It is when you can access your personal spiritual guidance that you are then able to take loving care of yourself. You will create an inner sense of safety and serenity when you are willing to learn to take 100 percent responsibility for all your own feelings of both pain and joy.

Learning to hear, see and feel messages from your spiritual guidance takes practice. The more you practice, more you t rust that you are never alone and that you really are being guided toward your highest good. This is what will create your sense of safety.

It may be difficult to practice opening to spiritual guidance if you believe it doesn’t exist, or that it will not show up for you personally. The only way you will know for sure whether or not this guidance is here is to practice moving into intent to learn about loving yourself with your guidance and see what happens. It takes a leap of faith to open to learning with something that you are not sure even exists.

Years ago I read Carlos Castenada’s books. Carlos was being mentored by a teacher named Don Juan. At one point, Don Juan stated that he would choose time of his own death. Carlos asked him (I am paraphrasing question since I no longer have book) "What if you were walking through desert one day and someone was hiding behind a rock ready to shoot you?" Don Juan’s answer was one I never forgot: "I wouldn’t be there." He wouldn’t be there because he would have tuned into his guidance and would have been told not to go there.

This is what we all need in these difficult times. We each need to do all we can to keep our frequency high, for this is how we can each help our planet. The attack on our country has made all of us vulnerable to darkness of fear, anger, anxiety and depression. We cannot afford to give in to this darkness.

We can each stay in love, peace and joy, rather than in fear, anxiety and depression, only when our intent is to learn about loving ourselves and we stay tapped into our guidance throughout day.

Our very way of life is at stake here. Most of us cannot go out and directly deal with darkness that destroyed that killed so many innocent people on September 11, 2001, or darkness or current threats. What we can do is stay in light - in love, peace and joy through our intent to learn and our connection with Spirit. Darkness cannot exist in face of light. The more of us that stay in light, more power we have to overcome darkness. We each have responsibility to move out of our intent to control and into intent to learn about loving ourselves and others. We all have responsibility to raise our frequency and stay in connection with God/Goddess energy of love and compassion. We each need to become spiritual warriors, taking loving action even when it is hard to do so. Through our own loving action, perhaps then our country will be guided toward taking whatever action that is in our highest good and highest good of all.

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is best-selling author and co-author of eight books, including "Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By You?", "Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By My Kids?", "Healing Your Aloneness","Inner Bonding", and "Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By God?" Visit her web site for a FREE Inner Bonding course: http://www.innerbonding.com or mailto:margaret@innerbonding.com

Willingness means that we are ready to ask for help from a spiritual source of strength, and from others who can bring us love to help us heal. It means that we are ready to acknowledge that we cannot find our safety without spiritual guidance - that we are ready to invite Spirit into our heart to nurture and guide us. It means that we have embraced journey, sacred privilege of learning about love upon this planet.

We cannot move into next step of Inner Bonding process, intent to learn about what we are thinking or doing to cause our pain until we are willing to move out of denial regarding our inner distress. As long as we are in denial about our pain, we will not recognize that we have inner pain and may not be motivated to learn about it. Our denial is one of ways we are protecting against pain. We may not be willing to move out of denial until loving ourselves and others is more important than avoiding our pain.

Willingness means that you pay attention to physical sensations within your body. You cannot know if you are believing or behaving in ways that are hurting you if you are unwilling to feel what is going on within your body. Feelings of pain, anger, anxiety, hurt, fear, and loneliness are physical sensations that occur within body. When you numb your body with substances or shut out your inner experience with manipulations and activities, you cannot know what you are feeling.

We put ourselves on a new path toward our own wholeness when we become willing to feel our pain and learn from it.

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is best-selling author and co-author of eight books, including "Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By You?", "Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By My Kids?", "Healing Your Aloneness","Inner Bonding", and "Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By God?" Visit her web site for a FREE Inner Bonding course: http://www.innerbonding.com or mailto:margaret@innerbonding.com