Lauren West is a Branding & Website designer, Reiki Healer, and Spiritual Life and Business Coach. She is multi-skilled, certified, and has worked in the field with women and men at all stages of business.
We all have a darker side to our personalities. We have “negative” characteristics that we don’t like about ourselves. We reject aspects of our being. Maybe we think (or have been told) that we are too shy, loud, annoying, critical, cynical, jaded, jealous, competitive, judgmental, afraid, self-loathing, useless, arrogant, lethargic, selfish, sensitive, bossy, aggressive, damaged, weird, skinny, fat, angry, sad, etc.
“We live in a world of duality. Light cannot exist without darkness and vice versa. The deeper we dive into our inner world, the more light we are able to hold and radiate out to the world. When you recognize that you are here to learn unique lessons for your soul’s growth, you can bring your darker aspects to the light and use them as your secret weapons or alchemize their energy into your most powerful asset.” – Lauren West
The labels that are given to us (and especially the self-appointed ones) block us from love, peace, and joy. We feel fragmented, like there is something inherently “wrong” with us or that we’re “bad”. When we buy into these negative beliefs, we enter a downward spiral into the emotional frequency vortex as we resonate on the lowest vibrational fields of guilt and shame.
We feel fragmented when part of ourselves are labelled as bad while other socially acceptable qualities are labelled as good. This harsh dichotomy corners us into making judgments about ourselves that are black and white. If humans were machines, this binary way of thinking could serve us. We would be less empathetic and more mechanical.
As souls incarnate on Earth at this point in history, the lightworkers, way showers, star seeds, galactic warriors etc. are here to return humanity to our hearts to live in harmony with Gaia, our inner worlds, and with each other. In this paradigm shift, we are entering a time when radical acceptance is coming to the fore. When we release judgment of ourselves, as we peel back the layers of outdated programming and limiting self-beliefs, we rise into higher dimensional timelines and “uplevel” our lives.
Right now, you have infinite possibilities of what your life could look like, of what your experience could be. When you embody a higher frequency of love, peace, gratitude, and joy, you naturally attract people, places, and opportunities that match this frequency. This is the Law of Attraction in action. What you are currently experiencing in your reality is a culmination of your beliefs, energy, soul blueprint and actions that you have attracted and chosen to play out in your life.
Now, you may be thinking – hey, I didn’t want to get my heart broken or I don’t want a family member to be sick or I didn’t want this terrible thing to happen to me. You have a valid point. Before now, you have been operating in the dark. You have been grappling for walls to follow in a dark house. Life has felt like a maze with dead ends. With this new knowledge, you have the insight and wisdom to transcend. You can elevate your life when you elevate your beliefs.
In order to elevate, you need to lighten your load. Shadow work facilitates this transmutation and clearing process. If you’re a Marie Kondo fan, then think of this as The Joy of Tidying Up Your Soul. In order to bring the darkness into light, we need to feel grounded, prepared, and devoted to doing this internal alchemy. Most of us naturally cringe at the thought of looking out our flaws as we recoil even more at the thought of embracing the darkest, gnarliest, and shameful aspects of our personalities.
Before you run away or close this book, let me tell you that on the other side of this, you will feel a lightness of being and deep calm that you have never felt before. You are able to drop the weight of pretending to be a certain way, pleasing other people, white-knuckling it through life, and release the subconscious stress and restlessness of self-judgment.
Self-love is only true, whole, and complete when we can love every part of ourselves – the “good” and the “bad”. We must reach a place of non-judgment and unconditional love where we accept and appreciate the contrasting elements of our self. While we live in a dualistic world, the collective consciousness is yearning for and moving towards unity. As an individual in this collective, you are most likely also feeling this shift as you are reading this book, opening your mind and heart to new perspectives, and are giving yourself love and appreciation like you never have before. That is commendable, world-changing work! I am so proud of you, and love you. We need you to continue doing this work throughout your life. You can also think of your life’s work in terms of energy and frequency rather than in terms of career if this resonates with you. What do you want to put out in the world? What do you want to receive? This is your life’s purpose. The other steps will appear at the right time.
Trusting yourself and your desires is a fairly new concept for many of us. We weren’t taught to trust our intuition. We were taught to trust logic, to look at what came before and to repeat it. We weren’t taught that it was good to have desires (if you were raised Catholic). We were taught that it was greedy, sinful, and gluttonous to want nice things, more money, and luxury. I’m sure you can think of some other examples from your life of beliefs that were drilled into your mind as facts and truths that you have been living by despite them dimming your life.
Most often, these beliefs are not ultimately true. I don’t believe that God/Source/the Universe wants us to suffer or feel bad about being human (and making mistakes and wanting things). In the Bible, it says that God wants to provide abundantly for his children.
If you’re thinking, what verse is that? I want to fact check. Then, my dear, you are missing the point entirely. You form your beliefs based on what you accept as facts, which in this case would be the Bible. The Bible has been translated from different languages over time and there are different interpretations that people take from it. The point is that you get to create the meaning. You get to think independently and challenge what others think. You have the choice to live from a place of guilt, fear, and shame or you can choose to forgive, question, and love.
As we journey into shadow work, it may get a little uncomfortable. You may see religion, politics, racism, sexism, and other touchy subjects come up as you journal. This is totally normal and very common. Depending on our upbringing, we may have been heavily programmed to hate under the guise of love. As we dive deeper into the wild jungle of our souls, we will be able to untangle the vines in our path so that we can move forward.
Self-Iiquiry questions:
Manifesting
Practically Magic – To Manifest is to master your mind and move to the rhythm of your heart’s wisdom.
You’ve probably heard the term manifesting before tossed around in woo woo context from new-age spiritual teachers, in The Secret, or on some hippie chick’s Instagram hashtag on a photo of her eating an acai bowl in Hawaii living her best life (no shade).
Simply put, manifesting is a co-creation process that anyone and everyone can successful and easily participate in. Manifesting is essentially creating and receiving what you desire. Let’s say you have a burning desire for your soulmate. You can feel it in every cell in your being. You want it. You’re ready.
The potentiality of him or her is potent. You think about them all the time and the details of it all. You visualize and fantasize about what they look like, making pancakes on a Sunday morning, going out to a club and dancing in a spicy dress, introducing them to your family. You even think about what your first Christmas card will look like together or what your kids would look like.
In order to activate the manifestation process, you must feel worthy of receiving your desires. If you want a soul-nourishing, mind-expanding, magical af relationship but you have a deep-seated unconscious belief that you’re not lovable, then you won’t be able to manifest this until you unblock it. With that belief, you may repel your soulmate and delay meeting them because you aren’t vibrational sympatico. If you do meet them, then you may self-sabotage and self-destruct the relationship out of fear of abandonment, insecurity, jealousy, or paranoia.
Self-love is a huge component of manifesting and feeling good. We must love ourselves so so so so so much. This may sound weird, stupid, or like a waste of time, but I can’t stress enough how vital it is to love yourself. Just by doing this, you can radically change your life. By loving yourself more, you’re able to love others more. You vibe is infectious and people crave being near you, in contact with you, and always want more. It’s also key to protect your energy from what I like to call energy leeches – people who are so stuck in victim mode and their own whirlwind of mess that they suck the life force out of you. In order to protect your energetic field and self from being drained, imagine a bubble around you like in Bubble Boy. This energetic forcefield maintains and protects the integrity and make-up of your aura and field while interacting with others.
When you love yourself, you shine. You dazzle and are radiant on autopilot. You attract what you desire naturally, because you’re in flow and love yourself, your life, and what’s to come. That’s a really, really good feeling. Imagine feeling so present that you just bliss. There’s nothing to worry about – no bosses, no bills, no break-ups. You send infinite, unconditional love to yourself on loop like a figure eight. You can imagine that this love is an infinite rainbow that you live inside. I love using this visualization in meditation and imagining little angels in cars driving around the super love highway as they protect me and bring me blessings. I know, I’m weird. I own it.
A big, big step in manifesting is taking aligned and inspired action. When you ask the Universe to show you your next step, to help you out, to sending some guidance, you will always receive it, but it’s your job to do something. The onus is on you to take action, to create movement, to just do it. Maybe you’re calling in more abundance and your soulmate. Perhaps you have an idea on how to make some extra money to put towards that vacation or purchase something that you really want or to put towards that bougie yoga membership you’ve always been curious about. So, you sack up and do the thing and the money comes in. You’re super grateful and feel empowered and like a damn magician. Then you decide that you’re going to sign up for that fitness membership at the studio with Chanel face products, crystals and the most beautiful white bathroom you’ve ever seen. Then, bang, you meet your soulmate in a yoga class or perhaps you experience divine downloads in class and open up and allow yourself to relax and receive. Then you learn how to tap into that frequency when you’re manifesting your soulmate.
Life is full of infinite possibilities. I do believe that some things are “destined” like meeting certain people, going to certain places, trying different experiences that make us feel like we
have found a missing puzzle piece to our soul’s journey. I also believe in synchronicities which are like little miraculous occurrences, psychic experiences, signs to show us that we are on the right path. Those synchronistic meetings and experiences are some of my favorite as it gives us a hint to the magical intricacies that go unseen to our earthly eyes. This could be from thinking about something and then hearing a song that’s relevant, to meeting a person that is instrumental in helping you, to finding money or receiving a windfall, to being invited on a trip, or a friend reaching out when you had just been thinking about them.
These little cosmic blips are like a heart monitor that is giving you feedback like yes, you’re on track. Yes, you can trust your heart’s desires. Yes, your manifestation and desired outcome is alive and well. Keep going, love.
Depending on what you’re calling in, you’ll get different hits of inspired guidance. When you get these divinely guided hunches, ideas, and messages. It’s essential that you trust them and yourself.
We are all human and divine. We are innately spiritual, and we’re all connected by energy in the unseen or etheric level of life. Is this sounding a little fluffy – too foo foo for you? Well, babe, allow this to sink in and open your mind as you consider multiple perspectives as we enter a multi-dimensional reality (which you’ve actually always been a part of but may not have had the awareness to know and realize your power and place in the cosmic quilt of the Universe).
You still with me? Beautiful.
If you take a look at the world that we’re living in today, you can see there are a lot of us out there who are no awake. They are unconscious and live without exercising their free will to its fullest and most satisfying extent. Being wild and free doesn’t mean breaking the bank, being a hippie on a commune, or leaving your corporate job – although, you have the free will to do all of that if you so choose. To be wild and free in an awakened state is to be grateful, to be present, and to make your choices from a balanced, intuitive, and heart-centered space.
Life is a series of decisions. The more clearly we are able to “see” with our third eye and intuition, the more clearly we are able to “feel” with our heart to decipher if doing something resonates with us on a soul level or with our ego. Sidebar: The ego is a hell of a drug.
Now, with our vision clear and our hearts open, we can observe the world and our surroundings with a more balanced and accurate gaze. We can see how the world is going through a massive adolescence period and desperately needs to improve on all levels – physically, emotionally, and spiritually. We are moving from an angsty, selfish, dramatic way of living to a more conscious, loving, and accepting state.
For example, if we were raised with the knowledge and understanding that we have everything inside of ourselves to change our lives, to feel good right now, to create and attract exactly what we desire, we would completely wreck the system and current American consumerist culture. We wouldn’t feed into the media telling us that we need more, better, and newer stuff. We wouldn’t feel the pressure of comparison to look a certain way, we wouldn’t need to spend loads of money to make ourselves feel okay.
By healing the root cause of ego – feeling insecure, feeling not cool, feeling not beautiful, feeling like we’re not good enough, feeling like we never have enough, feeling the need to impress others, feeling that restless anxiety of needing to compete and be the best – you are able to return to wholeness to realize how little it truly takes to make yourself happy.
If we saw the truth of life – that everything is energy, then we would realize that happiness, love, joy, fulfillment, success is an inside job. As you change your internal world by doing spiritual grooming or maintenance work, you continue to clean up messes and dust bunnies that you didn’t even know existed. When you’re manifesting and calling in new things, you need space to hold the new things.
Energizing your space by cleaning it, clearing it energetically, and thanking it all creates space for the new that wants to come in. It also helps you raise your vibration in order to become a match to call in the new quickly and naturally. You become a match for what you want by elevating your physical space and body.
To further illustrate my point, let’s look at a few celeb couples – Kim and Kanye, Beyonce and Jay-Z, Justin Bieber and Hailey Baldwin. They’re energetic matches for each other. It would be weird if Kim Kardashian and Jim Halpert (from The Office) dated, Beyonce and Weird Al Yankovic dated, or if Justin Bieber and Saoirse Ronan were a thing. They are not vibrationally compatible with each other romantically. I would be interested in their conversations. Your thoughts, beliefs, and emotions comprise your vibration? What is your vibe made up of? What are you an energetic match for? Do you like this or is there something you want to change?
How can you change it?
In other words, you need to be fully aligned with your higher self, feeling good and worthy, knowing that it’s going to happen for you, and clear on your desires to call in what you desire. This takes getting clear, unblocking, and loving yourself throughout the process as you hold the faith in the Universe and trust divine timing. When the time is right, you and it will converge on the same wavelength so it can come into your physical reality.
I promise it gets easier the more you do this. Set your intentions and always aim for a little bit higher than you think you can reach. This will ensure that the highest and best will unfold for you.
Manifesting 101 recap & breakdown
1. Get clear on what you really want
Open your heart and put gently place “practicality” in the backseat. We’ll get to that later. Let your heart’s purest desires take the wheel and allow yourself to be really, really honest with honest. After all, you’re only cheating yourself and the world if you don’t allow your beautiful, divine dreams channel through you from vision to reality. This isn’t the time to play small and let your ego (fear) dictate your decisions and vision.
2. Vibe with me now
Whatever you want to co-create or manifest (whether it’s money, you soulmate, your dream job, a new pair of jeans, your dream home, a vacation), you will need to simulate that frequency. The goal here is for you to become an energetic match for it, meaning that you’re on the same wavelength. This is how you attract it, you become it. I know this sounds like some weird Yoda shit, but I swear the Law of Attraction is real and will always work with you. By visualizing what you want and using all five senses – seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, smelling it, you create an energetic experience that conjures up a reality in your mind’s eye where what you want is yours. It’s key to show yourself that you can have it, that you already have it, that it’s in the bag. You want to do this repeatedly in meditation or throughout your day. Daydreaming can be productive!
3. Communicate with the universe
Ask God/The Universe/Nature/Source/Whatever-You-Want-To-Call-It and ask what would you have me do to manifest ? What would it take for me to receive ? What needs to shift for me to call in ? Then take aligned action. You want to make waves here and do your part to co-create.
4. Allow & receive
This is the easy part right? You relax with your positive affirmations and allow everything to sort itself out for the highest good of all involved. You did your work and now its the Universe’s turn to work her magic. In order to be open and allow what you want to manifest for you, you need to feel good, relaxed, and grateful. A grateful heart is a powerful magnet for more blessings.
Ok, go manifest all of the things and have fun! Haha joke. Seriously, though, I would recommend that you start with this 4-step process and manifest something that feels within reach or something that you want and then move on to something bigger. If you want to manifest multiple things at one time, I would recommend grouping them together a manifesting story so to speak. For example, if you’re manifesting more abundance, a vacation, and your soulmate, I would get clear on a number and a feeling, visualize the tropical location and sharing it with your soulmate.
As you begin, you can manifest a free dinner, a promotion, a new pair of shoes. If you start and hit the ground running, then you can see where your blocks are so you can heal what’s not working for you. After you start experimenting, you can troubleshoot by identifying your blocks and dissolving them or moving your energy.
Common blocks & how to dissolve them
1. Self-worth booster
You don’t feel worthy of what you want. You’re not a vibrational match for what you’re trying to co-create. It’s like you’re calling the wrong number or as one of my friend’s likes to say you’re tuning into the wrong radio station. If you want to listen to 97.7 but you’re stuck on 96.5, you’re close but no cigar. I’m sorry for mixing metaphors.
2. Trust issues
The how! I know it’s hard not to be a control freak. When we order our packages from Amazon Prime, we track those suckers. We want full transparency, and we want to know where are packages are and when they’ll arrive, or at least I do. This is like manifesting
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Lauren West, Branding Designer & Holistic Coach
Lauren West is a Branding & Website designer, Reiki Healer, and Spiritual Life and Business Coach. She is multi-skilled, certified, and has worked in the field with women and men at all stages of business. Her intention is to bring harmony to all levels of life and business to create brands and businesses that change lives and bring good vibes. Lauren believes that balance is key to success and long-term growth.
