If your inbox is anything like mine, it’s probably awash with people inviting you on mastery courses and workshops, virtual or otherwise. There’ll be 10 day cleanses and spiritual retreats pouring out of the sky, not to mention invitations from friends and acquaintances offering their latest program, seeking your validation in the form of an instant sign up. There may have been a stage when you dived into all this, and probably spent a fortune (and a lot of time), exploring other people’s methods.

Once you start to crystallise, you notice how your interest in these things starts to wane. Whilst you want to root for your friends and keep up with people’s newsletters, being more than happy to keep the expansive dialogue with such people alive, your desire to “sign up” and even pay for other people’s know-how will probably reach an all-time low (in fact paying for information will seem to become a particular “rub” for reasons that, at first, defeat you). Your “old” head might even question this, thinking you’re losing your self-improvement grip; or you may panic that a side-effect of becoming more embodied lately is that you no longer seem to be interested in “spirituality”, which used to be your biggest passion.

That’s probably not true; it’s just that you are becoming your own master now…and owning it. There’s a hand-over of the reins to your own innate knowing on almost every subject there is and this isn’t arrogance or foolhardiness so much as a tipping of the balance. We’ve spent our whole lives seeking information from outside of ourselves and now, we realise, we have direct access to everything we need for our own particular dharma. We might not know everything but that’s because it’s not our path to do so; however we know what we need to know in the very moment that we need to know that thing, and we can hear that information clearer when we’re not trying to pick it up in a room full of other people talking.

Like we used to meditate to gain our cosmic oversight, we now check in with this all the time and, when we need to go in deeper, we can just stop for a short time and will find all the signposts we need. We find, in any case, that when something from outside resonates, it’s because we knew that already, at some level (perhaps not admitted to ourselves until somebody else pointed it out…which gave us the confidence to believe ourself, only now we feel annoyed that they said it first…) In fact, if you’re noticing this degree of annoyance with other people’s teachings, rather than judging yourself for being snarky or jealous of others, look to the real reason for this annoyance; being that you were annoyed at your own lapse in self-belief.

If paying for what another person has to offer you becomes a particular “rub”; or if you feel as though you gave as much to them as they gave to you during the interaction, making the additional money transaction feel distasteful or unfair, then you have reached this point in your crystallisation process. In my case, I began to notice how therapists would  often start writing down notes from the information I was sharing or even experiencing monumental personal breakthroughs, crying, releasing, expressing such gratitude for the effect I had had and so eager for me to come again etc., catalysed by our two-way interaction…which then made the writing of a cheque at the end seem terribly wrong somehow because it left things unbalanced. It occured so many times, with healers of different disciplines, that I’ve often thought about writing a post called “Are you healing your healer?” I sometimes came away feeling as though they had needed to see me more than I needed to see them, feeling guilty if I postponed or cancelled the next session, or like it was (for me) a friendship rather than a service…however, one that I was having to pay for, which is not a good feeling. If this is you, its time for you to consider that you already had what that person was offering to you and it was lack of confidence that sent you off to see them, not an actual requirement for more external guidance. Your annoyance is that you failed to realise this before signing up to yet another superfluous source of information. You submitted to the imbalance that has been playing out between you and that other person that you’ve been paying twice, if that is what has been happening, and this is what has truly got your goat!

There’s a phrase that’s rung out loud and true for me for such a long time – ”take what resonates, leave the rest”.

When you haven’t invested in material (as in, bought into a program, paid to receive a certain method or subscribed to a particular school of thought) you remain much more at liberty to do this, since the act of investment is more powerful than we give credit. “Signing-up” (the phrase that is liberally bandied around wherever there is self-improvement merchandise to be had) is an energetic contract committing us to a particular point of view. Then we start to get into the territory of internal struggle when what someone is telling us doesn’t resonate or, you could say, ring our truth bell, yet (because we signed-up or paid money) we still make ourselves hear it out, give it lip service or many more chances than it deserves to prove to us that we need it, overriding our own (often quite instant and compelling) misgivings. I should add, that’s not because its “wrong” per se but that its wrong for us, in this moment, which is all that matters and we should listen. It might even be that we agree with every word…but that it offers nothing that we don’t already know, so we could have done all this work without signing up, which we feel bad about admitting to ourselves; yet, in some way, we feel held back or slowed down by going over this old material again…and we know it. Yet we feel like a failure or a drop-out if we consider walking away and so we judge ourselves before we negate the thing that didn’t ring true (such is our self-doubt entrainment).

This is where we start to feel much worse, rather than better, for the engagement and this happens more and more as we crystallise, which is bewildering at first; like taking a backward step. It’s why remaining a free agent, sampling many things with a wide-open mind, is the way forwards but, most of all, taking heed from our “inner knowing”, since this is a fully balanced head-and-heart collaboration from now on. Like a giant beanstalk, we also need plenty of space to grow…since the sky is the limit and we are not all in the same corner of the garden, with a one-size fits all patch of earth. Just because you relate to bits of what someone is saying and have quite a lot in common doesn’t mean you are breaking through boundaries into new paradigms at the same rate. We each have pur own unique dharma to fulfill and nothing should limit, divert or slow down the one we are starting to reveal to ourselves.

So whether this is a therapist you’ve been seeing, a Facebook group you belong to, a so-called  “mastery” course, a regular energy “forecast” or an eating program, the advice is the same…feel into it and trust yourself above anything (or anyone) else. If it truly doesn’t resonate, without having to over-analyse why, consider discontinuing or cancelling the subscription (cleaning up obsolete memberships is just so important, at the energetic level, as these entanglements continue to assert a sway while we remain connected). As you get better at this, you realise that you are always free to take what resonates and leave the rest (nobody can hold you prisoner with their ideas) but you may want to start questioning more carefully whether to sign up or invest in these products in the first place, or at least get quicker at tactfully dropping out as soon as they feel wrong, regardless of any prior arrangements made. Stop worrying so much about other people’s feelings and opinions of you (they will get something out of this in ways you don’t need to know about; since you can’t go wrong when following your divine truth) and stop, for heaven’s sake, using that as an excuse not to step up to yourself!

In short, this impasse is easily remedied, just as soon as we get out of the guru-seeking mentality and look to ourselves to step up as that guru, honouring that part of us that is wiser, and notices more, than we ever admitted. So the more we go to ourselves for what we need, the less time (and money) we waste seeking confirmation from others and we literally begin to feel more whole, taller, stronger and infinitely more capable. Our whole nervous system begins to relax since we are intact from the moment we step out of bed; not looking for other things to plug into our information gaps, like we have to stick fingers into a burst dam to get through our day.

And if we do need those confirmatory clues, synchronicities will speak to us every which way we look. These bizarre coincidences, which start to happen every day, in more and more ways when we are observant, are the universe’s way of saying “yes, you’re on track” so we never wander too far from the path. Reading this divine map gets easier and easier since it is “just for us”, being personalised in every detail. The last thing we want is to get diverted by other people’s methods and preoccupations since they, too, are following their own self-tailored path of synchronicities and divinely delivered information (along with other influences we don’t need to know about since we are all, to larger and lesser extents, human). Rigidity of thinking, above all, is something we no longer feel comfortable around and we find this in some surprising enlightened circles, so we want to remain free to question even that…since nothing is outside of our burning crystal scrutiny now. Once again, that’s not to say that other people’s ways are wrong (or that we won’t find intriguing cross-over points that we will want to discuss with them…and we wish them every success on their path) but that their way is their way; and this way is now, most definitely, ours since we have claimed it. We get so much better at asking for what we need; not from some information source in the three-dimesnional but beyond that…yet, at the same time, found within us. When we do this, what we asked for has this way of presenting to us, just as we most need it.

So, clearly ask for what you need, every day…wish I could teach this to everyone!

We find, in crystallising (which is to bring all-encompassing divinity into the very cells of our body in an as-near-to balanced arrangement as possible), that we desire to become even more individualised and autonomous than ever; which is the beautiful paradox that wants to be revealed as us. Nobody else is quite like us and we each come with our own in-built package of divinely appropriate information, which will flex, expand and tailor itself perfectly to meet our every most-human expression of the sheer diversity of choice along the ever winding route of self-exploration.