I often say that the best contribution you can make to the health and wellbeing of the planet and of humanity is to heal yourself, to do the inner work on yourself. If you accept that we are all connected and are all one, which I do, then obviously the more light and love you’re able to hold in a clear, healthy system, the more light and love is available to the rest of the whole of which you’re a part.

There is another aspect to this journey, though, that can catch you out and even make you wonder whether it’s worth continuing with that journey at all. That is, that as soon as you start working on yourself you are, by definition, also working on the whole. So you can find yourself faced with clearing endless layers upon layers of hurt, pain and dis-ease. You may well ask, how could I possibly be carrying around this much stuff?

The truth is that some of it is not yours, not in the sense of you as your current personality anyway. Here are some of the burdens you may be carrying:

• Ancestral patterns and karma
• Collective consciousness beliefs and archetypes
• Past life experiences, vows and contracts

When you add all of this up it can be overwhelming unless you understand and manage what’s going on. For me the realisation dawned when I was industriously clearing emotional patterns around romantic relationships and I found myself processing an endless amount of sadness and pain. At one point I was totally fed up with crying, and I didn’t even know what I was crying about any more.

Many of us have had several lifetimes of spiritual service, and as part of these roles we’ve made vows and agreements to hold and transmute pain for others, and/or the planet. Many of these vows and agreements remain active even after the associated incarnation is over.

As well as your individual agreements, which were made according to your beliefs and world view of the times, there is an archetypal or collective consciousness overarching your individual actions and choices. For example, if you took a vow of poverty in a particular lifetime that your soul is still engaged with and you wish to release, then you’re also working with healing the belief pattern which says that money and material possessions are evil and you cannot possess either if you wish to live a spiritual life. In the same way, if you’re healing your own experiences of abuse then you’re also working with the ancestral pattern which has perpetuated this behaviour and suffering through generations.

These are powerful, entrenched patterns that have been established and reinforced over aeons, by millions, and that’s why it can feel so overwhelming and gut-wrenchingly painful to work with our own pain as it’s hooked in to these much wider, deeper paradigms. Thankfully, as co-creators, we can make it easier on ourselves. Remember that as a sovereign being you have a choice as to how your healing process takes place!

Ask for help: We’re such naturally self-sufficient creatures that we usually just carry on ploughing through without thinking there’s another way! So my first and most important advice is to ask that you only be given as much to heal at any one time as you can handle with ease and grace. It sounds so simple but this alone has made a massive difference to my ability to stay the course.

Practice awareness: Get into the habit of asking exactly what it is that’s identified itself for healing. Is the pain/sadness/fear you’re sensing something associated with your current personality, a past life experience, or an ancestral pattern, for example? An awareness of where you are and what you’re looking at can help tremendously, because once you know it’s not just about you personally you’re able to detach from much of the emotion attached to the discomfort.

Release old vows, agreements and promises that may be contributing to your struggles and are no longer in your highest good: In this case you’ll need to ask your Higher Self to make you aware of where these exist so you can choose to release and dissolve them. Often, you can do this simply by stating aloud your intention to do so. Remember to consciously choose a new, more positive experience after the old has been released too, such as “I only work with energies that contribute to my agreed soul purpose.”

Remember you’re not alone: Sometimes you may need a little help from a skilled healer to bring a wounded past life soul aspect to the point of being willing and able to release. It can be difficult to access the root cause of pain on your own if part of your soul has a very good reason for wanting to hold onto it!

If we’re all one, then you also have immediate access to a veritable throng of lightworkers, ascended masters, angels and light beings who are all just waiting for you to ask for their help. Never be afraid to call on them for assistance, and thank you from the bottom of my heart for any healing that you do. When you help yourself, you’re making it an easier and lighter task for me and anyone else who has to address similar issues to do the same.

Semele Xerri

Credit: semelexerri.co.uk