Dear Eye of Tiger,

I am hopeful that maybe you will find the time to do a reading for me.

Currently, I am going through a phase where all I want to do is withdraw from the (social) world. In particular, I feel a strong pull away from certain close friends, as if I need to avoid them completely.
For some reason, I have been having difficulty sleeping and feel jittery, my heart racing for absolutely no reason that is apparent to me.

Any message I can get at the moment concerning this direction that I am being pulled towards (strong urge to withdraw from social circles and friends) would help shed some clarity for me.


Thanks and blessings  

Unless you are also in love at this time and failed to mention this in your request, difficulties in sleeping combined with feeling jittery and your heart racing for some unknown reason sound like a good reason for you consulting your doctor immediately about the possibility of either anxiety attacks, or an underlying medical condition which needs to be treated. It is also I feel quite possible from my own first hand experience to suffer from symptoms of both anxiety and depression at the same time. A strong urge to withdraw from your friends (or at least certain ones) sounds ominous to me and is a common symptom of the depression I also feel on my bad days. Could it be that you are withdrawing only from certain friends because they are attempting to interfere in how you should be allowed to run your own life, and make your own decisions as you see fit to do so?

Be in this world but not of it is a phrase that I have often heard. Effectively it means that while we should at times stay actively engaged with our life and our friends, at other times we need to spend some quality time alone with ourselves thinking more deeply about what is most important.

When we are on a spiritual path, it is necessary to temporarily and regularly withdraw from the outside world and our friends in order to get a more realistic perspective on where we are going. It is only when we permanently withdraw into our own private world that this urge becomes pathological. The idea is to find a reasonable balance point between our quiet private times of meditation and contemplation, and then move back out into the world to apply the insights we have gained during these sessions in a practical manner. Sitting around isolated from others for hours every day deep in meditation serves very little useful purpose unless it also gives us something of value to take back into our outer lives. It is also I feel very egocentric, as the physical world does not revolve around our needs above everybody else's. We are not ourselves the centre of the Universe?

As I see from your profile you are either yourself a student of the Tarot or that you are familiar with the common meanings given to each of the cards in the deck, please study THE HERMIT in more detail as this is I feel the card which best represents your own current situation. The name of the card itself is I think somewhat unfortunate as it is not advising you to become a social recluse or hermit, but it is saying to me that people such as ourselves who are following a more spiritually centred path than many of our friends are do need regular private retreats from the apparent insanity of the outside world in order to recharge our spiritual batteries, and therefore better prepare and strengthen us for whatever the future holds in store for us on the outside.

Only if you feel an urge to increasingly withdraw from the world and most if not all of your friends on a permanent basis, should the warning bells be going off. Please take a look on the Web at the general meanings given for the card THE HERMIT, then let me know whether it offers you any further insights and sense of comfort for having to effectively live two separate lives at the same time.

And see your doctor as well if these troubling symptoms persist, or get worse. They are not to be regarded as being normal for a person of your personality type. First progressively eliminate all medical and other everyday possibilities first, before interpreting them to necessarily be a sign of you having awakened the life force (Kundalini), located at the base of your spine. It is possible to become spiritually enlightened, and also to suffer from medical problems as well.

"SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS of KUNDALINI Awakening"

http://www.elcollie.com/st/symptoms.html

Love, Light and Peace,

eye_of_tiger

Thanks Eye of Tiger,

I am very touched first of all for the time and energy you devoted to responding to my request. It was so fast! I appreciate it.

It is true that the Hermit is the card I can identify most closely with at this moment. I have to admit that silence is the thing I relish right now.
On the one hand,I don't want this silence to end because clear insight on almost everything in my life is there"inside my stomach" so to speak. It is hard to express this in words. ..
On the other hand, I still enjoy interacting with people and having conversations. I am still my fun-loving self.
About these friends that I have felt like moving away from, I must say that in the past week, I have felt almost TANGIBLE negative energy (is this the term?) coming from them... Their actions, it is true only confirmed it, but they have always been the same. But something is telling me to stay away.
This same inner voice had been warning me for months about one of them. Each time I would be on the phone with her and on the verge of telling her private info about myself, I could feel something tugging at my heart and a "stop, stop!"... Sometimes I listened, sometimes I did not.
The jitteriness and the difficult falling asleep started in particular last Sunday, the day I actually felt very CLEARLY this need to avoid these two friends. ...
Then last night, in my dream, I dreamt of the same friend the voice had been warning me about: She was trying to talk to me, and I was just moving away from her, refusing to answer her invitation. I KNEW I had to leave this person. I woke up with my heart racing, and I felt grateful, as if my questions had been answered. I can't remember the rest of the dream unfortunately.

Thanks also for the link to the Awakening info. It is interesting that the neck thing is something I have had for 3 weeks to 1 month now... Crazy and painful stiffness on the right side of my neck. Also, I have been feeling incredibly cold during the day... At night though, I always wake up because of the heat I feel and have to take all my clothes off.

I feel very serene and at peace these days... No feelings of loneliness or depression at all. But yes, I forget to eat or drink, and also my digestive system is like I have never known before.... As if I am high on something!
There is a lot more, but this is not the place nor the board to say it. This post is already too long.
In all cases, Eye of Tiger, blessings and love to you!




PS: actually the anxiety attack thing is a possibility too. I need to see my doctor anyway and will tell her about this (now seeing a doctor here in canada can take a loooooong time...)  

You are always very welcome, and the difficulties you described in seeing a doctor in Canada sound very familiar to me here in South Australia.

Doctors are in imminent danger of becoming an endangered species, even in our neck of the woods.

EOT