There’s no way to avoid it – running our own business is one of the most powerful medicine paths we can choose.

It’s important to remember this at all times, to avoid destructive magical thinking that kills us on both ends of the spectrum:

… The voice that tells us we should immediately succeed without doing the deep work, and that we’ve failed when we don’t get the same results as the seasoned pros.

… The voice that tells us we have evidence that we’ll never reach our goals, and we should just give up and return to a 9-5.

My favorite remedy to this common trap is to strategically start feeling successful now.

Begin by picking goals you can’t possibly fail at.

Want to fill an entire program?

—> Set a goal to get one lead today.

Trying to set up a funnel so full of complex moving parts that it would make Einstein sweat?

—> Set a goal to write your headline in an hour.

Then celebrate your successes shamelessly and with zero discernment.

Someone clicked your ad and didn’t sign up to speak with you? You got engagement!

Stared blankly at your screen and wrote 10 headlines you don’t like? You just eliminated 10 options!

By relishing the small wins, we slowly but surely cultivate the grounded confidence we need to take the next step.

Our expectations of success grow with each small victory.

There’s a great saying that humans tend to overestimate what we can achieve in a few months and underestimate what we can achieve in a year.

Baby step by baby step, we can wake up a year from now and be astounded by our achievements.

The post A cure for entrepreneurial doubt and magical thinking appeared first on Visionary Readings.

Taking responsibility says, “I see my part in this, and I know how to create a more desirable result next time.”

This is empowerment.

Self blame says, “I screwed up and I’m going to punish myself for it.”

This is disempowering.

It leads to guilt, hiding, and bottled up emotions that make us feel stuck.

Self blame is actually just a defense mechanism to avoid facing the truth about our role in something, because our subconscious thinks it’s going to be too painful.

But this is a lie that keeps us trapped in a cycle of shame.

The truth is that facing it might hurt for a second, but it’s actually a huge relief to give up the burden we’ve been carrying.

Acknowledging our part in what happened is exactly what’s needed to create a better outcome.

Sometimes our part may simply be that we put up with a terrible situation for way too long, because we didn’t know how to leave, or that we deserved better.

Taking responsibility doesn’t always mean that we forgive someone or welcome them back into our lives.

It does mean taking back the power to create our own life by making different choices.

When we have “messed up,” we know exactly how to improve – if we can understand what we did, without defaulting to self blame.

Self responsibility is a powerful form of self love.

The post Taking responsibility vs. blaming ourself appeared first on Visionary Readings.

I truly honor all of us who have had to go through some seriously traumatic experiences.

And I do NOT ever recommend giving anyone unsolicited opinions about their own karma. (Really, it’s a terrible idea!)

And yet, if karma is one of our lenses into truth… into what’s so… into capital “R” Reality… does it really empower us to jettison it so we can feel better?

I actually don’t think it’s empowering or makes us feel good to imagine that none of our actions have any effect.

By rejecting the concept of karma we are literally saying, “I don’t believe in cause and effect.”

We are saying, “My actions have no fruit.”

We are saying, “It does not matter what I think or do today, I will die and be reborn and none of my spiritual development, transformation or effort will accompany me.”

In rejecting the notion that our NEGATIVE energy will follow us, we throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater because none of our POSITIVE energy would be able to come either.

We can’t have it both ways.

Either life is a meaningless, temporary adventure that ends when we die, or we are eternal beings who carry with us memories, imprints and soul trajectories.

As someone who reads Vedic Astrology charts (aka karma maps) all day long, and has the trippy experience of being able to accurately name what happened to someone in the past, with only a birth time to go off of, I can personally say: I believe we have a destiny.

I can see that there are predictable events that happen to us throughout our lives.

I can see that they aren’t always things we caused in this lifetime.

And I feel empowered by the idea that the choices I make today – the seeds that I plant – can ripple out into my life, other people’s lives, and future lifetimes.

I can’t tell you how many times an astrology client of mine has felt deep relief in knowing that a traumatic event was predestined from previous lifetimes.

That it wasn’t their fault.

That they couldn’t have changed anything.

That the karma has been done and that event is now in the past.

They feel validated, emboldened and renewed — not shamed, blamed or shut down.

Karma doesn’t mean “an eye for an eye.”

It doesn’t mean that if we were violated, we must have done the exact same thing to that person (or someone else).

It just means that we were somehow involved in causing another’s pain, and that this energy is returning to us to be completed.

It means there is an opportunity to close the loop, complete the circuit, and heal… forever.

To me, this knowledge is a profound gift of true seeing, not one to be tossed in the trash as a self protection mechanism.

I will never stop talking about karma, because it’s my lens into Truth, so please know that if you continue to follow me, that’s what will continue to flow through me.

And next time someone admonishes you for using the word karma to understand life, perhaps this explanation will help.

And yet, we should never weaponize karma or talk about it lightly. It’s serious business that causes people to feel all sorts of things, and by throwing it around carelessly, we will create more of our own negative karma.

I recommend discussing other people’s specific karma only in a formal, permission based container like a Vedic Astrology reading or other type of professionally guided session, in our domain of expertise.

The post Is talking about karma “victim blaming?” appeared first on Visionary Readings.

“I am going to hire someone to do my sales and marketing because my personality type isn’t good at that stuff.”

“I’ve got too much Feminine energy to be doing these Masculine energy parts of my business…”

How many times have I heard women entrepreneurs uttering these sentences over the years? And how many times have I entertained these ideas for myself?

So many women who are just starting out in business are thinking some version of, “I just wish I could have someone do that hard/boring part for me.” (Which is usually only optimal for a later stage business – more on that later).

I call this “White Knight syndrome,” because it’s as though they want a White Knight to ride in on his White horse and rescue them from having to go through the birth canal of truly braving it as an entrepreneur.

This is problematic for SO MANY REASONS, but here are a few big ones.

1) The role it puts these women in is “Damsel In Distress,” which is simply not the archetype of a successful business owner. The energy that needs to be embodied is “Badass Warrior” or “Magical Manifesting Priestess,” and the transformation into this version of ourselves IS the evolutionary journey of entrepreneurship. We need to experience the birth process and that involves some labor. The frustrations, struggles and massive amounts of discomfort are priceless learning opportunities. If we outsource this, we stay the same, and we will not expand our capacity to receive. And anyway, this imaginary White Knight doesn’t exist (see #2), so we may get stuck in a holding pattern and never truly live our purpose.

2) Our soul business is like a snowflake. No one has ever done it like we will, because it is birthed from the depths of our hearts. Only we know exactly how to make it work. Even if we imitate someone who appears to be succeeding at the exact same game, it will not be the same for us, because of the subtle component that is particularly present for those who identify primarily with Feminine Energy and want to attract those clients.

I have days and days of ridiculous stories from my Vedic Astrology practice about implementing proven marketing strategies that would never work for me, and fly-in-the-face-of-marketing-wisdom things that consistently attract people to me. I have spent *thousands* of dollars over the years, trying to get experts to tell me how to do it, and not one of those dollars translated into a client.

It is so incredibly tempting, when we feel lost, overwhelmed and scared, to reach for an authoritative Masculine person to tell us what to do or actually do things for us. This is the Shadow Feminine at work. But we are simply outsourcing our confidence and wisdom. Of course we absolutely need coaches and mentors, but these people will inadvertently lead us astray if:

a) we don’t hire them from a sense of deep alignment in our hearts and do it from fear or scarcity instead or

b) they are not consistently advising us to check in with our hearts to find our deepest truth and operate from that place, and are instead telling us what they know will work for us. (Spoiler alert – hiring this person can be a very expensive mistake!)

At the end of the day, we know best, and it’s just a matter of trusting ourselves, being willing to “fail” and learn and iterate, and using our inner guidance to choose which outside information to welcome in.

3) Once we’ve gotten things working to a certain point in our business, where we understand how it all works and what’s really involved, delegation is wonderful. We can focus on our zone of genius. But if we don’t learn about all these pieces ourselves, we risk becoming completely dependent on our partner/staff etc. What if they need to leave us? What happens then? If we don’t at least understand all parts of our business, it’s ultimately disempowering.

In reality, running a business completely in our feminine isn’t actually ideal (and the inverse is true too!) We need to balance our masculine and feminine energies inside because both are needed.

A friend of mine once suggested having weekly meetings with my inner masculine to plan out the week and give it structure so my inner feminine could have more space to play. I find this practice very helpful and highly recommend it to anyone who feels any resistance being in their masculine energy.

I hope that this is useful for any budding female or feminine-energy-dominant entrepreneurs! We are truly the ones we’ve been waiting for.

💖🌟🧜🏻‍♀️

The post The Shadow Feminine In Entrepreneurship and the Dangers of the White Knight Fantasy appeared first on Visionary Readings.

While these creations do not have self awareness, they do transmit our consciousness anytime someone interacts with them. They are doling out energy on our behalf, even if we are not aware of it.

This means that our creations can create karma for us, since karma is created in both the energy we put out, but also the response that we generate.

If someone develops anger toward us because of our photos, those photos are creating a karmic bond between us and that person, whether we know it or not, or whether or not it is reasonable for them to feel that way.

Because of this, in many ancient spiritual traditions, fame is often regarded as more of a curse than a blessing.

All sorts of people put their attention on celebrities, and in all kinds of ways. One may be an adoring fan, but another may be obsessive or be projecting unwanted energy. No personal interactions are necessary to create these energetic bonds.

Most people aren’t equipped or trained to handle this much energy coming at them and it takes an accomplished yogi or shaman to transmute and channel it in a good way (an ability that was most likely acquired via diligent practice in many past lives).

The energy of other people’s thoughts about us is powerful, en masse, and can knock us off balance if we aren’t prepared.

This is why so many famous people fall apart and wind up having extremely challenging lives, despite their success and appearance of “having it all” from the outside.

We now live in a world where social media is King, and we are all aspiring celebrities in our own hall of mirrors.

There are no longer any geographical barriers to limit the number of people we enmesh with, and the amount of karma we can create in one lifetime is practically infinite.

We are in a cultural fishbowl where we don’t realize how embedded this desire to be seen is becoming in each of us. To be seen by as many people as possible is now entwined with our very survival. This will only deepen as time goes on.

The archetype that represents this new, barely-understood world is Rahu.

Rahu is the ever-moving point where the orbital path of the Sun and the Moon intersect, and is a key player in eclipses.

Rahu is a Hungry Ghost who always wants more but never feels satisfied. Rahu represents compulsive ambition, self-serving fame, ingenuity, imposters, subterfuge, unsolvable riddles, and things that are simply not what they seem.

The United States is in a Rahu “chapter” for the next 15 years and our President is basically the human embodiment of Rahu. We don’t have the birth time of this iteration of Humanity, but it seems we are collectively in a Rahu period as the epidemic of compulsively desiring fame is global.

So what do we do with this realization?

We stay awake, grounded and aware.

We tune into the frequencies of gratitude and anonymous service.

We surround ourselves with wise beings who can give us accurate and personal reflections.

We carefully consider what we are putting out there online and take time to understand and prepare for what it means to be seen and judged by many.

This doesn’t mean we should hide in a cave- we are inherently creative beings, and life is meant to be lived – but with this awareness, we can consciously choose what energies we are inviting into our field and the level we wish to play at.

The post Fame, Social Media and Karma appeared first on Visionary Readings.

I paused for a moment. Wouldn’t it be amazing if I could do whatever I wanted all the time, and have unlimited income?

This is a seductive and universally appealing vision. There are actually a few people out there who have apparently achieved this, which makes it seem even more desirable. (And they are probably inviting you into a very expensive mastermind so you can have the same results!)

But, upon further reflection, I realized that I didn’t want that at all. Here’s why.

Effort creates value. Creating anything of value requires that we apply consistent effort over time. This is simply how reality works.

When was the last time you created something of great value to others with minimal effort? (Don’t forget to count all the years you spent honing your craft or building your network).

But what about the people who seem to have money pouring down on them like a monsoon — while they go to the spa?

In those cases, one of these things is true:

A) This person does a ton of diligent work they haven’t told you about, yet posted a spa photo on social media accompanied by a quote about the ease of abundance.

B ) This person put the effort in during past lives and is now reaping the rewards.

Either way, we wind up comparing ourselves to these people without having all the data on how they created their abundance.

This matters, because life is truly about putting in the effort to alleviate the suffering of others, and giving more than we take. This is a key on the path to freedom.

When we receive the fruits of past life efforts, what we do with those rewards defines whether we are following our Dharma or just wasting good karma.

Despite what much of the internet marketing and feminine empowerment teachings tell us, life is not, in fact, about conspicuous consumption or the endless pursuit of pleasure (for its own sake).

Leading a coaching mastermind to coach other coaches to coach coaches and telling others that they should just believe they can have it too by posting to Instagram, and that their dream of constant, pleasurable indulgence will come easily, while everyone sips champagne on a boat in Italy — that’s simply not a value add.

All this does is drain the karmic bank account of hard-won, supportive energy. It’s a waste, because that energy could be used to help others who are truly suffering, which is how the coffers seem to get refilled.

Imagine that, in 1000 past lives, someone did diligent and grueling daily practices to increase their Shakti and their capacity to affect the world, and then in 2018, used it all up to blog about being rich.

This is what’s likely happening for certain people right now

In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter if we are Donald Trump or Mother Theresa – life is infinite, and will sort itself out.

But here we are, playing the game of life here in space and time – so how do we really want to do it?

If we want a fulfilled life where we feel in integrity with ourselves as humans, then easy is not the goal. Money is not the goal.

Value, service, contribution, beauty, truth, freedom, evolution – these are the kind of goals that are worth living for.

True pleasure, happiness, abundance and enjoyment are side effects of these things.

I’ve spent the last 18 months co-building a business and it’s been anything but easy. Exhilerating, fascinating, deeply fulfilling and extremely challenging – yes, but easy, no – and I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

I’ve grown and learned through the challenges and struggles it has brought me. I’ve created value though my effort. I’m a part of something that truly helps people.

The process of birthing, whether enjoyable or painful, is a challenge because it’s meant to transform who we are at the core into a mother.

There is a reason why it allegedly takes 10,000 hours of applied effort to become an expert in anything.

Anyone can hang a shingle online declaring they are an expert at something, but… are they really?

Who do we really want to learn from?

So the next time someone tries to seductively sell you on the dream of “something for nothing,” I recommend walking away, because this person fundamentally misunderstands reality.

There is no such thing. We are always either giving or consuming, with every breath we take (not even our breath is free!)

Choose wisely!

~ Artwork by Paul Bond Art ~

The post Wasting Good Karma: The Seductive Myth Of Getting Something For Nothing (e.g. Millennial Wantrepreneurs on Instagram, MLM’s, And Coaching Masterminds) appeared first on Visionary Readings.

This concept, like many others, has been twisted and adulterated by people who haven’t taken the time to understand its true meaning (see also: Mercury Retrograde, the Facebook Algorithm, a lot of Westernized Yoga).

However, underneath this hippie drivel is a profound truth that is worth exploring.

Love and light are, in fact, the key. It’s just not as easy as it sounds.

Our healing and evolution happen when we expand our capacity to receive more energy, more light and more love. Darkness can’t survive the light.

It might seem like we are curing ailments and fixing things that are broken, but at the end of the day, any true path is increasing the flow of pure energy through our entire system.

This sounds enjoyable in theory, but is an incredibly uncomfortable experience.

Love is anything but comfortable.

We experience breakthroughs to the extent that we can withstand the excruciating agony of being loved and lit up more than we’ve known before.

When we hit the edge of how much we can take, and lean into it, we grow.

Sometimes we encounter the discomfort and turn back, because the love seems unbearable.

For example, being seen and loved by a partner – more than we ever were growing up – can trigger subconscious panic, and patterns of self sabotage, and some may even pick a fight, stray, or leave.

It is much easier to continue feeling unloved than it is to be fully loved.

Or when we encounter new levels of success in our career, it can be so unfamiliar that we may unconsciously hold ourselves back and return to our former level of comfort. It’s easier to perpetuate failure than to truly accept a win.

Perhaps we’ve gotten so identified with being sick that being well doesn’t resonate with us anymore. It is very easy to get to this place, and no cure can touch us in this state.

We have to get used to the experience of the love and the light in order to move forward.

It’s simple but it’s not easy.

The best healing modalities are the ones that serve us in this way. They push us to the limits of how good it can get (though it may not occur as good in the moment!), and then hold us through the process of rewiring our systems to normalize this new level of wellness and joy.

Anything else should be closely examined as it is potentially just holding us back.

Telling someone to “let in more love and light” or just see that “we are all One” is completely ridiculous, however.

It takes a heroic amount of courage, strength, and the right support to grow in this way.

It usually begins with Love pushing us off a cliff to take a deep dive into the darkness so we can arrive at a place where we perceive expansion.

This is not for the faint of heart…

But it is so worth it.

(Visionary art by: Manzel Bowman)

The post The True Meaning Of “Love And Light” – Reclaiming The Concept From Spiritual Bypassers appeared first on Visionary Readings.

For the sake of this post, I’m defining addiction as anything we consistently choose instead of feeling uncomfortable, even if it’s not good for us in the long term.

Over the years, I’ve noticed a particular relationship between addiction and life purpose that I’ve found very helpful for myself, and my clients who want to end their addictive behavior and find deeper fulfillment.

I’ve noticed that addictions flare up when we are out of alignment in a key area of our life, and not living in integrity with our truth.

Rather than feel the profound pain of self-deception, many of us reach for a temporary pacifier.

The bigger the chasm between our heart’s clear knowing and our choices, the more we suffer anxiety, depression, and anger, and the more we are tempted to seek relief.

But relief is the antidote of alignment.

Relief is a cover up.

The longer we rest in relief, the further we drift from our true selves because we can’t feel our deepest truth.

The only way to align with our inner compass is to sit in the discomfort.

If we constantly tolerate having addictions, we are accepting an early, living death. We may still be breathing but we are not truly alive. We are going through the motions.

This is because addictions rob us of our joy, vitality and creativity by giving us a quick hit of contentment (or the drama of fighting the addiction) instead of allowing us to see what’s really so and change accordingly. They are an elaborate distraction.

The real cure for addiction is to feel the pain of self denial, of half-living, of thwarted self expression, so we can be adequately motivated to take the heroic steps necessary to get into alignment with our dharma, our true purpose.

The genuine fulfillment available to us when we are in the flow of our dharma is so deeply satisfying that the desire to self medicate with life’s various “junk foods” falls away.

This is why living in full alignment with our own truth can completely cure us of our addictions.

(And for things that are physically addictive or hard wired into our nervous systems, there are myriad modalities to help with that piece).

It’s simple but it’s not easy.

Humans won’t change unless the change appears easier than staying the same.

Most of the time it seems harder to change, so we don’t end that relationship, quit that job, start that business or pursue our passion, because it’s scary and unknown.

We also don’t easily give up our comfortable, addictive behavior for this same reason.

But if we can stop the behavior just long enough to sit in our daily suffering and allow the agitation to eat away our lies, change suddenly seems easier and we find the strength and courage to take that big leap forward, to dive off the familiar cliff into the abyss of the unknown, where all the magic lives.

This is the difference between having a life we are in love with instead of a life we are surviving. It is not a path for the faint of heart but it is worth it.

The post The Hidden Relationship Between Addiction And Alignment appeared first on Visionary Readings.

When there’s an apparent problem in our lives, especially around health, love or money, most of us employ one of two strategies:

1. Denial: “What problem? Everything is fine!” The issues with this approach are evident.

2. Pathologizing: “I have candida!” “I’m codependent!” “I have money blocks!” The issues with this strategy are harder to spot.

In this second strategy, the problem can seem really BIG and overwhelming, as though it’s going to take years and a Herculean effort to solve. (Please note that I am only speaking about these cases here).

It can feel comforting to label the issue so we know what we are up against, but if the measures apparently required to solve it are drastic, it’s a red flag that there is a distortion in our perception.

By labeling a problem and identifying the solution, we perceive that we are back in control of a situation that had us feel helpless.

Now we can focus on the solution, but in turning our attention to an unending, all- consuming solution, we stop feeling the pain of the problem, and mainly feel the busy-ness of trying to fix or heal it.

This can look like endless cleansing, coaching, reading, advice-seeking, healing sessions, and talking about the issue.

We may have small wins but the problem never seems to go away. We are caught in our very own victim-perpetrator-rescuer drama where we are the victim, the problem is the perpetrator, and the solution is the rescuer.

This can be a destructive loop and it rarely works.

Until we can sit with the discomfort of the problem long enough to arrive at true clarity, we are probably just trying to avoid feeling our pain, which is what will actually have us feel better. Feeling in control of the problem is a poor substitute for fully experiencing the problem.

The pain likely isn’t even what we think it is. I’ve had back pain that was about a relationship that needed to end, and I’ve had money issues that were about my ability to have fun. And I’ve had candida that was actually caused by stress, and exacerbated by cleansing,

Every time I went down the road of trying to fix the problem, I dug myself deeper and deeper into an expensive, time consuming, bottomless pit of needing to do more and more to feel ok.

When I finally stopped and felt the helplessness, the lack of control, i.e. the real, underlying issue, the thing I was in the most denial about and was unconsciously avoiding like the plague, surfaced naturally.

It was always a situation where I knew I needed to change something big in my life but was terrified to do so.

It didn’t require years of healing, it required massive courage, faith, and a willingness to relinquish a piece of my identity I had been gripping tightly.

This was never an easy task, but it was always simple.

What actually worked for me was to make a heartfelt prayer for help and to be well.

What I’ve learned through observing myself and others is that once we’ve glimpsed the true problem and make a deeply aligned prayer about it, we are probably less than a year away from a surprising resolution (though it’s rarely what we think the solution should be…)

Massive transformation is way easier than we imagine it will be. The fact that we even have a particular prayer means that it’s already answered, or we wouldn’t truly have it. We just don’t know how or when.

The key is to avoid the “fix me, I’m broken” paradigm, because we could get stuck there for an unnecessarily long time.

One way out of this cycle is to celebrate small wins and notice the ways we are always one breath away from freedom.

If we turn our attention to the real ways we are getting braver, stronger and wiser, even feeling into the most minor victories can accelerate the manifestation of our prayer, because we begin to cultivate the necessary faith that it will be answered in the best way possible.

This is why feeling our feelings and celebrating our progress are the keys to shaping our reality, to the extent that our free will allows it. (Sometimes we are just on Destiny’s ride and get to inhabit the medicine of surrender, but the same approach is equally effective!)

Some practitioners and healers will deny this truth, insist on giving us and our issue a powerful label, and declare that it will take years of diligent effort to resolve.

I say, do not listen to these people, for they are confused, and complicating reality. They have likely built up a belief structure around this problem that supports their own identity. We do not need to take that on.

I suggest we look deeper. Get honest with ourselves. Feel our hearts. Make a prayer. Cultivate faith. Celebrate. Surrender.

If we focus on the truth, the truth will inevitably emerge.

The post The Problem With Focusing On The Problem appeared first on Visionary Readings.

When the Moon is waning, especially in the second week, she rises in the middle of the night, so most of us are asleep during the hours when the moonlight is visible. This makes it feel like the Moon is dark for much longer than a couple of days.

I’m always relieved when the Moon becomes totally dark, because I know the light is finally returning to the night sky, and that my own energy is about to get brighter. I feel delight when the crescent Moon is first visible near the horizon just after Sunset when the waxing cycle begins.

Some of us are more deeply affected by the lunar cycles than others, depending on the Moon’s location in our birth chart.

I’ve found that tracking the cycles of the Moon has made it much easier to predict my own energy flow. My energy is inward and darker during the last week of the waning moon, and more outward and optimistic as soon as the waxing cycle begins.

Once I began observing this, by intentionally viewing the Moon and taking the moonlight in through my eyes, my physical Moon cycle became perfectly aligned with the actual Moon, making my energy even more predictable. (This is also true when I sleep near a window where the moonlight is visible).

The Spring equinox is in just a few days which means the most intense phase of the waxing Sun is also from now until Solstice. The waxing Sun/waxing Moon weeks are my favorite time of year because this is when we experience the most light overall. I’m celebrating the beginning of these precious 3 months of abundant light!

>>> Visionary Art By R. Blume <<<

The post It’s Always Darkest Before Dawn appeared first on Visionary Readings.