Summer Takeaways & Stepping Away From Labels

I just finished eight straight weeks of eight-hour days of coaching volleyball. Before I started this summer I was nervous that I would “lose” my strong connection to Spirit because I would only have enough energy to coach every day. How silly. One of the biggest lessons I’ve ever lived through has been the idea that our spirituality is best expressed through truly just living our life. Living our mundane lives in the boldest and bravest way possible. We could also get into what “spirituality” really even means. If you want more of my thoughts, you might enjoy reading my blog post “Do We Need To Redefine Spirituality?” To save you a few extra minutes of reading I’ll share one of my biggest takeaways from that piece of writing. “To me, spirituality means two things. One, a deeper connection with yourself. Two, a deeper connection with a higher source. What you choose to label these connections is entirely up to you. How you explore those two connections is entirely up to you.” To make things easier I will continue to refer to what I channel as “Spirit” and will continue to use the label ‘spirituality’ for the sake of simplicity but please know that by spirituality all I mean is connection and by Spirit all I mean is energy. Maybe one day I’ll have better terms for all of this.

 If you’ve ever had a conversation about spirituality with me you would know that I am not the biggest fan of labels. If you’ve had many conversations with me about spirituality you have probably given me a few eye rolls when I jump on my labels soapbox once again. I appreciate their utility in communicating what I need to communicate (aka see above paragraph). However, they have always felt limiting to me. As I mentioned in the blog post linked above, I did not grow up religious or spiritual. I was essentially a blank slate when I started to become consciously aware that I could channel energy, effectively communicate that energy, and that (much to my amazement) the information I brought through was extremely clear and accurate.

 I used to think that this blank slate was a disadvantage. It seemed like everyone around me knew everything there is to know about spirituality. How crystals worked, how to read tarot, what a fucking birth chart was. I didn’t know anything. For a while, I was interested in learning as much as I possibly could but as my own individual connection and trust grew stronger I started to lose the urge to know and understand everything. It actually became almost suffocating to hear about all of the things I should be doing or I could be doing in the spiritual space. That pressure to do it all to be worthy of your spiritual practice is what I affectionately call a spiritual chore chart.

 When I started to recognize that I wanted to build a career based on this connection I have, I felt the need to adopt the labels that other people in the space were using. I had a lot of anxiety about communicating what I did to people. I was a highly rational person who had always considered myself responsible, academic, and intelligent. This “new” ability, or more so awareness about this natural inclination seemed to threaten that view of myself. For a long time, I thought that my difficulty in explaining what I did stemmed from a deep insecurity within myself that what I was doing wasn’t “legitimate” work. I think that was part of it, but I also believe that some other big things were going on.

 As I continued to explore my relationship with energy it continued to grow as I experienced things I didn’t even understand. I was channeling energy that did not feel the same as the departed loved ones I was used to communicating with. This excited me and also scared the absolute shit out of me. Not in the way where I was fearful of the energy I was channeling, more so in a way where I was anxious about knowing how to communicate that I was receiving this information.

 One big thing I learned through that incredibly uncomfortable trial and error period was that it’s all the same. Truly. It may be different expressions, different modalities, different ways of communicating, but at the end of the day, it’s all just energy. The same thing with channeling,  a lot of people feel very strongly that types of energy channeled should be separated. For example, mediumship is different than psychic messages. I started to realize this when I would channel pages for the collective (meaning information for our collective experience, not for an individual) and that the next week I would hear astrologers say close to the same information for the collective based on what the planets were doing. It was affirming in a way and it’s when I started to undo my belief that information was coming from two different “places” and started to realize that it was the same pool of information but it is reaching people’s ears in ways that align with them.

 I am not the type of channeler who needs to know exactly “who” and “what” they are channeling. I’ve been told by incredibly successful mediums that this is the “wrong” way to approach this work and that this viewpoint is quite dangerous. I call BS. When I channel energy sometimes it is very clear to me where it’s coming from, for example, it being someone’s departed loved one. Sometimes it’s not so clear to me and all that I know is that while I am channeling information it is a LOT of energy to maintain. I set clear boundaries that any energy that comes through me must come from the highest source and good intentions but choose not to limit what information can come through. I always say that there is no information that is off-limits to me unless it’s supposed to be (there is some information that I don’t believe humans are meant to know) or it’s out of my frame of reference. Most of the time I walk away from these sessions after writing pages and pages of information.

 It’s weird to have a large population of people admire you for the connection you have, sometimes to a point where they would trust your channeled information over any sort of self-trust and knowledge of their own. There’s another large part of the population of people who think what I do is fake. Both are natural to think but neither is true, it’s a strange spot to be in.

 From a business/marketing perspective, it seems it is somewhat necessary to have a label so that potential clients can understand what I do, which I understand and have spent a long time thinking about. There is also another side of my belief system that believes that everyone can connect to the energy in their unique way. The third point in this thought process of mine is how to balance the two things mentioned above while also accepting and acknowledging that I have a strong natural ability to do this work and to not belittle this powerful aspect of myself. Whoever said balance is a myth- I’m right there with ya.

 Earlier this year I reconnected with my friend Nate, a high school friend with whom I had been out of touch for a few years. Nate has been one of the most affirming souls I have ever been blessed to know (Nate told me once that I was an affirming soul for him and I am fully stealing this phrase because that’s the best way to describe it). I had never truly felt seen and understood with my viewpoint of the world and he seemed to just understand what I was trying to communicate instantly. My friendship with him has catapulted my relationship with Spirit in a way that was honestly a bit overwhelming. We push each other and our belief systems constantly, and I know that we reconnected at the moment we did because it was pivotal for our growth. It was around that time that I started to recognize that it was no longer necessary for me to wait to have the conversations like the one I’m having with you right now. There is no amount of followers, or clients, or recognition, etc, that is needed to challenge old belief systems. The past few months I’ve felt almost paralyzed and exhausted from speaking about spirituality because I wasn’t communicating what I needed to.

 I am just now beginning to enter into the stage where I am confident enough to own that I am quite good at what I do. I am powerful and can channel and manage an incredible amount of energy. This is true, but it is also true that you are powerful in your unique way. As we continue to be more aware of energy as a collective I believe that our labels will naturally dissolve as there will no longer be a need. We will just be incredibly intelligent souls, living a human experience, with the knowledge and awareness to trust our intuition and express our superpowers through this life.

 I guess all of this is to say that I just want to be Makena. This work does not consume my life, and I don’t want it to. It doesn’t consume my life because it’s just part of who I am. It naturally bleeds in and out of my experience (as it most likely does yours, even if you’re not aware of it). Although it never leaves me completely, which I am grateful for, there are moments in my life where I don’t even think twice about what I do. Sometimes I even forget, much of the time to my friend’s amusement, when I am surprised that I said I felt like something would happen and it did. I am excited for a world where we all accept our natural aspects of ourselves (whatever that may look like). I’m excited for the day when people know me and my work without having to utter the word psychic, or even medium to be honest. I am excited to just be Makena, the girl that shows up for the people she loves, reads good books, climbs a few mountains, teaches people that their spirituality is theirs, cries maybe a tad too much, and channels some profound energy.