and prevent many problems we mechanically create and repeat.

For the next few paragraphs I’ll comment on the difference between care and overcare. Overcare is when our initial feelings of care about something or someone turn into worry, anxiety and over-identification—this can escalate into emotional depletion and the obvious stress that follows. Our care is one of our highest assets but like most anything, care has a balance point; when care crosses the line into overcare, it becomes a deficit and our health bears the consequences. Balanced care nurtures us and others while overcare drains us and hinders our effectiveness, even when our intentions are good .

We know that numerous caregivers experience a high rate of energetic burnout from not being able to find the balance between care and overcare. That’s understandable because balancing our care has a predictable learning curve and it’s not an easy task for people who care deeply. It’s part of an emotional maturing process in learning the economy of balanced care.

An excessive (obsessive) amount of overcare and emotional turbulence can also be created from trying to navigate the learning curve of new software, computers, smartphones or other “must-have” devices. Yes , they are helpful , but that doesn’t expunge the cumulative stress deficits accrued from the anxiety of having to keep up with it all, especially if you don’t have a knack for it. A balancing gesture would be to occasionally do a reality check and ask, “Are we consumers of our technology or are we consumed by our technology?” or “Are we the programmers of our gadgets or are we pawns of our gadgets?” When addiction creeps in, we become the pawns and the gadgets become our master. Finding balance in all things is a heart intelligent practice in these accelerated times, especially when technology is fixing to explode into science fiction-type potentials. Have fun but stay in charge, or you become the pawn. There’s no gray.

A stealthy ingredient in overcare is its seductive power to justify itself, while leaving us blindsided to its energy-sapping consequences. With practice, we can cue up our intuition to alert us when overcare begins to invade our feelings and perceptions. The practice of identifying and deleting overcare can save a pivotal amount of energy and health risk along the way. Eliminating overcare does not reduce our care; it strengthens the effectiveness of our care by bringing it into balance and coherent alignment with our heart. Any time our outgoing energy is balanced, we are smarter on our feet. View overcare as a thriving emotional virus, hidden by society’s unconscious agreement that overcare is okay and not accountable . With commitment and our heart’s guidance we can free ourselves from the seductive stress that overcare and constant worry bring us.

At first, trying to distinguish the difference between balanced care and overcare can seem complicated. This is because when we are in overcare, we can tend to feel that’s when we are caring the most. Many issues we start to care about morph into worry. Excessive worry is a classic example of when overcare is fooling us into thinking that it’s effective care . In our heart, most of us know that free-to-roam worry eventuates into personal energy deficits and compromises our wellbeing. (If we truly believed that worry really helped us, we would encourage our friends and children to go find a corner and “worry” whenever life’s challenges come up.) Overcare is a deeply imprinted human tendency that’s handed down through each generation. It’s like a virus that can only be cured through self -adjustment. Others can’t do it for us. There’s no vaccine; however we don’t need one, because overcare is nothing that we can’t handle with a little focus and our heart’s commitment.

Dethroning the habit of overcare is doable when our intentions are sourced from a coherent partnership between our heart, mind and emotions. Including our heart’s commitment provides the strength for actualizing important intentions that otherwise fizzle before they land. Our heart energy brings fortitude and resilience into our intentions, especially as our commitments start to shrink. The magic of the heart expresses itself through ease, not will and might, though the nature of the heart is mighty and a positive force that’s understated.

An obvious suggestion for eliminating overcare is to practice observing and regulating our emotional expenditures. Often we get an intuitive inspiration to change and replace an old, non-supportive emotional pattern. However, inspiration quickly wilts like a left-over party balloon if we don’t “act on it” much sooner than later. Inspiration self-sustains as we use it. As we become more skilled with this energy, we learn to move forward with our intuitive nudges while the heat from inspiration is still warm. This multiplies our potential for achieving our aim as it raises us above the vibration of our predictable resistances. Inspiration is a spirit-filled moment. It’s a packet of free energetic initiative—with a timer on it . As we move forward with the first nudge of inspiration, we can beat the human tendency to waste that intuitive gift from our heart. I’ve found that sometimes it’s many moons before certain needed inspirations return, if we miss acting on them on the first pass. It’s about learning the economy of spirit .

First: While breathing in a relaxed pace, pretend you are breathing through your heart or chest area and imagine calming your mind and emotions with your breath. (Calm emotions help to create a space that enables intuitive access for clearer discernment and choices when evaluating situations.)

Next: Once you’ve calmed your mental and emotional vibrations, then ask yourself, “What would an attitude of balanced care look like in this situation?” After you decide, imagine breathing in that new replacement attitude for a few minutes to anchor it into your system.

Repeat this exercise a few times if feelings of overcare seem amplified and determined. Approach it with ease , not force. With practice, you become more conscious of when you are overcaring and you can just stop it on the spot (in most cases) and return to being in charge of your energy.

As you practice, don’t be concerned if it doesn’t work every time. (You’ll get plenty more chances.) Being genuine strengthens the connection with your heart’s intention. This simple tool is not just for overcare; it’s helpful for any stressful challenge or situation that calls for clearer discernment without the emotional override. I’ve found that understanding and managing overcare is one of the most forward-moving steps we can take in our personal transformation process.

Remember that worry is one of the highest contributors to overcare because it seems so “legal” and normal. Worry and fear take overcare to the extremes. We can reduce and change these stress producing patterns as we put our heart into it—like we tell kids to do when committing to something important.

It’s often hard to remember that we have the choice to practice emotional regulation when triggered by fear from personal matters or global concerns, such as terrorism, civil unrest, viruses, climate change, etc. Many of us have learned that our health and well-being are jeopardized if we don’t practice some form of inner balance when constantly challenged by fear—whether our fear is real or not. Panic and fear put a haze around our sensible assessments and choices by numbing our higher reasoning capacity. More people are becoming tired of fear having the power to disassemble their emotional constitution and self-security. Most of us have wished to manage fear for a long time, yet often nothing changes until we step forward and put our heart’s commitment behind our mind’s intentions. We frequently engage just our mind to resolve challenges that instead require the sensitive guidance of our heart’s intelligence. The mind often trips over itself while impatiently rushing toward quick-fixes, leaving a trail of setbacks and re-starts. Our heart, working in partnership with our mind, creates an intuitive draw for information or effective steps to manage fear or other unwanted behavioral patterns .

From experience, I have learned the importance of approaching fear with ease and self-compassion rather than with mind struggle. Impatience sent many of my fear-reducing intentions straight to the trash basket until I learned that patience is also a must for transforming fear, not an option. When our intuitive reasoning capacity becomes restricted from fear, this causes our self-security alarm to go off and creates a powerful inner distortion which we call panic, overwhelm, etc. You can reduce this by placing importance on slowing down the vibrations of your mind and emotions; this helps to reduce the charge or intensity. It can be done by slow breathing while imagining your breath entering through your heart area. An effective way to learn to manage emotional intensity is to first practice on smaller emotions such as frustration, irritation, impatience and such. Reducing mental and emotional intensity is a gateway to intuitive sensitivity for wiser choices and solutions .

Don’t try to stop fear; simply commit to increasingly reduce fear a little at a time (with ease, not push). Don’t put a timer on the process. Release self-judgment or negative feelings towards your fear as this creates more resistance. Know that fear becomes more negotiable as we reduce the extra drama created in self-talk and imaginary projections with dim outcomes. I did this habitually until I realized that my mind was addicted to over-thinking the aspects of fear—trying to be too complex in assessing my feelings (boy Freud). The more we amplify fear with drama, the more we empower the fears we wish to eliminate. Most of us already know this—until the fear pops up.

Simply practice breathing in the feeling of calm and emotional balance while watching the news. As you breathe, see yourself maintaining care and compassion for humanity’s challenges without taking on their pain and fear. This doesn’t mean that you care less. Doctors, nurses and first responders to accidents maintain their care and effectiveness without over-identifying with the pain that people are experiencing. In most cases they had to practice to develop this quality, but with patience and genuine commitment any of us can develop it as well.

If the news seems too hard to deal with at times, then know that it’s okay not to watch it at all. Without truly learning dispassion, many people would probably fare better by not constantly watching the news. I often choose to watch global news because it stokes the fire of my commitment to compassion for the fear and suffering experienced throughout the planet. With practice, the mind and heart can learn to process dispassion and compassion at the same time. We have to be honest with ourselves in deciding if following the news supports or compromises our wellbeing based on our individual nature and constitution. Like many issues, the news has its assets and its deficits. Use your own heart to decide what’s best for you.

The practice that helped me the most to reduce fear is this: In prayer or meditation, I would visualize love from my heart streaming into my mind and into all my cells to change my old fear imprints. While breathing, I would hold a conscious intention in my heart to change my old programs of fear and anxiety into feelings of intelligent concern (managed-concern)—which is a much more objective and less stressful attitude than the feeling of fear.

Fear disempowers us—whereas the attitude of intelligent concern creates focused care that leaves us in charge and more attuned to intuitive direction. Intelligent concern is a health-conscious replacement attitude for fear. Make a heart commitment to practice befriending fear and changing the feeling to intelligent concern (managed-concern). This will draw a calmer response, clearer assessment and intuitive direction for responding to whatever threatens your inner or outer security. Practicing this exercise can and will help you progressively become more confident and empowered when challenged by fear, if you are patient and committed.

Practicing on less intense fears quickly strengthened my capacity to objectively shift and dissipate some of my deeper fears and anxieties. As you practice reducing and transforming fear, realize that small steps are wise steps because they create a balanced pace which draws less discouragement. Also remember to practice with patience and self-compassion, and allow for slip-ups without self-judgment and resignation. Approach it with ease, without urgency and self-doubt .

These few paragraphs don’t come close to addressing the endless situations and circumstances that can trigger our fears. People have searched for ages trying to find that “fix all, fear-eraser.” Many helpful instructions are available if you research the books and information on this subject. If you desire it from your heart, you will draw information that can help you replace your fears with increased self-security.

Often when small kids are distressed, unhappy or experiencing a tantrum, we instinctively re-direct their energy by giving them a toy or loving attention and almost instantly, they can totally change their frequency pitch (vibration) to calmness, joy, elation or contentment (higher pitch emotions). A primary reason that children often transform compressive emotions quickly is because in their early years of development they are still connected to the higher frequencies of their natural heart attributes, such as uncomplicated love, transparency, lack of prejudice, and their super-power to release and move on. Their minds are not yet entrained to the countless lower vibration societal mindsets and habits that often overshadow their heart’s higher feelings and choices.

The collective consciousness is slowly awakening to the need to educate children in how to maintain the connection with the natural, higher vibration of who they really are . This is done by helping them sustain a balanced alignment between their mind and heart as they mature. It’s especially important for children to maintain connection with their heart’s guidance amidst society’s hard and fast entrainment in overstimulation, ambition, competition and techno-mania.

One of the biggest obstructions in a child’s development (but not intentional) is when parents assume that they always know best regarding what their kids should be and do as they become adults. Millions of children end up playing out the dreams of their parent’s ideal personifications. To most parents in these situations it seems normal and motivated by care. It is care—but often overcare or uneducated care which unintentionally force-fits children into molds that don’t fit. Guidance is important, yet guidance occasionally needs an awareness upgrade that’s more inclusive of the consequences it generates. Most everyone realizes that for a long time now, children around the world are born with more awareness than previous generations. This increased awareness can cause resistance and separation in teens when they are pressured in directions that their deeper heart feels are not right for them—especially regarding vocation and relationship choices.

There are updated guidance models that can prevent much stress and emotional suffering in children from spirit repression. Guidance needs to include an awareness of their individual nature and their deeper heart’s inclinations and desires. New consciousness regarding this is on the rise, yet there’s much left to be done to change old-school guidance patterns.

With compassion, I encourage parents to be proactive in becoming more informed about updated and effective new models and information regarding this subject. Most parents are doing the best they can based on their awareness and means. But it’s time to upgrade our awareness because in our heart of hearts, we want our children and young adults to become who they truly are . Parents also need to have compassion for themselves as keeping up with children’s accelerated awareness is one of the harder challenges of these times. I compassionately understand the extra commitment this takes. As we collectively desire and envision an awareness upgrade from the heart, it will come about. The sun can already be seen coming over the hill. Our younger generation’s increasing awareness will eventually bail out society’s conflicting lower vibrational mindsets that have cost so many lives and generated ongoing hatred, separation and retribution. They won’t tend to support this ever-long impasse or tolerate the old ways that block harmonious connection and caring interactions among all people. This is all part of the consciousness shift we are experiencing.

Compassion increases in effectiveness as we mature in the core qualities of the heart, such as unconditional love, allowance, acceptance and an unattached desire for the highest outcome for all concerned. Cultivating these heart qualities strengthens our compassion and frees it to serve the highest best. True compassion benefits the sender and receiver, though we can’t always see the ways it nurtures and heals. Many of us have felt drained and stressed on occasion from what we thought was giving compassion . This energy drain and depletion come mostly from unbalanced empathetic care. Empathy can produce strong feelings of care but often comes with tentacles that create over-attachment to what we care about.

Compassion is one of the highest supportive energies of love. I used to think it was for fixing others. We can support each other with our love and compassion but people have to do their own mending from within. I was a dedicated “Mr. Fix-all” until I learned that people have to do their own fixing or similar challenges keep repeating—sometimes in different arrangements, and sometimes in much harder circumstances. Often the problems we rush to fix for others are their growth opportunities for learning to connect more deeply within their own heart and soul for direction and solutions.

Learning to balance our empathetic interactions is a big step towards understanding the tone of true compassion. It’s an unconditional love that supports the highest outcome for others without depleting our personal reservoir of energy. Whereas unmanaged empathy, sympathetic attachment, and “tired-care” are the rocks to look behind when we feel drained from extending what we felt was our heart’s compassion. One reason that compassion is misunderstood is that for ages, people have used the term compassion as a convenient cover-all word for what is often sympathy, empathy, pity or excessive worry. More people are being prompted from within to gain a deeper understanding of compassion, since compassion tops the list of what would benefit humanity in these transitional times.

Compassion is a powerful core frequency within our heart, but in most cases it takes practice to feel love and care for people in extreme stress without becoming overly identified with their challenges (a learning curve for all of us). One expression of true compassion is when we can hold love and light for others in dark moments, without draining our own battery and joining them in the dark. As we balance and manage our care we increase the effectiveness of our compassion. Without balance, our attempts to be compassionate turn into overcare and result in an energy deficit .

The following is similar in ways to the content on compassion. But since compassion is so often confused with empathy, I feel it could be helpful to restate a few points that set these two expressions of care apart. As I mentioned earlier, sensitivity to other’s pain points often triggers feelings of compassion and empathetic care; yet our effectiveness diminishes rapidly when we over-attach emotionally to their issues. Compassion can sense the suffering of others, yet can maintain balance and energetic composure within its care.

News stories, children’s challenges, other people’s health issues, etc. can elicit our empathetic responses which, without management, can trigger a continuous drain throughout our whole system, even if we feel like we are “kind of in charge.” Empathy starts out as an asset, yet it can become a misery if we don’t find our balance with it. A reality moment is when we realize (not just intellectually, but really get it) that unmanaged empathy can produce continuous energy deficits that far out-weigh the “good” which we think we are providing. Unnecessary aging comes with this package .

On the edge of burnout, we end up livid with ourselves for sinking too deep into others’ challenges, or the world’s problems, and then we get angry because there’s nobody to blame but ourselves (though we give it a good try). It gets worse as we remember that we learned our lesson the last time this happened—and here we are again. This is often followed by self-judgment and self-reduction until we get too worn down to even do that. Then we stressfully re-gather ourselves over a period of time and start all over with new self-care commitments, feeling like we’ve really learned our lesson this time…

We can change the ending to these self-generated stress ambushes by paying more attention to the intuitive feelings that signal us when our care becomes imbalanced—when our empathetic care fades into overcare, attachment and self-depletion . Our heart’s intelligence often provides intuitive warnings before self-depletion sets in but we can fall short on taking action, often because we think our overcare is justified. At times our mind diverts us from our heart’s choices when our ego pouts because it wants something different. Ego is good at seizing the moment when our intentions are rickety and not anchored in the heart. Our ego will surrender to the strength of our inner dignity once it senses our commitment is heart-solid.

Like many others, my heart intuition was blocked by my mind’s misinterpretation of empathy. I thought living on the edge of burnout from serving others was virtuous and noble. I felt it was proof of my self-sacrifice “to share the light and spread the good” like a little knight. (Picture a knight in shining ignorance on a mission to fix everyone , whatever the personal cost—that was me at age twenty-five.) Much of that experience was from young-buck ego vanity, mixed with sincere, yet unbalanced care. I’ve moved on since then after learning the same lesson, repeatedly. But I still closely monitor the difference between empathy and balanced care. It stays high on my personal list of self-care maintenance practices.

Remember, empathy itself is not the source of energy drains; it’s the unintentional mishandling of this ability that drains and taxes our wellbeing. Our hearts have the capacity to maintain energetic detachment and emotional equability. It’s one of the most valuable gifts we can give ourselves. Balanced empathy can nurture and serve others without serving us up with it. Learning the difference between lower empathetic attachment and balanced care can help dissolve most of the problems around empathy, and help us mature in the understanding of true compassion and its effectiveness.

Practice watching some recorded movie scenes where the characters are experiencing a medium amount of physical or emotional pain that creates a challenging sympathetic or empathetic feeling in you. As you watch, imagine you are breathing through your heart space, or the center of your chest. Breathe in a relaxed way and practice detaching yourself from the emotional over-identification.

If you do this enough times you will eventually find a place within yourself where you can regulate your feelings. You will start to realize that you can actually care about what is going on without it pulling you into it. The advantage of repeating the scenes is that it gives you more chances in a row to experiment with finding that inner switch which regulates your emotional output. Practicing with movie scenes gives you a jump start on learning dispassion and intentional composure which help with learning true compassion. These types of practices are often used by first responders to learn to maintain emotional composure as they respond to car wrecks, catastrophes, and such. This skill can be developed. Know in your heart that maintaining your emotional composure, without suffering with people in distress, doesn’t mean that you care less for them. Your care and compassion are actually more effective.

Self-compassion is an advanced step in anyone’s personal empowerment and self-care maintenance practices. At first people tend to respond awkwardly when it’s suggested they feel compassion for themselves—it can seem a little self-serving, out of place, undeserved, un-spiritual, etc. These attitudes come from handed-down entrainment from old belief systems that don’t serve us anymore. Self-compassion has been on the back-burner too long, and now it’s time to seize the moment and take advantage of its transformational benefits. To have compassion for yourself is not an act of selfishness; it’s an act of intelligence, heart intelligence.

Don’t confuse self-compassion with pity-party type emotions; it’s a transformative vibration from our heart that nurtures us with a non-judgmental acceptance and a deeper understanding of our self. Practicing this form of self-care (love) is especially helpful when transitioning through situations that require time for healing and emotional adjustment. If we have physical or emotional challenges, self-compassion intuitively guides and supports us through the best ways to handle our issues or situations. However, self-compassion is not just for challenging times as it could seem. Self-compassion is a regenerative energy that serves as a tonic for our cells and our operating system.

Self-compassion is a higher vibrational frequency sourced from the love and power of our heart and soul. We obviously think compassion is beneficial or else we wouldn’t automatically gush it out to others, pets, world suffering, etc. Why wouldn’t we do this for ourselves—love is love and it does what it does, and it’s free. So don’t feel awkward about a little self-love. Compassionate self-love is not ego infatuation. It’s an intelligent and regenerative self-maintenance practice.

To practice self-compassion simply get quiet somewhere and imagine creating an inner spa. Imagine breathing self-compassion into your mental/emotional nature and into your physical cells. Do this for a while—like a meditation. Most importantly, do this from the heart as it connects directly with the renewing qualities of your soul vibration. As you become familiar with the practice, it will begin to feel as if you are interacting with a best friend who truly cares, understands and supports.

Compassion is a most powerful and intelligent frequency within the love spectrum. As we unconditionally express compassion, it intuitively chooses its own way to administer its care–based on a sensitive attunement to the higher need of the whole. Pure compassion is not tethered to our agendas; it’s free to weave its magic, sometimes visibly yet often unseen, but never wasted as it nurtures all within its radiance. True compassion supports the highest-best outcome, which is not always what our personality would choose or understand. Unconditional love sets the tone for compassion, distinguishing it from lower vibrational attachments which hinder effectiveness. As our human intelligence spirals to the next station of enlightenment, then collective compassion will become the foundational vibration for amplifying the connection with our soul and source as they stream love and healing through our human experience. Compassion is transformational love and care manifesting in the most ripened state of effectiveness for the whole. – Doc