Awesome Kris’ Burning Question: “What does LOA say about ascension symptoms? I’ve been experiencing a lot of weird crap happening to my body over the last year and a half, and one of them is disproportionate weight gain (annoying!). I’ve read that this symptom in particular can be the way your body is “anchoring” more energy and it seems like people essentially are saying these are just things you have to deal with because they are actually good things. But I don’t WANT weight gain, for example, even if it is a “good thing.”

From what I understand of your blogs before, ascension symptoms are similar or the same as “purging.” So how do I ease up on the negative side effects of something that is actually good for me? Also, do I have to manifest these side effects at all? Seems like there must be something else in there causing me to manifest these things instead of effortlessly integrating higher frequencies. Thoughts?”

Dear Awesome Kris,

So… what you’re saying is that you DON’T want your butt to get bigger as you raise your vibration? But what if big butts and rotund bellies are a sign of enlightenment? I mean, have you seen a statue of the Buddha? Ok, ok, I can literally feel the collective gasp from those of you who aren’t sure if I’m joking. Of course I’m totally joking. You don’t have to end up with a Buddha body if you don’t want to (also, it’s worth noting that the original Indian Buddha was not depicted as fat at all, and only became fat once he was introduced to China, where girth was/is a sign of wealth and prosperity).

Why we get fat (or sick, or whatever)

The body can put on weight for many, many reasons. At the core, it’s always about blocked energy. When your energy is not able to flow freely, when you have resistance, and you hold on to it for long enough, it will translate physically in some way. Some of these ways are less obvious than others. Stored weight represents stored energy, both physically and metaphysically. In other words, there’s something you’re being inspired to do or be, that you’re not allowing yourself to do or be. When the energy can’t flow freely, it backs up, and this can cause weight gain (or other symptoms).

The people who are most overweight or most ill often have a massive amount of potential energy which is not allowed to express itself. These are not weak people – quite the contrary. Blocking the flow of that kind of energy is painful, extremely so. It takes a very strong (misguided, but strong) person to be able to stand that kind of discomfort and not do anything about it. People keep themselves in these types of painful situations for all kinds of reasons. Here are just a few of the more common ones:

• Having a belief that you must put everyone else ahead of yourself, so when your needs crop up, it doesn’t even occur to you to tend to them.
• Wanting to express yourself creatively in some way (flow energy in way that’s joyful) but not allowing it because your society/parents/culture doesn’t think it’s viable.
• Holding oneself in a work situation or relationship that’s abusive or aggressive (seen as dangerous by the reptilian brain) and not doing anything about it. If the body wants to either fight or flee and you don’t do either, it often has no choice but to literally make you bigger as a means to protect you.
• You have a belief that being overweight renders you sexually unattractive, and a belief that being sexually attractive is unsafe. So, the weight keeps you safe.
• As you get more and more in touch with higher frequencies, you become afraid of detaching too much and “floating away”. In this case you can put on weight as a way of increasing your physical presence, and grounding or “anchoring” yourself, as you described. In this case, doing regular grounding exercises can do wonders.

When it comes to weight that’s been around for a long time, there are usually several major beliefs involved.

What happens during ascension?

As you’ve so astutely surmised, the discomfort that comes with ascension is a type of purging. Basically, as you reach for and align with higher frequencies, anything within your energy body that doesn’t yet match that new frequency will come to the surface to be released. You will feel the interference of it. The more aggressive you are about your growth, the more you turn up the energy flow, the stronger your “symptoms” are going to become. You can also increase that discomfort by fighting the release. Your body wants to get rid of the resistance. But, if you insist on being stubborn and holding on to your fears, the increased energy flow will begin to beat you up a bit.

I don’t want any of this to scare you. Quite the contrary. I want you to understand that your discomfort is within your control. You don’t have to suffer. And no, you don’t have to just put up with it, at least not past a certain point.

What the hell do I mean by that? Well, if you have ANY resistance, and you do, then any increase in your energy flow, any movement towards joy and who you really are, is going to amplify whatever discomfort (blockages that are actively keeping you from moving forward) has been there the whole time and which you haven’t been paying attention to. The turning up of energy flow doesn’t create suffering, but it does show you the suffering that’s been there all along, and which you’ve been putting up with. If you understand what’s happening though, and you remember that this feedback is a good thing, you won’t actually experience it as suffering any more. You’ll still be overweight, but the fact that you are won’t be as painful to you. Simply accepting that the weight is a good thing won’t magically make it go away, but it is a necessary step in the process.

How to get to skinny town

The people who advise you that you just have to put up with it, stop here. I’d like to continue the explanation: Yes, you have to make peace with whatever is happening, or you’ll be pushing against it. If you fight it, you’ll increase the suffering and perpetuate the situation (you’ll be even unhappier and you’ll get fatter). And, unless you’re a total masochist, you probably don’t want that.

Once you recognize, however, that the weight is there for a reason, even if you don’t yet know that reason, you get back a sense of control and hope. Instead of feeling at the mercy of the dieting industry, or just resigning yourself to being fat forever, you now have a path that you can follow, which will take you to skinny town. If the weight is there for a reason, and that reason is actually serving you, then if you address that reason, the weight will no longer be necessary and will go away. Or, to put it another way, if the weight is the result of an energy blockage, then removing that blockage will cause the weight to dissipate. Poof!

So, yes, the end goal is to have the body you want, but as a reflection of your spirit, not as a necessary component in feeling good.

Don’t focus on the weight

So, if you can’t get the weight off by dieting and if making peace with it isn’t enough, then what DO you do? This is the part that people generally don’t want to hear (everyone wants a freaking miracle pill). But the key to getting the weight off is NOT to focus on the weight. Focus on the root cause, the energy blockage, instead. And, this blockage will almost never actually have anything to do with weight. You’re not fat because you have a belief about fat. You have a belief that’s not allowing you to fully express the full awesomeness of who you really are. The more you become who you really are, the more your weight will reflect that.

So, while you can ask yourself “What does this weight represent to me? How does it make me feel?”, and that will certainly yield some really helpful information, the root cause of the issue will generally be something much, much deeper. A better question to ask yourself is, “Am I happy?” If the answer is anything less than an immediate “Hell YES I am!!”, followed by an enthusiastic happy dance, then it’s a no. Ask yourself why not. What is it that you’d like to be doing? What activity that represents joy to you are you not pursuing? What stupid beliefs do you have about what you can’t do, shouldn’t do, or how your joy would hurt others are blocking you from doing what you really want to do? This is the path you must go down in order to ascend, as well as in order to get rid of any uncomfortable symptoms of ascension, including weight.

Oh, and by the way, you’re always ascending. You can’t help it. It’s just that lately, we’ve started to move on up at such speeds that we’re becoming more consciously aware of it. So, if you’re afraid that you’ll gain more weight if you “start to ascend”, you can relax. You’ve been on that roller coaster since birth.

How to smooth out the process

Ok, ok, so the symptoms of ascension, including supremely sucky ones like weight are only there to help you realize that you have resistance. But does the ride really have to be this bumpy? Are you doomed to just stumble from one bitch slapping to the next?

The good news is: nope! Remember, you’re not here to suffer. You’re here to have fun and enjoy this process. And it can totally be enjoyable. Here’s how:

First of all, you do really have to make peace with the process. This is not the same as saying “I don’t want this to change”. It’s more like “I don’t NEED this change in order to feel good. I will feel good anyway.” An effective way of doing that is to remember that the discomfort is always TEMPORARY, and is a messenger of some kind. Find the message and heed it, and the messenger will go away. Every. Time. When you truly get this, you’ll see any kind of discomfort that comes up as a challenge presenting itself, instead of just one more burden you have to deal with. It’s a perspective that shifts you from powerlessness to empowerment.

Second, PAY ATTENTION TO HOW YOU FEEL!!! I can’t say this strongly enough. The only reason things ever have to get so damn volatile, the only reason you have to get bitch slapped by the Universe, is because that’s what it takes to get your attention. Stop dismissing discomfort. Stop putting up with stuff that bothers you because it’s not THAT annoying, or you don’t have a right to speak up, or you don’t believe anyone cares, or “ain’t nobody got time for that”. NOTHING is too small to be addressed. It all starts small. Addressing it at that level keeps it from getting bigger and is exactly how you smooth out your ride.

In fact, you want to start small. Don’t go after the big crap right off the bat. When you first start this work, you have no skills, no practice and no real belief in your ability to shift anything. Really? You want to go after the biggest resistance first? That’s like deciding to start your running training by doing a marathon, or choosing to fight your first boxing match against Muhammad Ali. You’re setting yourself up to fail. Let me give you an example.

Start small to get BIG results

Let’s say that you realize that you don’t feel worthy. Loads of people have done enough work on themselves to have identified this belief. It’s a monster of a belief, too, like a massive root system underneath a forest. It’s tied to many, many other beliefs and has affected pretty much every area of your life. Now, as a good little student of personal development, you may at this point start to work on this core belief. You’ll affirm that you are worthy, that you do matter and that you are good enough. And then… nothing happens. Not a damn thing shifts. Why not? Because 1.) unworthiness is too big of a belief to go after directly and 2.) you would recognize that if you’d started with the easy stuff and learned what shifting beliefs actually looks and feels like.

Here’s what I recommend instead:

Start with something that annoys you. Choose a concrete example of something that’s producing a negative reaction in your life right now. It can be general, like “I hate my job”. Use the manifestations in your life to help you.

Why aren’t you fighting or fleeing? Ask yourself why you don’t just quit (why don’t you remove yourself from the situation?) or why you haven’t gone and confronted the reason it sucks so bad. What reasons is your mind giving you for why you are trapped?

Allow yourself to admit what you really want. If money or obligation or whatever you’re using to keep yourself stuck weren’t in play, if you had millions of dollars and your family didn’t need you so much, what would you be doing differently? What would you get rid of in your life? What would you add or subtract? Your fears might make it hard for you to focus on what you really want, but soothe your way through it and do it anyway. It will feel really weird, but also really good (and scary, but that’s ok).

Assume there’s another option that you’re not seeing. Open yourself up to the idea that there is a better way, some way to get what you want, that you haven’t thought of. You don’t have to know HOW to solve the situation, just that it is solvable. This will start to open up your energy to that solution actually presenting itself.

Is this who you are FOREVER? Ask yourself if this situation and the way you’re acting is a representation of who you really are. Do you want to keep working in this sucky job forever? A lot of people keep themselves stuck in discomfort because they tell themselves that it’s just “for now”… But guess what? There is only NOW. If you aren’t willing to change it NOW, you’re not willing to change it. But when you think about staying in this situation, job, relationship, etc. FOREVER, the picture takes on a different flavor. You may not be so willing to put up with it for an eternity.

Start incorporating joy NOW, even in small ways. Whatever it is that you want, start bringing some of that into your life now. This can be in small, seemingly insignificant ways. I’m not asking you to quit the job you hate and go charter a sailboat, if that terrifies you and you have the strong belief that you can’t do that. There’s no reason to be that aggressive about it. But you can get a picture of a sail boat and put it on your desk. You can read books about sailing, sign up for sailing classes on your vacation (instead of doing only what everyone else wants), and use the old Google to find people who actually did quit their jobs to go sailing around the world to inspire you. Start with something and keep incorporating more and more of these representations of your joy as you’re inspired to.

Stop putting up with being annoyed. As I said, don’t dismiss small frustrations and annoyances. Face them head on. Stand up for yourself. Honor yourself. If something bothers you, take care of it. Either remove yourself from the situation (stop making coffee for the whole, ungrateful office out of the goodness of your heart, if you resent doing so) or confront it (go tell your boss that you have too much work and ask for help prioritizing and re-delegating the work load). I highly recommend that you start with the small stuff, build some confidence and practice, and then move on to the bigger fish. This will keep you from going totally overboard and screaming at the entire office that they can make their own coffee dammit, despite the fact that no one ever asked you to in the first place. In other words, take care of the things that bother you, but do so in a way you can feel good about.

Follow the bread crumbs. Finally, make sure you follow the bread crumbs – those things you’re inspired to do, that may or may not seem related to your highest joy, that will help to become who you really are. The path will light up with something – you’ll have an idea or someone will suggest something that really excites you, but you actually have to have the courage to take action on it.

Bottom line

Ascension is a natural process. Like evolution. It’s always happening. You’re just becoming more aware of it now, that’s all. You don’t have to do anything to make it happen and it doesn’t have to suck. Why would it, if it’s a natural part of life? The only reason you’re experiencing a bumpy ride is because 1.) you’re fighting the process in some way and/or 2.) you’re being really stubborn or oblivious about something. But don’t worry, at some point you’ll get so sick from all the pain, you’ll give it up. So, even if you don’t do anything, the resistance will eventually work itself out. Or, you can choose to pay attention to how you feel and start catching those signs of resistance when they’re small. I’d recommend the second option.  You might like a bumpy ride and motion sickness and babies crying non-stop for hours. Me? I’m more of a private jet, champagne and strawberries, and in-flight massages by Sven, the Swedish, shirtless, ex-Olympic swimmer with the magic hands kind of traveler. But, you know… it’s totally up to you.