Hi Ayal,

I'm writing to ask you if you could help me find out why I grind my teeth, and what I can do about it. I've tried hypnotherapy, chiropractic treatments, craniosacral, various mouth guards and none of those have helped. One channel suggested I sing to myself and now I sing all the time (it was fun suggestion) and that hasn't helped alleviate it either.

One thing I have noticed, when I take any herbs or medicines to relax before bed - it makes the grinding worse! Pretty strange, huh? It's almost like when you try to calm someone down and they get more upset, so maybe it's not that strange after all. Maybe my jaw is trying to tell me something, but what? Or is it just a physical condition that needs treatment that I need to stick with for a certain length of time?

I'm getting worried. I can deal with the pain and headaches, but I'm worried about the damage to my teeth and gums that's getting worse. I have a healthy mouth and want to keep it that way. I'm sure that particular worry doesn't help either!

Hi. An issue showed up for you called "Not caring for the self - anxiety." So, a couple of things to do for this:

1. Say this to yourself 4 times over the next 3 days, and then remind yourself of it as needed:

   TRUE RESPONSIBILITY IS THE ABILITY TO FULFILL MY NEEDS - AND TO DO SO IN A WAY THAT DOES NOT HARM MYSELF, OR DEPRIVE OTHERS OF THE ABILITY TO FULFILL THEIR NEEDS.  RESPONSIBILITY IS THE ABILITY TO BE WHO I AM IN MY FULLNESS.

   Then explore how well you believe this and are able to do this for yourself - that is, fulfill your own needs and be the most joyous, fulfilled person you can be. If you find blocks to that - explore those. Track who or what you allow to trigger inner disturbances or reactivity. Explore what that is all about for you.

2. You need to strengthen your nervous system - chiropractic is actually good for you for this, but releasing your anxiety and finding out what causes it is a key for you. It seems to be centered around your relationships with others.

3. Do what's called "frequent attacks of smiling through the eyes of the heart" - so... let your energy come forth from your heart as if you had eyes in your heart that are smiling. Focus on this throughout the day and during your interactions with others, or just allow it to come forth wherever you are, seeing or experiencing whatever you are seeing and experiencing.

4. You are needing to develop the attribute of forbearance - to learn to interact consciously with others, especially from this place of forbearance. Also you need to be able to release relationships that handicap your growth. In lieu of this, I invite you to say the following twice in the next 2 days:

   "I am open to receiving guidance about why I hold onto this relationship."

   Then, sit in meditation and be open to receiving that guidance, insight, and information. Go as deep as you can.

5. Release also, any hatred that you still carry around- is there someone you perceive to be an enemy or perceive as threatening toward you? If so, work to release your hatred and develop, as mentioned, the quality of deeper understanding and forbearance instead. And, this may also be a relationship you need to let go of.  What, in you, feels threatened by others? That's a key.

6. Explore what keeps you from caring for yourself - even when we think we are taking care of ourselves, by going to this chiropractor or that, etc., there can be a deeper, underlying issue of not feeling that you are worth being taken care of - that somewhere someone didn't take care of you as you needed, and this gets translated into the belief that you're not worth being taken care of. What happens then is that, on some level, you don't truly take care of yourself. (See the responsibility definition above).

   It may also mean that you still expect others to do this for you - that you wait for them and want for them to do it for you still, or you need for them to do it (since you never feel that you ever got it). And this causes your anxiety. But, in the deepest sense, that ability to love yourself and depend upon YOUR OWN love for yourself - to take good care of YOURSELF - to believe you're worth it  - isn't functioning as it needs to. So, there can be a sort of hole in there, or a sense of psychological collapse somewhere. When you pinpoint it, and feel it there, you can heal it.

Thank you so much for your time and energy and responding so quickly. I will try these suggestions. Most of it rings true, but I have questions on parts of #4 and #5.

#4 - I'm wondering what relationship this could be. The only relationship I really have is with my husband. And that one is really good. He's so wonderful and unconditional loving. A far cry from what I grew up with (absentee father and emotionally abusive mother). I don't have any close friends currently. Acquaintances at work, and in a shaman group, but no friends I can call or hang out with. I have a strained relationship with my mother's side of the family and a sporadic one with my father's.

As far as forbearance, I thought I had worked well with that. I try very hard not be like my mother (judgemental, critical, always looking at what's wrong). It's an inner battle I fight all the time to not be like that. Perhaps I need to try harder.

#5 - I thought I had release most of the hatred I had with my mother and her family. My mother's not like she used to be (at least it's not directed at me anymore).

The feeling threatened by others sounds partially true. Maybe that's why I don't have any friends and why others have told me in the past that I have walls, I'm weird, or not open. I've never understood that, because on the outside I'm friendly, funny, and can socialize fairly well. It's like there's this invisible wall that even I don't understand. To me it feels like nobody wants to be with me, and to others it seems like I have a wall.

I wrote to you once before and you encouraged me to have an Akashic reading. I did and she mentioned that I have one of the hardest life lessons a soul could come in with--and that's the concept of a deep sense of self-shame. That made perfect sense. It also goes along with your suggestion of needing self-care. Maybe the hatred isn't with someone else. Maybe it's within myself because I do feel that sometimes (not all the time). This inexplainable self-loathing where it would be o.k. for someone else to make the same mistake or behave a certain way, but for some reason inexcusable for myself.

Any additional thoughts are welcome. Thanks again.

I'm getting it's still with your mother, and the pattern that got in place from that. You've got about 26% more releasing of it to go. In order to incarnate into a family where your mother would be abusive, that would definitely point to the issues you mentioned... of you coming in to work out shame and self loathing. Good insight on that. When you hate yourself, you project that energy onto others, seeing in them what you hate about yourself. Then life always feels threatening.

The trick is to accept yourself, and love yourself for all the wonderful challenges you took on and for the courage you display as you go about your wonderful growing and journey of discovery. When you accept and realize that your mother and her family and your father are only actors in your play - that you came in to work out this issue of self hatred, how then can you hate them for doing what your soul asked them to do, in order for you to learn and grow? They could only be a mirror for you of your own energy, and they agreed to do this for and with you. So, when you take FULL responsibility for that, that this energy was within you and drew helpful mirrors to yourself, you can look at them with love and appreciation for showing you what you needed to heal in yourself. This then allowed you to choose another way of being - whether or not they got the same soul lesson, or grew, themselves.

When there is such a strong disconnect with one's family, that does point to issues of trust - trusting that you are worth loving. And, as it is so wonderfully set up, once we get that we ARE worth loving, we BECOME Love, and all of our external relationships change. We become like a beacon of light. Others are drawn to it. We see others through the eyes of Love - and that is all anyone wants, isn't it, or truly needs.

You don't need to struggle against anything - and you don't need to struggle within yourself. There is no struggle. There is only this wonderful journey of expansion and development we are on. All you need to do is OPEN. Struggling says there are 2 sides, or polarities to something, because you are struggling "AGAINST" something else. There is no something else. Where is God not? There is only God, or Divine Intelligence - call it what you will - everywhere. And, as I said above, if you see your mother and her family, and your father, as your teachers who came in to play a role for you and help you - what is there to struggle against? There is only GROWING more. Moving toward, not moving AGAINST. Whether that is inside yourself, or with others.

That struggling against is tar baby energy. And look what happened there. That story is one of the greatest teachings I know of, for the soul. What you resist, persists. We can't push anything away and think it will heal. It has to be folded into the energy of love. If you see life as struggling against an enemy, or an opposing force ( this may be what was meant by what came through earlier ) - well then, you will be at odds with others, on some deep, core level, true? That belief will permeate everything and all of your responses to others. People will feel it. And it will push others away because you think you need to do that to survive and protect yourself.

You are also saying if you struggle within yourself, that there is something bad and wrong about you - and this is the shame - this is why you keep yourself apart from others. You think you have to exorcise something from within you. You don't. You just have to lovingly put one thing down and gently take another thing up. Hmmmm, you say. Not this, but this. It's not about whipping ourselves for not being "perfect". It's about gaining compassion and loving and appreciating the journey. That is the wisdom and nobility and beauty of the feminine aspect. We love the journey. If we miss a stitch when we're knitting, we don't throw the thing down on the ground... if a child stumbles when it's learning to walk, we don't beat it...

When we have impatience with others or with ourselves, that's "power over" someone. This lifetime, you are here to, among other things, develop your ability to honor yourself - to gain, in this way, personal power. Not power over anyone or anything - but the true power of the true self. It's a very deep and gentle thing. It's the energy of a smile in the eyes.  Soft eyes. Open, infinite heart.

The noble feminine, which you probably came in to develop and unfold, has patience and forbearance because we treasure THE PROCESS - it's fun to knit - it's fun to watch a child learning to walk - it's all ok and everything will unfold just as it's supposed to in its own, perfect timing. That's where that old saying comes from - a watched pot never boils... we can't force a seed to grow faster then its own divine Plan has set up. But we can sure as heck see the beauty in the process and be amazed by it. We surrender our own egotistical will that says something should happen when I say or think it must happen! We relax, and we surrender to trusting it all - and then we float down the river.

Blessings, Ayal

462. "I can't move forward on anything long enough or far enough to succeed"