forgiveness

How to Handle Difficult People: Spiritual Teacher or Downright Toxic?

November 1, 2011 By Energy Healing Reiki Master 1 Comment

I was talking to a healer buddy of mine for over an hour today and it was such an interesting conversation that I felt inspired to create a blog post. My friend is a very empathic and gifted healer. Like most healers I know (including myself), he is a people pleaser so that combination of healer/empathic/people pleaser means setting good, strong, clear energetic boundaries on people he interacts with is very important to his health and well being.

Anyway my buddy had dinner last night with an old friend and another person he had never met before. My buddy didn’t resonate with the new person at all. He felt he was very negative and so my buddy basically disengaged from the conversation and disconnected energetically from the person. Twelve hours later and after a nights rest and he was still disturbed about the encounter. He was upset with himself that he was not more compassionate with the individual and was feeling guilt and regret about the way he handled the encounter and dealt with the person.

Any new person who enters your life and disturbs you the next day is someone to look closely at so we explored this situation in great depth – this is the executive summary version.

First of all, I NO LONGER CHOOSE TO BEAT UP ON MYSELF for how I handled any encounters or interactions with other people NO MATTER WHAT. Second, I try not to place labels on it or to judge or criticize myself as being selfish or not compassionate in how I handle a difficult person. I also try not to revert to guilt or regret at any time. If I feel guilt and regret, I look for what “I should do” or “ought to do” statements – often from early childhood – are operating and clear them out.

When I encounter a difficult person or attract one into my life, I usually drop what I am doing and focus on what is going on energetically. The first thing I do is ask the Creator to heal and ameliorate any karma I may have with that person or that person may have with me. A lot of time this one step alone clears up the whole incident and I go merrily on my way without interacting again with the person.

If that does not resolve the issue, I go to phase 2 and ask what is that person reflecting or mirroring back to me that I need to look at within myself and heal. Then I work with what comes up and clear it out.

If this does not resolve it, I ask is there a hidden wakeup call in this. Is there something going on that is seeking to gain my attention. In this case, my buddy has an old “friend” in another state who left his life several years ago but now is coming back to FL to live. This person is probably not a divine ideal person for my buddy to hang out with and the new person is very much like this friend. So in a way this encounter served my buddy to warn him to look at his relationship with his old friend and decide how he wants to handle him in the future.

Please note that the encounter with the difficult person is serving the highest good of my buddy even if he does not realize or appreciate it.

If there is no karma, no mirror, no wakeup call then the other possibility is that the difficult person reminds me of someone from my past like a parent, sibling or friend that I need to forgive. Usually the people we have karma with are also the people we need to forgive as well.

The really interesting thing to me for mastery is how should we handle difficult people. And to me that is often a combination of where we are on the path and whether or not the difficult person is a teacher or a toxic. The guiding principle is to be compassionate with yourself.

When I first realized what a strong empath I was, it really changed how I interacted with people. I began looking at the people around me and I made changes. People who I did not enjoy being with or who I LOL judged as lowering my vibration – I cut out of my life quite ruthlessly. It was something I needed to do at that time because I did not have the shielding and filters and protective mechanisms I needed to interact with them.

I was taking on other people’s stuff right and left and the only way I knew how to handle it was to eliminate them from my life. It created a huge amount of stress on my relationship with my ex who did not understand this and thought I was being extremely selfish by no longer doing stuff with my old low vibration buddies. And I did not feel it was selfish at all and still don’t. If I have any regrets at all it would be that I realized earlier in my life that I was so empathic and been more discerning at an earlier age as to who I hung out with. LOL and if I had would I have been with that ex who like all my exes is a great spiritual teacher for me.

Any way – that was sixteen years ago and today I approach difficult people very differently. I have learned over the years that a lot of my growth and evolution comes from difficult people. One of my biggest spiritual teachers was an old boss of mine who I could not cut out of my life. And to be honest, if I could have cut her out of my life and kept my job I would have.

There is a big difference between Difficult People who are Spiritual Teachers and Difficult People who Cross the Line and have become Toxic. Teacher Difficult People bring up stuff and make us explore areas that are not comfortable but they provide a way for us to clear, heal, transmute and release dysfunctional patterns and programs. This ultimately helps us to grow, evolve, expand and raise our vibration.

Toxic Difficult People are another type of creature altogether. Toxic people bring up so much stuff and are so negative that they can overpower a person energetically and lower their vibration. And if I see a toxic person enter my life, I start to run and run fast and hard.

About Reiki Master Bill Austin:

Bill Austin is an energy healing facilitator, spiritual teacher, artist, writer and visionary living in St Petersburg, Florida in the United States. Bill specializes in spiritual healing and is the founder of several Reiki and other energy healing modalities. He has trained healers in over sixteen countries and has helped people from all over the world to heal, grow, expand and to realize more of their full potential. Bill infuses healing and enlightenment energies into healing art images and has created a line of self help books. You can click on this link to download a free healing ebook called: Vibrational Color Healing Art: A Fun, Joyful and Playful Approach to Healing. Please follow Bill on Twitter!

Some of Bill’s Favorite Healing Quotes, Part 1

May 24, 2011 By Energy Healing Reiki Master Leave a Comment

“You don’t forgive others to let them off the hook. You forgive yourself and others so that you can clear, heal, transmute and dissolve the emotional wounding, trauma, harm and damage that closes your heart.”

“When you begin to change or fine-tune your lifestyle, make gradual adjustments and stick with them. Each month change just one habit in a small way. It takes about one month for the body to get used to the new practice, but after that month the change will become a habit. People who try to implement a whole lot of changes at one time usually totally freak out and often fall flat on their face.”

“Increasingly I am drawn to the healing power of beauty. When people ask me what I do now, rather than mentioning that I am a healer, I often say “I create beauty.” The core essence of healthy cells is beautifully structured molecules of energy. One of the reasons we love to be in nature is that there is so much beauty in each flower and tree and the crashing of waves against the crystal white sand… I love looking at beautiful pieces of art and absorbing the color and when you focus your awareness on nature and beautiful things it is hard to be down and depressed. So next time you are feeling down maybe you may want to head over to an art gallery or visit a museum and soak yourself up in healing power of color and beauty.”

“I watched someone I loved very much die at age 45 agonizingly slowly for three weeks in the Intensive Care Unit of the hospital. And one of the many blessings I received from this experience is a heartfelt realization of how precious life is and how important each moment we spend with a loved one is. When I first took my buddy to the Emergency Room of the hospital, I had no idea that this would be the last time I would see him when he was conscious. I also decided that if I am ever in a similar state that I would prefer for the life support systems to be turned off closer to the start of the dying process rather than toward the end.“

“A lot of the clients I work with experience sadness, depression, suppressed rage/road rage, emotional numbness and disconnectedness and are seeking ways to clear, heal and transmute these painful patterns. When I work with them energetically I often find that they have lost touch with who they really are. In one or more important areas of their life, they are giving their power away to others or are doing things that no longer resonate with their heart. We pay a huge energetic price when we are not authentic to who we really are and whenever we give away our power to others or take power away from others.”

“Whenever I feel off energetically or down that is always a signal to me that I need to take a time out and look at what is going on energetically and work on healing and clearing it as soon as possible before it becomes a larger imbalance. I find it very helpful to restore my inner balance and serenity by taking a walk, hanging out in nature, taking some deep breaths or doing something I love to do like painting.”

“We live in a very challenging time period. In this time of accelerated change and planetary ascension, it is important to stay as grounded as possible and as connected to nature as we can be. Nature is a great spiritual teacher and mirror for humanity. The animals, plants and crystals are not nearly as freaked out about the changes as humanity is and that is because they tap into the heart of Gaia and live from a much calmer, more tranquil space than the human emotional roller coaster. I love sunbathing on the sand, playing in the ocean, walking around town, etc. The more I steep and ground myself into the stillness, beauty and tranquility of nature the more balanced and alive I feel. Whenever I feel stressed I usually can come back into balance by hanging out with nature. I encourage each of you to hang out in nature!”

About Holistic Healer Bill Austin:

Bill Austin is an energy healing facilitator, spiritual teacher, artist, writer and visionary living in St Petersburg, Florida in the United States. Bill specializes in absent healing and is the founder of several spiritual healing and Reiki healing modalities. He has trained healers in over sixteen countries and has helped people from all over the world to heal, grow, expand and to realize more of their full potential. Bill infuses healing and enlightenment energies into healing art images and has created a line of self help books. You can click on this link to download a free healing ebook called: Vibrational Color Healing Art.

Filed Under: Healing Tagged With: beauty, forgiveness, healing, holistic healing, nature

Why Should I Forgive People Who Wrong Me?

October 20, 2010 By Energy Healing Reiki Master Leave a Comment

First of all I want to state that when we forgive others, we are not saying that the “bad” deeds that others do to us are OK.

Forgiveness does not condone what was done. I believe that it is important to forgive yourself, others and Spirit because we want to heal our life and move on.

Forgiveness begins with forgiving yourself and being as loving and gentle to yourself as you can be. I tend to beat up on myself a lot and self sabotage myself a lot so It is often more challenging for me to forgive myself than it is to forgive others.

Often people with forgiveness challenges in their life live in the past and often shut down emotionally and socially because they are afraid that they will get hurt if they trust others and interact with people. And lots of people on the spiritual path have a lot of anger toward Spirit/Creator for the highly dysfunctional world we live in.

Forgiveness is such a huge issue for so many people that I created a YouTube video on this topic and posted two articles about it on my web site before I had the blog. The two articles are:

The YouTube Video is below:

About Spiritual Healer Bill Austin:

Bill Austin is an energy healing facilitator, spiritual teacher, artist, writer and visionary living in St Petersburg, Florida in the United States. Bill specializes in distance healing, spiritual growth, healing art and healer training. He is the founder of several Reiki and other energy healing modalities. He has trained healers in over sixteen countries and has helped people from all over the world to heal, grow, expand and realize more of their full potential. Bill infuses healing and enlightenment energies into healing art images and has created a line of self help books. You can click on this link to download a free healing ebook called: Vibrational Color Healing Art. He offers a number of free energy healing resources on the freespiritualhealing.com web site.