Kaity Astraelis

You see, transformation is something else entirely than change…

Transformation calls upon the art and power of healing. Healing the unconscious mind. When the deeply seeded origin of patterning and behavior is healed, we can say that the walls between our true nature and our current self have been removed. On the other side of transformation, a new expression of freedom and authenticity, absent of inner struggle, awaits. No longer are we fighting with ourselves, we are, instead, enjoying a world that is totally new.

In contrast, changing our habits and patterns seems to show up as a massive effort to re-arrange personality traits accumulated from the past. “I won’t drink anymore,” someone might declare, “I’m going to change!” But has the underlying motive to drink transformed?! The experience of change can often leave us feeling like we are fighting something inside ourselves. And we often are! We are fighting the unconscious mind where all our childhood beliefs and wounding are stored. And over time, the unconscious mind always seems to win.

So, it’s not change that leads us to the life of our dreams, but transformation. It’s an inside out process, not the other way around! Rather than change on the outside to redirect our lives, we can transform on the inside, and allows changes to occur in reflection of our new operating system. Change doesn’t give us access to what is fundamentally not working, transformation does! And this deep inner shift is the key to a new reality, one that luminously reflects the new us!

In this new space, a very real level of responsibility for our reality arises. As through the process of healing, we come to discover that everything we need to heal lies within. Within us, we possess the alchemical power to transform darkness to light and set ourselves free. Once we touch this power, we know that we are the only ones that are responsible for our life experience, and a new sense of empowerment unfolds, prompting us to create new patterns and habits in lieu of the old.

Thus, hasn’t the time for transformation arrived?

Here are three guiding principles to stepping more fulling into the deep healing that leads to actively and consciously creating ourselves:

1.) Awareness – Everything begins with awareness. The greater self-awareness we have, the deeper and more profound the healing can be. If we ever feel stuck, we can be brave and ask friends and community to reflect to us the ways they see us acting and behaving that keep us from living our best life.

2.) Responsibility – Taking responsibility for our own transformation. Actively deciding who we want to become and what we want to create in our lives. Also, actively deciding what we will no longer tolerate in ourselves and environment. And not waiting for anyone to give us permission here!

3.) Intention, Imagination, & Focus – Through our innate powers of these three qualities, we must use our mind and our ability to envision our greatness. Staying dedicated to this vision of ourselves within, meditating on it, being devoted to it, to our true nature, our essence, our soul, our light.

In essence, transformation is an art and it brings us closer to our soul by removing the blocks that keep us from living a life on purpose. By choosing who we become in this life, we actively participate in creating a new world.

Free to be…

This month as we shift gears from summer to fall (at least, in the northern hemisphere), there might be a slight ‘uptick’ for all us. Whether we are heading back to an office, a home office, or whether the kids are heading back to school… or not, there is that feeling in the air that lets us know summer is slipping into the rear-view mirror.

And if there’s anything this pandemic has taught us all is that going with the flow is something none of us where doing enough of. So, here’s my invitation…

Before we “fall” back into the old habits of human doing, can we promise ourselves this month that we will remember we are enough as we are? Let’s all, collectively, give ourselves and each other the permission to be enough. Let’s put down (just for September because I don’t want anyone to be too overwhelmed by the sense of freedom that might be possible here) the desire to teach, preach, and/or judge ourselves and others. This month, collectively, we are off the hook for striving, pushing, pulling, and hoping. That’s right, I’m inviting us all to let go of even hoping!

Let life be exactly as it is. Let people be who they are. Let yourself be exactly as you are. In your strengths and your weaknesses. Let others be perfectly perfect in their strengths and their weaknesses. And don’t confuse the act of relaxing into being enough for inaction. When we allow ourselves to be enough, I have found myself to be more inspired and fearless than ever before. Why? Because I operate from a place of trust and ease. And from this place I have taken the biggest risks and made the biggest leaps. When I know I am enough, the power of life finally gets to move through me, uninhibited. And that’s a pretty extraordinary experience. I’ve also noticed a lightness of being that seems to add a sense of curiosity and openness to the day that is so easily shut off otherwise. Being has nothing to do with inaction, is what I’m saying. But it does have everything to do with how we generate energy, experience our day, and impact others.

All in all, life can get -all too easily- pretty serious. So, this month, let gooooo of the stories you have about yourself and others. Give yourself an internal vacation from your own control and chatter. Instead, show up. Show you to yourself and to your family, friends, and commitments. Be centered in your body and your heart. Listen to life. Take aligned action. Repeat.

As many of you know, I’m of the ilk that everything is energy. Why this belief serves me is because it empowers me to influence my own life. From this belief, life becomes malleable. I can shift my mood, my thoughts, and thus manifest a reality that is in reflection of both. Additionally, it grants me the power to give back energy that doesn’t belong to me and transmute energy that no longer serves me.

Wanna try it? I hope so, because today I’m going to teach you a tool I use to transmute energy. I was taught this tool in my early years of study and use it almost every day today. There is no other tool like it, and it’s called The Violet Consuming Flame.

The Violet Consuming Flame was brought to the planet in the 1940s but Ascended Master, Saint Germain. What’s an Ascended Master? Well, you’re one in the making, as an ascended master is someone who has used their free will to continually evolve themselves by increasing self-awareness, making positive choices that align with their highest nature, and continually exhibit self-mastery over fear-based feelings and thoughts. This process of self-mastery eventually led individuals, like Saint Germain, into a state of enlightenment until the time of death, which is defined at this level as a conscious as a choice to leave the body and continue to assist humanity in their awakening.

So, there was Saint Germain, keeping an eye on humanity and he was like, “Humanity seems to need some help.” I mean, we were coming out of the 1800s – a prolific time of war and slave trading, and while we were evolving through the industrial revolution, humanity’s consciousness was couched deeply in the vestiges of separation rather than unity and oneness. AND, it looked like we had a long way to go.

Thus, in the 1940s, a new tool for personal development got introduced. And it was specifically designed to accelerate our development. Rather than working through each layer… by layer… by layer… we were given the choice to activate this flame of transmutation in our bodies, minds, and energy field and allow this flame to transform whatever there is to dissolve that no longer serves us. *When I say “flame” I am not talking about fire that is physical to the eye or hot to the touch. I am talking about an energy that is sacred and possesses certain alchemical qualities to transform things, like fire. This tool also builds, like fire, starting from a small flame and becoming larger with our intention. And whether it is a small flame or a concentration of large flames, the alchemical power to transform is present at all stages.

If you’re ready to experience this, jump into the meditation now. If you need an example, I got you.

There are cycles of intensity in my work as a psychotherapist. For example, there was as series of school shootings and suicides in Denver a couple years ago and many of my clients were touched by these events. One after the next came into my office processing this material. I knew, as a professional, that if I was not vigilant with my own energy, I could experience vicarious trauma, exhaustion, and even burnout. So, I amped up the Violet Consuming Flame. I filled my office with it, I filled my own energy with it. I meditated with it each evening to clean and clear my mind, my cells, and the space. The Violet Consuming Flame acts like a cosmic cleaner, and instant relief is felt. So rather than my office becoming a catch-all for deep anger, grief, and fear, it became a space of transmutation for these young people. They came in feeling one way, and left feeling lighter. And I was not overwhelmed by the consistent intensity that I was sitting with throughout the weeks. Instead, my own energy field was “padded” with the Violet Flame and anything that arose inside of me was washed away and anything that came my way my dissolved, like a paper-airplane circling the sun.

And this is why I say, everything is energy. Because if I didn’t, I would have been totally burned out by that month. And don’t get me wrong, I was tired, but using these tools gives me resilience and strength to support others at a different level while also taking care of myself.

“Energy flows where attention goes…”

Many of us feel that we are at the whim of life – just keeping up, just doing the best we can, just taking it as it comes. When we live like this, we begin to judge and control what comes our way because it fundamentally defines how we feel.

For example:
That thing that happened with the family or that thing that happened at work is ______ (fill in judgingly descriptive word here, like “crappy,” “bad,” “hard,” or “challenging”) because it makes me feel ­­­­­­­­­_____­­­__ (fill in feeling word here, like “stressed,” “scared,” “sad,” or “angry”).

Or, conversely, that thing is _______ (“great,” “good,” “wonderful,” etc) because it makes me feel _______ (“good,” “happy,” “successful,” “confident,” etc).

Both these sentences depict a state-of-being that is dependent on an external factor. And while experiencing feelings as a result of the world around us is normal, it can get us in trouble when we can’t control the world around us. In other words, when we live the majority of our day from this perspective of life, we start trying to control life, and at best, we start having a really strong opinion about our day and letting others know about it. And if there is no one to hear us, then we start telling ourselves, which can be draining and stressful to our inner listener.

I’ve noticed this in my own life. When I feel that my ‘to-do’ list is rivaling the length of the yellow-brick road, I can feel, too, like I’m keeping up with my day rather than feeling like I’m meeting my day with presence from moment to moment. This is my preferred experience of a day and I find that this experience is something I can influence, so I let myself have an opinion and feel invested. The other day, I became aware of feeling like I was keeping up, so I took a deeper look at where this experience was coming from. How did I get myself into feeling like this? I felt revved up, out of the moment, disconnected, and worried. And through that investigation, I was reminded…

I was reminded that we have the power to focus our minds wherever we want. It’s our freewill, our right. And when I start focusing on the tasks in front of me rather than the emotional state I am bringing to the tasks, I start to feel like I’m keeping up. Fascinatingly, when I’m disconnected from what I’m feeling in the moment, I start to just show up to the ‘to-do’ list; meaning, I start to focus on “getting things done” and reacting to life, rather than consciously creating my day’s experience!

“But what if I don’t want to feel what I’m feeling in the moment?” you ask. I hear you. And I’ll say it like this, awareness of what we are feeling has nothing to do with whether or not we have to feel it long term. Bringing awareness to a feeling we might not want to feel – like overwhelm – simply gives us the opportunity to choose something different. Recognizing our ability to influence our day can be a total game-changer, and it starts with recognizing how powerful we are.

Sharing personally again, I was running through my list the other day and I was feeling disconnected. My disconnection was amplified in the reflection of the landscape I was driving through. Breathtakingly beautiful fields of green, thick canopies of trees blowing in the wind, the sun shimmering over a vast lake, and mountains reaching out of the horizon into a blue sky. Yeah, if you’re seeing that and you don’t feel anything about it, I advise you to stop and check in. So that’s what I did. I stopped. And I simply turned my attention to my state of being. I noticed I was running through what I had to get done that day, but at the expense of being present (which, by the way, can make getting things done sort of painful). I took a breath and re-focused my attention on the wild amounts of gratitude I have for my life right now. And suddenly, the scene around me became brighter. I heard birds I hadn’t heard, I felt the temperature (yes, the windows were down), I felt the air move through the car, and I reached over and turned on some music and started to sing. Guess what? I got to where I was going in the same amount of time and I got all the things completed that I had slated for that day. And guess what else? It all happened inside a rich and full experience of presence. How did I make that happen? I chose to shift my focus. From overwhelm to gratitude. I decided to activate the feeling I wanted to feel and bring it to my day. I became a conscious creator.

When we choose what we focus on, we let life off the hook. Yes, we stop blaming life and external circumstances for “making us feel” the way we feel. Instead, through our awareness, we bring agency to the moment and energize an emotional state of our choice. External circumstances can influence us only to the degree we allow it. Am I a total pro at this? Nope. Do I need reminding? Yes. Does this teaching give me access to living a more satisfying life? One that can support others and celebrate a beautiful day? Yes.

In conclusion, I invite us all to keep caring deeply about life. But let’s care a-heck-of-a-lot more about what’s happening inside of us rather than what’s happening outside of us. Focus on what you can control rather than giving your power away to that which you can’t.

Enjoy Discovering You!

“Let’s talk about stress, baby, let’s talk about you and me, let’s talk all the good things and the bad things that may be, let’s talk about stress.”  — Salt-N-Pepa

Okay, stress is not the word Salt-N-Pepa use… But you and I are gonna talk about it.

Stress has become the underlying culprit to serious mental and physical health issues in our country. Because of this, the fads of self-care have flourished into a booming industry and stress itself now reigns as a demonized force to be tamed, dealt with, or avoided completely. What sucks the most – to use professional language- is the polarity we have created. Not only are we responsible for contending with lives that are stressful, but now we are accountable to combating the stress by finding more hours in our week for self-care, and if we don’t make strides toward implementing this dire remedy, then we, instead, deal with our stressful lives and feel guilty about doing nothing to change it. So now we have stress, obligation, and guilt. How did we get there so fast? Has self-care become stressful? If it has, it’s only because we don’t understand stress.

Stress is a natural part of life and is not something to be avoided. We can’t avoid it. A potted tree grows taller if it feels a slight stress around its roots in the pot. However, if you don’t pay attention by eventually giving the tree a larger pot when it’s ready, the tree becomes sick and can die. Healthy stress vs. unhealthy stress is all around us. Short bursts of stress release hormones that can help us perform at work, in school, at sports. Some stress experiences can feel enlivening and energizing! Longer episodes, where we experience frequent bursts of stress in a row, can help us focus to complete projects, hit deadlines, and accomplish goals. But extended periods of stress where there is no room for our bodies to rest – when our nervous systems recalibrate and our hormones rebalance – can make us sick both emotionally, mentally and/or physically.

So, what we need to know more than anything is that there are many different kinds of stress. And not all stress is bad.

Stress falls under three major categories: acute stress, episodic acute stress, and chronic stress. The first one is categorized by short bursts of cortisol and adrenalin through our bodies like what happens when we are at a starting line for a race, about to walk onto stage, or conversely when we get into an argument, get a flat tire on the way to an important meeting, or drop something by accident and it breaks. We feel “activated,” but it passes. There is a clear beginning, middle, and end. This kind of stress is normal and okay. It’s part of life and our bodies are built to experience it. After a short burst of acute stress, we may find ourselves gratefully climbing into bed and reflecting on the experience with perspective and thoughtfulness. This is a sign that the nervous system has recalibrated and we are back to neutral. Recovered and good to go.

The ability to recover more quickly and build our capacity for acute stress can be improved through study and training. However, the 3 basics of eating, sleeping, and exercising mindfully can help to naturally improve our ability to recover.

The second stage of stress, episodic acute stress, is when this feeling of being activated starts happening more and more frequently. In this category, there’s a feeling of needing “to come up for air” but not necessarily getting it. We feel this when we have a big push for a deadline, like closing a business deal or studying for end of semester exams. The nervous system is turned on, however, we know there is an end in sight and we will rest soon.

This is a really important moment. The part where we have promised to rest after the episodic acute stress experience. The deal is closed. The emergency has been de-escalated. The family is safe. The semester is complete. The project is finished. In this moment, we have been in “go-mode” for awhile and it’s easy to bypass the conscious effort it takes to switch gears and create the environment our nervous systems and hormones need to rebalance and recover. But we must. This is the time to put our phones down long before bed, to get 8-10 hours of sleep for several nights in a row, to play, to lounge, to laugh, to nap. To work less. We do not take recovery time seriously enough in our society, and I’ll tell you now that every high performer we have on a pedestal in our culture has a recovery routine that would blow your mind. It is taken with as much seriousness as the business launch. But without the seriousness. Learn to let go. It will change your life.

Because if we don’t let go, take it from me, we enter a whole different category of stress. The world of chronic stress. I found myself in this place almost a decade ago and it took a long time to undo. It can happen when things such as family emergencies, a death, company lay-offs, global circumstances, all out of our control, are piled on to the aforementioned stress experiences. In other words, there is no “end” in sight, no rest period waiting, no coming up for air. Physiologically speaking, the nervous system feels stuck in the hyper alert “on” position. Stress hormones keep getting dumped into our blood stream which can create a weakened immune system and mental health issues.

This is the place that bubble baths and massages don’t seem to touch. Why? Because those are fabulous short-term tactics for acute stress experiences. Here, we need a long-term view. Lifestyle changes, mental health support, and even medical support. Chronic stress is a wake-up call to action. It was for me. It was time to break the pot I was feeling constantly ‘root-bound’ inside of and grow into something vaster and wider, filled with more possibility and support; a time to root down while reaching for the sky. When I found myself with a Lyme Disease diagnosis following a major car crash, I knew I had some internal work to do. It was uncomfortable, but I turned inward to face unresolved trauma, mental and emotional patterns that no longer served me, and belief systems that were no longer letting me grow. I trained my mindset, and asked myself some deeply probing questions about what I really wanted for my life and relationships. It was a profoundly transformative time in my life, but now I understand the unquestionable interconnectedness between mind, body, and spirit and how it can all manifest in our one beautiful life.

In essence, my invitation to you is to begin to identify what kind of stress you are experiencing. Begin to try and respond more appropriately to each kind. Let the acute stress rise and pass, ask yourself more deeply challenging questions is you feel you are entering a longer term stress patter, seek support. I would never be who I am today without the support of the mentors and teachers in my life. Asking for support, both familial and professional, is something we should never be ashamed of. Learn to embrace the good stuff and train your mind, body, and spirit into greater capacity so you can enjoy the life you know is yours. In the words of someone who I was not able to identify on Instagram, but give whole hearted credit to for this gem of wisdom:
“Self-care is not a long hot bubble bath, chocolates and good wine – self-care is cultivating the life I do not need to escape from.” 

Blessing of Light

Please join me today in this short guided practice, where I offer a gentle blessing of light for you to open to and receive…