From Caroline’s 2014 Online Salon

How's that for a powerful question? But that wasn't just a question for me recently; it was the task at hand. A few weeks ago, I participated as a guest on a television program that is in the development stages in California. It's called The Help Desk. Unlike other talk shows that are shot in a regular studio with an in-house audience, this show uses an outside setting in which the "Help Desk" is positioned in a central location in San Francisco. The guest presenters, such as myself, are seated at the Help Desk and then participants approach the Help Desk, one at a time, and ask a question of the presenter.

The questions, of course, are appropriate to whoever the presenter is. For example, when Deepak Chopra was the guest presenter, the questions were largely around the quest for happiness and he would help each person discern the life patterns that prevented them from making choices that allowed for the flow of happiness in their lives.

My participants asked me about health-related matters. I was given instructions to limit my interactions with each person to less than five minutes, preferably three minutes. Doing a type of intuitive reading on a person is, I suppose, like a Zen dance. It's not a casual, "Hi and here's your data" encounter for me. I need to sense a type of connection that is best described as your unique energy current. It's not difficult for this connection to happen by any means, but I do need to focus. Sitting at an exposed desk in the middle of a public square while being viewed by a standing audience was, to say the least, an unfamiliar setting. Airplanes were constantly flying low en route to or leaving San Francisco International Airport. Traffic noise was constantly humming in the background. And the sun was shifting its glittering rays, always requiring the crew to make technical adjustments. These are the types of distractions that interfere with intuitive clarity - at least for me. So even as I approached the set, I felt myself bracing for one of those "stop-start, stop-start" experiences.

I had no idea how many people the producers had pre-interviewed to be my guests - the "guests of the guest", so to speak. The network had sent out a write-up that they were shooting this program and included an invitation for participants. Then they interviewed all those who replied, selecting the ones they felt would work for the show. I did not learn the number until I sat down. Given that it was an hour-long show, which included a one-on-one interview with me and a post-show interview, that left about 30 minutes of one-to-one work. I estimated that I would speak to perhaps eight to ten people, which is a substantial number, if you are doing any type of intuitive work. As soon as I sat down, I glanced to my left to see that the producer had a line of more than fifteen people waiting. I couldn't believe it. I did the time calculations in my head - and believe me, calculations are not my thing - but even I could figure out that the producers intended for this line to move fast.

As soon as I was seated at the Help Desk and the camera was rolling, the first guest approached the desk and sat down. I looked directly in her eyes and asked, "How may I help you?" It's actually quite stunning in an almost mystical way - and perhaps it is mystical - that the second, the instant, you connect with a human being with the intention of helping them, the world around you evaporates. The external setting I was a bit concerned about evaporated. I was no longer aware of any traffic sounds or irritating sunlight or the distractions of people walking past with packages and dogs, wondering what the heck was going on in the middle of the plaza.

I was aware, however, of the time limitation I had per guest: five minutes or less. Now at least thirty to forty percent of that time is taken up with people providing you with snippets of personal background that provides an essential framework for their questions. People need to let you know why the question they are asking you is so significant to them, because they want the answer to be that as well. And further, as I look in their eyes and listen to them tell me even in a brief moment or two about their situation, I can feel that they are hoping that I am an answer - perhaps the answer - that will help them to crack through the mystery of why they can't heal something or why they can't seem to move forward with their life or why their relationships are an endless pattern of heartbreak.

What can you heal in five or - even more challenging - three minutes? I want you to think about that. And I want you to imagine that challenge. Just for a moment, be the person asking for help and then be the person who is there to answer the question with profoundly healing content.

Those individuals were an inspiration to me in many ways. I do not think many of us are aware of how much and in how many ways that we as human beings have become focused upon the quality - and the mystery - of our interior nature. Over the course of these past six decades, we have actually evolved from being primarily five sensory to becoming multisensory creatures. We are actively intuitive, we have emotional and psychic intelligence, and with any luck eventually we will recognize that our soul is an active intelligent agent in our life system. Our psyches are governed by archetypal patterns, containers of myths and symbols that continually feed our unconscious. Our health and well-being feeds off of the stories we tell ourselves, stories that are created, generated, and rooted in our myths. Every person I talk to tells me a story in some way about his or her life and that story inevitably contains at least one symbol or hints at one myth. As each of the participants of the Help Desk told me a bit about themselves, I listened for both the details they were sharing as well as any symbols or metaphors in their descriptions through which I could then identify an archetypal pattern. We can't stop ourselves from revealing our archetypes. All of these systems that combine to make up each human life need to be understood in terms of how they speak to each other, how they participate in acts of creation, how they interact with the creative mechanisms of our psyche and soul, and how their sensitivities influence the development of physical illnesses. And further, how do we interact with this extraordinary system of life that is US when it comes to healing an illness?

I view the realm of health and healing through this lens now. In fact, it's more of a parallel reality in that the real power of who we are truly exists in the realm of energy, or our energy field. Our health is regulated by far more than chemicals and nutrition, as we know. But adding on knowledge about the chakras, for instance, is hardly enough to span the spectrum of all that we have come to discover about the depth and width of our interior selves. Speaking about "chakras", for instance, represents a great deal more than energy dots laid over the physical anatomy. The recognition of our energy anatomy - of energy consciousness itself - represents an entirely different paradigm of how we need to consider the nature of our concept of power.

This journey of life that we are on is a step-by-step experience of how we use the power running through our life system. Our minds and all that functions through our minds generate a continual stream of micro and macro activities through the complex of our non-stop brain. Our emotions are always active. We are constantly making choices, consciously and unconsciously. And - think about this - our "choices continue to make choices." How's that for a thought? But it's pure truth. And because it's truth, we need to find a way to evaluate the micro and macro impact of our thoughts, attitudes, belief patterns - the whole of our energetic personality and nature - as the energetic reflection of the landscape of our physical life.

Imagine just for a second how such an approach would shift the way in which you would consider:

How you thought about the source of any problem, including a health concern;

How you defined a big or small, serious or insignificant choice;

How you defined your own power to make choices to redirect the flow of events in your life or in your healing.

Would you then reconsider the power contained in five minutes of your life?

It's worth going deeper into these questions precisely because the decades of evolving consciousness activity have made such an impact upon who we are, and in so many ways we do not think about that - but we should. In fact, we need to not just think about how much we have evolved but in what ways - and the consequences of those changes upon every aspect of our nature. For a starter, we need to think of ourselves as multisensory beings now, not five sensory. We need to actually recognize that we are living in an energy-driven society and that we are highly energetic/intuitive beings that spend most of our conscious hours interacting with energy technology. We have accelerated the speed at which we communicate, think, act, exchange thoughts and ideas. We are moving and living and making choices and decisions at the speed of the Internet now - most of the time without including the appropriate amount of "time" to reflect upon the seriousness of the choices we are making. But speed and convenience and getting things accomplished in the "immediate now" are today's values: What can be done in five minutes? These are facts of life and therefore they are facts of health.

They are also the most challenging facts of health because they are not yet measurable in a laboratory. Energetic stress, for example, can't be tested, weighed, or in any way recorded, and yet most of you reading this have already experienced "energetic stress", I can assure you of that. We still think within a model of problem solving that reads: One solution per every one problem. That may still work in some areas, but it certainly does not apply when it comes to discerning the reasons why you are not feeling well or your "life is not feeling well". There simply is never one reason for anything - ever. And as you come to realize the vastness of your consciousness and the enormous network of highly integrated power relay systems that comprise your consciousness, you understand all the more that trying to track down one stress point or one negative pattern or one negative memory as the root of a disorder is preposterous. Would that health and illness were that simple.

Now let's consider the other side of that position: There is also no such thing as one solution to any challenge, whether you are confronting a health issue or a life problem. The truth is, any number of possible solutions exists for every challenge we have in life, but you have to be able to utilize more than your five senses to perceive the vast domain of the imagination. A while back I realized something very curious about most people in Western culture. We can't distinguish the difference between imagining and hallucinating at all. For most people, they are one and the same thing. I can't recall the number of times people have told me that they had invisible friends when they were children and that some elder told them to stop imagining such things. Usually when people dust off these memories of early childhood - invisible friends being interrupted by invading adults - their voices become bitter, if not angry. I've asked many people if they believe their contact with their invisible friends would have continued had their parents not told them to "stop imagining such things". No one as yet has said yes. But what so many have in common is that they are left with the impression that stepping into the territory of the imagination is high risk. Clearly the signpost at the gateway to the imagination is one that reads, "Not to Enter Unescorted" and "For Coloring Use Only".

And yet, what human ability should you rely upon more than your imagination when up against the challenge of healing or a life crisis or redirecting the course of your life? The last choice you should make is to not imagine all the possible untapped resources of your heart, mind, and spirit.

Consider the second point I brought up, which is one of discerning what have been and are the significant or insignificant choices you've made and continue to make in life. When I first began my work as a medical intuitive years ago, the model of health that I followed was essentially one of "negativity equals illness and a positive attitude makes for health." Today I think nothing could be more like wishful thinking. Certainly negativity contributes to the breakdown of health but let's face it, I know a whole lot of negative thinking people who are quite healthy and conversely, I know even more very kind and loving people who are battling endless illnesses. That formula is one I tossed out of the window years ago. It is one based on the childhood myth that goes something like, "If we are good, nothing bad will happen to us." Health and illness do not follow the pattern of childhood myths.

We are far more complicated than a childhood myth. My great awakening - and here's my lesson to you - is that there is no such thing as an insignificant choice because every single choice we make continues to create offspring. If you don't believe me, then hit a pause button right here and think about any choice you've made today - anything - from what you ate for breakfast to what you decided to wear. What you ate nurtures your body, so it continues to work and eventually that food works its way through your body and goes on into yet another cycle of life and so on. Your clothes get more worn each time you wear them. Every choice sets other choices into motion.

Now think of choices we make that include other people or life decisions. Rarely do we take the time to reflect upon whether a choice is significant or insignificant and even more rare would be to track the long-range impact of a decision. We might do this type of thinking for major life choices such as buying a house or moving, but in general we tend to make most of our decisions as we go along. Of course, it's an impossible task to examine the power content of every choice we make and its potential consequences. But the point is to grasp the core principle, which is that every choice we make sets endless consequences into motion. We never realize even one percent of those consequences, as they play out in the microcosmic field of the psychic plane. (Think of those young kids who do foolish things at parties and ten years later when they are applying for jobs or running for a political office, they find their compromising photographs on-line. One tiny insignificant choice in the moment and yet the truth is that it has lifelong consequences.) Yet, how many of those funny coincidences that happen years down the road might well be the result of a gathering of the threads of various so-called insignificant choices we've made along the way? For example, perhaps you made a phone call to someone who then remembered you years later and arranged to meet you. And it's at that meeting that you are introduced to a person who ends up being the great catalyst of your life. That phone call may have taken less than five minutes.

The mystical lesson in this is that you have more power than you realize to shift the direction of your life - in five minutes or less. It's that truth that we are meant to realize, to grasp, and to comprehend because we continue to believe that we need huge amounts of time and money and the help of lots of other people to move our lives forward. That simply isn't true.

Reflect on this teaching for just a minute: You can empower any moment of your life if you consciously acknowledged the wheels of creation that are set into motion within any choice you make. A choice is essentially your capacity to engage the laws of creation; for example, cause and effect and action and reaction, to name just two. We are born with an inherent sense of the power to effect change in our lives because we can make decisions. We can say yes or no. We make choices endlessly in deciding what to believe and not believe, whether to be a kind person or not, whether to be honest or dishonest, whether to be generous or selfish, whether to be forgiving or bitter. We never stop making choices.

And the third question brings this subject directly to you: How do you measure or define the power of your own choices? People - meaning all of us - fear making choices. Even "small" choices intimidate people. Ask someone to select a restaurant and often that person will go blank - over a restaurant. Obviously people talk to me about the conflicts they have about life decisions and understandably so. Nothing is easy about deciding whether to divorce or go on chemotherapy. These are game-changers. But what is also true is that your intuition speaks immediately to you on every life issue, and all the louder on the issues of conscience, life-or-death, or that involve the lives of others. When a person tells me that he or she does not know what to do, that is actually rarely the case. The truth is that person knows exactly what to do but lacks the courage to go forward. People fear the consequences of their choices, which speaks to the truth that we have an inherent sense of how much power is contained in making a choice - especially one packed with integrity and truth. One choice packed with clarity and truth will change the course of your life forever. And that's another five-minute-or-less healing experience, if ever there was one. Every person has the power to make that quality of choice, though it may take him or her years to find the courage.

You at The Help Desk

So let me take you back where this discussion began - to the Help Desk and the challenge of assisting people in five minutes or less. I hope by now you have a sense that you can change your life in five minutes - or you can do the same for another person. Imagine that you could see the human energy system clearly or that you had an understanding of health the way it should be perceived in this age of consciousness. The assistance you could offer another person in five minutes would be immeasurable. You have that capacity inside you.

Moreover, think of how deeply you could - in fact, should - know yourself. I obviously gave this topic more than serious thought. I so believe that every person should understand how the evolution of consciousness has impacted the human design, how it has empowered us, and how it has literally "re-sensitized" us, making us more vulnerable to social and environmental stresses than we realize. At the same time, we have awakened abilities and senses that require recognition and training.

We can do more now in five minutes than you can possibly imagine. Just think of how many people you can communicate with now in five minutes. You need to understand what you can do with your consciousness when applied to your health, mind, body and spirit in five minutes. You can change the quality of your life in five minutes - but you need to know how. Read the details on my new Reflections series, Anatomy of Your Health, and think about joining me this Wednesday night.

Meanwhile, here are some closing power exercises for inspiration:

Close your eyes for a moment, breath in the truth that everything in your life is in place as an answer to your prayer, then open your eyes. Live in that thought. Do not look back. Just live in it.

Decide to not dwell in anger at all. Just like that. Anger is a state of possession. You can help being angry - yes you can. You can change anything about yourself. You are not helpless.

Decide to see yourself as a lovely and beautiful person - just like that. You don't need one other person to tell you that. You don't need anyone else's approval ever again. Stop seeking approval. Stop playing that game.

You can choose at any time to see yourself in another image, through another lens. Just like that. It's not really difficult. And tell yourself that. Difficult is a habit - remember that.

Love,

Caroline