The Art of Closing Cycles

We do the work. We clear the karma. We release the energy. We close the cycle. There is a process and art to closing the cycles of our lives.

Sometimes the cycles close suddenly, but most often the cycles in our lives close without us realizing. If we are paying attention, we can close them and move forward with focus and intention. We can then move forward into the next cycle with grace and confidence.

After years of change, upheaval, spiritual awakening, and breast cancer, I am restarting my career and I get to serve the collective using all of my talents, gifts, skills, and abilities. My spirit guides are pleased and are asking me to reflect on and celebrate my journey that has prepared me for this new venture, this new cycle of my life. Resisting their request, and the opportunities it brings would block the energy, doing what they ask of me is my pleasure. It is the art of closing cycles.

In the Beginning.

In 2016, I was looking for a new career. My long career in finance and accounting, was no longer working for me. The long hours allowed me to neglect myself. I had come to a point in my life that ignoring my needs was no longer a viable or healthy option. All I was trying to do was change my career, I ended up changing my entire life.

I didn’t do it alone. I hired a career coach who led me to understand myself better and that allowed me to better choose a new career. Early in our work together, I realized that I wanted career that allowed me to help people, help women, in some way. I didn’t know then how I wanted to help; I just knew that I wanted to help women.

In autumn of 2019, I attended a workshop led by my career coach. The goal of the workshop was to help women find new careers. My goal was still the same, whatever work I did, I wanted to help women. Maybe it was already in my mind, or the weeks of inner work, but I realized I wanted to become a coach.

My last assignment of that workshop was to attend a local chapter meeting of the coaching federation. My tendency towards introversion ensured that it was a challenge. It was also an evening I will never forget.

I arrived early and sat at a large, round table by myself. Soon, people joined me, and we started chatting. Everyone at the table was at a different phase in their coaching career and it was very encouraging to hear their stories and see the path forward.

Then, the program began, and people started sharing stories of challenges with clients. It was entirely confidential while also being open and honest. It was the first time I heard people speaking openly about feelings, emotions, and being with people while they are experiencing challenges. That level of emotional intimacy was new to me.

I was born into a family that didn’t acknowledge emotions, let alone talk about them openly. We were taught to suppress emotions, repress any feelings we had. So, to be in that meeting that night, with those coaches sharing emotions and speaking about people with great compassion, was life changing. I felt like the girl in the bee costume in the 1990’s Blind Melon video. I had found my people.

Soon after I started planning my way forward. I researched coaching schools and when I found one that resonated with me, I signed up. My first coaching class at Co-Active Training Institute began in January of 2020. It was scary and amazing. Again, I had found my people.

The classes paused a while for the pandemic. At the same time my old career ended. Our cat had cancer and her life ended as well. There were many endings in March 2020. No doubt you have your own list of pauses and endings during that time.

Eventually coaching classes were moved online and life seemed to move forward again. I was grateful to know that I still had coaching school and a coaching career to look forward to even if the world seemed to be shut down.

One day in class, I learned a major life lesson about being with intense or strong emotions. The task was to bring up one of our most challenging emotions and be with it for a time. I volunteered for the virtual front of the room demonstration. The emotion I chose was “lonely”. Each time I tried to change the subject or wiggle out of feeling lonely, I was gently guided back by the coach instructor. I felt deeply and cried in a Zoom full of my classmates. It changed me.

Afterwards, I clearly understood what it was like to sit with my most challenging emotion. I wasn’t just learning how to be a coach; those classes were teaching me emotional intelligence. I was learning to feel and experience life in a new way.

After classes wrapped up, I got busy creating a website and opening my own coaching practice. It came with its own challenges. My background in finance and accounting was helping, my emotional growth was helping, all my skills were helping move me forward and I began to blog about personal growth.

In the autumn of 2020, I began taking online courses in mindfulness with Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield at SoundsTrue.com. Mindfulness was helping me stay the course and be patient with myself and my new business. I took a course with Eckhart Tolle, Kim Eng, and Steve Taylor. My emotional education continued; my spiritual education was just beginning.

Eventually I realized that something was happening in my life. And, as we do, I searched online for answers. I found a video by Christina Lopes that detailed the stages of spiritual awakening. It was eye-opening when I realized that I was in one of the middle stages and experiencing a dark night of the soul.

I had no idea that my desire to change my career would lead to a spiritual awakening. At the time I didn’t know that was a thing. When a dark night of the soul happens, and you’re pretty sure that you aren’t depressed and you see your life changing all around you, you come to realize that spiritual awakenings are very real.

It was time for me to focus on my spiritual awakening. My business was underperforming my expectations, and it gave me plenty of time to focus on spirituality. The ups and downs of awakening were new to me, and I needed all my energy to navigate them.

The fatigue I was experiencing was brought on by all the changes, upheavals, and new beginnings in 2020, or so I thought. In March of 2021, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. My life was changing again. I had hoped to keep my business open, coaching was my calling, but it wasn’t to be. I focused on surviving cancer, closed my coaching practice, and all while blogging about my cancer journey.

Throughout my cancer journey, I leaned into the spiritual practices that I had started the year before. Mindfulness carried me through the many doctor’s appointments. Emotional intelligence helped me navigate the many emotions that came with breast cancer and treatment. I meditated through the pain. Along with doctor’s advice and my cancer treatment plan, I sought energy healing. Everything I had learned to date was employed to aid in my cancer journey.

As I healed, I began to experience energy in a new way. Channels were opened between me and spirit. My spirit guides began to teach me to work with the energy. We began with a small ball of energy for me to “play” with and then I stepped into the energy. I was channeling long before I knew what I was doing. My guides were with me every step of the way even before I knew them by name.

As I learned and progressed, my talents, gifts, skills and abilities were being presented and fostered. When I didn’t know what was happening, I asked, and my guides answered. It’s been like that ever since.

I have been guided to do and be many things by my spirit team. The guidance, even when I didn’t understand it, was, in hindsight, in service of my Divine soul path and life mission. It was all to get me healed and clear of old beliefs and programming. All of it in service of where I am in my life and in this moment.

Closing Cycles Opens New Cycles.

My guides tell me that I am closing many cycles in my life. In service to those closing cycles, I have been guided to write this post. Truly though, I am channeling this more than writing this post. My guides are with me as we acknowledge my path and acknowledge what it took to get here.

With the closing of cycles, there are new cycles opening and new opportunities. One of the new cycles is in my career where my spiritual awakening started. I recently opened for business. I am now offering spiritual consulting services and get to combine all that I have learned and use it to help others. It’s what I wanted to since my career coach and I had identified it several years ago.

Even if only in a blog post, in summary, it’s important to call out my path. To close the cycle by acknowledging how far I’ve come in just a few short years. Even if my guides always tell me that “time is irrelevant”, it’s important to recognize spiritual growth and the closing of cycles. It is the art of closing cycles.

Our Spiritual Paths are not Linear.

Time is irrelevant. It is our energy, how we are being and doing, that moves us forward on our path. Sometimes our way forward is intentionally obscure so that we employ free will to balance the destined advice of our guides. Sometimes our path is more challenging than we feel we can bear, because spirit knows the growth that it will bring. Sometimes on our life path, we feel entirely alone, even though we are being gently guided and lovingly supported.

Our paths are not always clear, but there are always helpers along the way. I ask that you consider allowing me to be a helper to you. I come with experiential wisdom and my spiritual guides. Allow us to assist you, hold space for you, and provide a non-judgmental ear you for you on your path.

My services and contact information can be found on the Consulting Services page. You don’t have to be on your path alone.

The image used today is mine. In the tarot, the Wheel of Fortune card refers to cycles closing and opening. The cards are from the Tarot of the Cosmic Seed and the Rider-Waite-Smith decks.

Be well,

Nikki