How are you finding the transition into September? When I think of it, the energy that comes to mind is industrious and interestingly I have had a number of conversations recently with clients where the common theme is how busy they are. And I expect this is also coming into my awareness right now because I am about to start running a new course and the first colour we will be looking at is red.
What comes up for you when you look at the red and pink bottles in the photo above particularly the red one? The red one is from a set that I had made up with my business partner. Wouldn’t you know it the bottle is called 24/7 which refers to that tendency of being on all the time without switching off. Like the management consultant who does a six mile walk at 6.30am because that means they still have a 10 hour work day to fit everything in! This kind of behaviour is one of the first signs of being a workaholic. You turn down opportunities to meet and connect, to learn and grow in the belief that such activities get in the way of what you need to achieve. In fact the opposite is true; when you allow yourself to play and have fun, magic happens.
How does a Red pattern show up?
I had the opportunity to spend quite a bit of time with one of my clients this week who was running a strong red pattern. There is a clear link to all the base chakra issues – a sense that you are not enough as you are; and there’s a link to survival fears of believing that you need to work that hard to make the money to put food on the table.
What can happen when you find yourself in that pattern is that you then spend money you don’t really have as a way of rewarding yourself for all your efforts. The following quotation captures that tendency brilliantly:
Too many people spend money they earned..to buy things they don’t want..to impress people that they don’t like.
Will rogers
Running a red pattern becomes a vicious cycle that is hard to break and you can feel caught in a trap. Feeling caught by the fear and so it becomes imperative to earn. I have known clients who already have precious little time take on extra roles so if one does not work out they have a new job lined up. Seems eminently practical and yet the cost is depletion and exhaustion often countered by the taking of endless supplements. What’s needed is a willingness to see beneath the surface level activities and identify the thoughts and feelings that are driving the behaviour. Often it is a root chakra issue around survival fears.
Burnout territory comes from overdoing Red
Being on 24/7 can lead to burnout. It’s a slippery slope from working hard to overdoing it and heading to burnout. You can change this by taking a moment to pause and see what sits underneath this need to keep busy. Try it and see what you comes into your awareness. It may take more than one or two attempts if you rarely contemplate. A great way in is to focus on your breath so you can centre and drop into yourself.
Why the patterns can be hard to shift
The feeling that you don’t have enough; the fear around not being able to earn what you need by doing what you love is a base chakra wound. And sometimes it is ancestral; and has been passed onto you and really is not yours at all. In my family one of my grandfather’s ended his career with no pension because the firm that he worked for went bankrupt. That energy was carried forward into the generations that followed him and it has been important to attend to it so that it can be healed and no longer run us. This is another gift that colour brings that as you elevate your own consciousness through doing this work, it has ripple effects on your ancestors up and down the line.
If you do nothing, you will continue to invite the same situations, events and people back into your life until you realise your patterns; find the emotions that are triggering that response in you and process them. Colour really helps you to recognise your pattern and to shift it at an energetic level.
Often those that come to work with me have done many other kinds of therapies and work on their key issues. There can be some resistance initially around there being more to clear. My experience with all these things are that there are many layers and often what’s coming up in those that have done a lot of personal development are merely vestiges or echos of the former pattern.
If you find yourself noticing potential triggers coming up around money and your relationship with it, smile and recognise them for what they are – a test from the Universe to see if you have really integrated that particular lesson. Then respond from a place of self-compassion rather than getting caught up in the potential drama of it all. You will find that so freeing because it means you won’t suffer any falling out of the Universal flow like you used to.
Why start with Red?
The lesson on Red in the course on building emotional intelligence in young people states we are responsible for what we choose to feel. In this way red is the foundational principle on which we build up a framework by which to live. If you want to know more about the spiritual principles that underpin colour, why not join the forthcoming chakras course. In it you will discover the spiritual principles behind colour. The question I have for you is: are you ready to awaken to who you really are?