What a winter! I have found this to be the most difficult winter in years, and many I have talked to are saying the same. I was very happy to see March 20th come around. The energy of winter has shifted into the birth and growth of spring. Yea God! Go Team! Actually the energy shifted for me around the first of March, but by the 20th I was ready for the birthing to happen!
I have seen this reflected in my session work with clients as well. Many hit hard spots this winter, as I did. These were totally unexpected hard spots, and without a warning of any kind. Or things came up that we thought we had ‘dealt with’ already. It seemed that all winter I was in an active hibernation- a very busy stillness. I felt myself fragmented almost, and of course I had to ask my spiritual guidance team what was up with that! They gently smiled at me and said “Spiritual Defrag”. Then They promptly disappeared, having downloaded this tidbit of wisdom into my consciousness and soul for me to explore.
Hummm, Spiritual Defrag…. Interesting concept, but of course I needed more, being the enquiring mind that I am. I needed to see how this actually fit into my life and my work. I desired the wisdom of these two words on a deep soul level. I could vaguely see how this applied to my life but I wanted more clarity. They promptly sent me my first vivid example outside myself. This person had been experiencing the same shifts of energy that I had been seeing, and a bit of a twist. She said she felt that she was ‘at the end of her spiritual rope’. I found this very interesting, especially as it related to her quest to discover exactly what it was she wanted to do with her life.
Hummmm, again. Her story was like many others. Most people are raised with religious/church doctrine – much of it brimming with dogma and fear. There are beliefs that they are unworthy. Beliefs that we are unable to connect with the Divine Source on a real personal day to day level way that affects our lives. These thoughts and beliefs are often woven through every breath. As we grow up we accumulate many different pieces of religion through listening, observing and being part of a family and community. We then work to fit them together, creating our own belief system. Something that fits who we believe we are. Ultimately, it is assumed, and we hope, that this religious education will bring us comfort. However, often it brings us pain and conflict, a feeling of never being good enough.
As usual, as human beings we develop inner conflict when what we hear does not match what we see. We find ourselves in a religious conflict, often creating an inner and spiritual turmoil. I have found that ultimately we all, sooner or later, have to look directly at our relationship with God, independent of any organization. We have to define God, and/or the Divine Source of All That Is, from all the pieces we have accumulated and our own personal experience. No one else’s definition of God will fit us perfectly. We generally start this process with what we have learned or picked up from our early religious upbringing, or lack there of. All the pieces we have accumulated over time will need to be looked at, deciding what to keep and what to let go. Then we shave, break up the pieces or simply rearrange our knowledge and experience to define God.
At this point many look outside their respective churches for spiritual Guidance and the wisdom they seek. We look to those around us, read books and seek deeper experiences with ourselves, and the Divine. So once again we find ourselves shifting the pieces we have gotten as we find new ways of looking at our self and the world. As we quest for this relationship with God we find ourselves becoming more involved in our personal Spiritual Evolution. Often, but not always, creating a Spiritual Revolution, totally throwing out the old and creating a new definition for our self. We attend lectures and workshops, and expand our views even more. We explore the concepts of Universal Laws such as Karma and Reincarnation.
Even as we embrace the Universal Laws, by what ever name we call them, we understand that the world as we know it has is own set of rules. The world’s rules aren’t necessarily the Universal Laws, and not what we usually learned in church as kids. We find that we have whole sets of man made rules that we picked up growing up and older. We find ourselves with extra pieces. In the course of our spiritual evolution we create a mosaic of beliefs and experiences. This mosaic of our belief system has these extra pieces in this constant state of evolution. In the case of a personal Spiritual Revolution there are even more fragmented pieces.
I’ve discovered this is where the Spiritual Defrag comes in to the process. A lot of people carry all the old with them as they integrate, develop, and live the new spiritual aspects and wisdom they are embracing. What happens to all those old pieces? The religious doctrine? The dogma? The fear and feelings of being unworthy? They are still in our consciousness or subconscious as well as in our energy field. This pattern came up a lot this winter. Many pieces floating are around in some aspect of our being and do not have a home. Some of them are mental pieces in our subconscious that seemed to be in a holding pattern, waiting to see if they will be called up for use again, long after they have been consciously dismissed. However, they are still there simmering and ready to bubble up at any time.
In computer-ese these are fragmented pieces that have separated from an operating program or a file. These fragments are too small or useless, so the operating system can’t use them or use them efficiently. Thus, causing the computer to run slowly and inefficiently. It can happen slowly or suddenly, depending on what has fragmented or mis-filed. Defrag leaves no holes, and gets rid of the little pieces that slows things down or causes glitches— causing the operating system to search all over for one piece of information that will allow the program to run smoothly and efficiently. We use a scan program to check out our computer to see what is what in the system. This is to locate fragments, holes and disjointed or warped information. We get a report back about what it found and corrections it made. When our personal operating system, the Higher Self, is fragmented it cannot operate efficiently either.
Spiritual Defrag is our ability to evaluate our lives. It identifies and gets rid of what is not allowing us to run smoothly. When living intentionally we consciously scan our personal programs, the sum total of our life. However, unlike computers we cannot always- in an easy, peaceful and harmonious way- make all the corrections on our constantly evolving life program. I have found this to be so because as humans we lack the cold objectivity of computers, and I for one celebrate this lack! We are intimately involved with our life program unlike a computer. A computer does not feel joy, passion or bliss like we do. It also does not feel the loneliness, pain or sadness that we experience at times in our lives. I celebrate this as well. It is often when these feelings enter into our minds and lives that we stop and take the time to defrag. Those that are in the constant process of joy and happiness do this daily (the act of intentional living), they don’t wait for pain or discomfort to trigger a life scan.
When scanning our lives we often find fragments that no longer fit. Ideas, people or places that we have out grown or simply don’t fit us anymore. One fragment that often pops up in our scan (sometimes forcefully) is the manifestation of illness, or discontent, and feeling unworthy or not good enough. I believe that everyone would agree that our thoughts are powerful, yet when it comes to negative thoughts, the ones that WE have, we seem to forget this. The same thing happens when we bump up against old and non-supportive programming, perhaps from childhood or early adulthood. When we look at those thoughts and beliefs, we usually find that many of them constantly contradict our wonderful loving prayers, affirmations, and mantras that we repeat faithfully everyday. These thoughts and beliefs are like computer viruses. We have acknowledged some of them and have eliminated them, but others seem to be in quarantine. Lurking in the background, springing out when the barrier is not strong enough. (I won’t even get into the amount of daily energy that it takes to keep these pushed into the background! Talk about feeing tired all the time. Keep leaning on that door so they don’t spring free, and you’ll continue to be exhausted physically, mentally and spiritually.) Cleaning up our conscious and subconscious minds is a must to keep our life running smooth and honest. Success in this area will empower us to move forward as the individuals we desire to be.
Honestly and lovingly allowing these thoughts and beliefs to surface is the best course of action. The very thing we swear that we’ll never be is probably where we are headed. Allow these things to come to our awareness, and then choose to keep them or let them go is much healthier. It makes the process easier if we remember we can love the source of the thought or belief (mom, dad, granny) and chose not to keep it. It does not make them wrong and us right, nor does it make us wrong and them right. It simply means that pair of shoes does not fit our feet, so to speak. The shoe is fine; it is just not for us. Many seek traditional or alternative therapy, or hypnosis to help with this process; others choose to tackle this project on their own. What ever works (as long as it really works) is fantastic for it clears the way for greater growth, and a more dynamic space for self-awareness and empowerment. However, being aware of the energetic pattern of thoughts is important, for thoughts do have an energy, and energy never dies, it simply changes form.
As we are all spiritual beings this fragmentation also happens in our spirit. As everything is made of energy, it is in our energy field as well. We often ‘defrag’ our conscious and subconscious minds through rearranging our thoughts, or therapy. If this is so, where do the old thoughts go? Very often they go into our energy field or into our bodies. (If the thought or belief is still in the conscious or subconscious it is definitely in the body’s energy field as well, where illness and injury take root, acting like magnets for these things as well.) I have found that directing the Divine Energy into these areas will assist in clearing them out of our energy field and mind once and for all.
When love is in our field only things like love will remain. A Course in Miracles states that “Love brings up everything unlike its self for the purpose of healing and release”, so this can bring up a healing crisis. It can affect the mind, body or spirit. It can be small or big, but it will be noticeable and often uncomfortable and at times terribly painful. It is a trigger for us to know things are not smooth and operating efficiently. That something is not supporting us, but is actually working against us. There are many ways this can appear. One of the ways my client (and many others) felt this in day-to-day life was through a great desire to help people through her natural gifts. However, this desire created conflict for her as well. She had a spiritual and mental conflict with the results of her work, and was totally at the mercy of the opinion of others, and she was in a state of constant exhaustion physically. It was God’s work if there were immediate noticeable positive results, but she was a great failure if there were not. The belief that if it is good it must be God, if not it must be human. Intellectually she had altered her beliefs about God and the way the Universe works. She knew she was vital in the role of bringing individuals to personal healing, but something in her underlying belief system kept her from embracing this knowing. Creating mental confusion, physical exhaustion and spiritual conflict.
All of us have healing crisis of varying degrees and effects. How we get through them, if we choose to get through them, is what makes the difference in how much ‘easy, peaceful and harmonious’ we have in our lives. It is the difference between living with joy and harmony or pain and drama. Too many accept a painful healing crisis as part of living or being human. After all, no one is completely happy and at peace, are they? Without drama and trauma somewhere in our lives how would we know we are really living, right? If you believe that it will be true. If you don’t then perhaps it is time for a Spiritual Defrag.

 July 2004