Answering the Call of Your Spirit

By Heidi McBratney

Her new book, Answering the Call of your Spirit, is for you and for everyone who has forgotten their original light, the spark inside them.
Within this book, you will come to understand your power. You’ll be gently introduced to a number of practical steps to regain your inner light.
As you work with each Self-Discovery Moment, you’ll begin to build greater resilience to deal with life’s many twists and turns.

Learn how to break free of worries or fears that might have been holding you back.
Once you begin to take action, you’ll naturally tap into your own unique personal power and remember your original mission here on Earth.
Remember: Happiness and peace are part of your birthright. You deserve to shine brightly and be happy!

Praise from Readers for Answering the Call of Your Spirit

“Whether you are on your journey or just beginning, Heidi invites you to embrace your soul, your light, and explore your shadows. The stories and self-discovery-moments guide you as you walk along the path, and you choose the depth in which you engage in the process. Thank you, Heidi, for your guidance on my journey.” – D.S. Toronto.
“I have had the good fortune to sit in circle with Heidi McBratney to both experience and witness the effects of her down-to-earth teachings and exercises. The simple exercises allow participants to focus and get out of their own way and gain new perspectives. I love witnessing the ‘aha’ moments.” – Rev. Gillian Edwards.
“I was recently diagnosed with PTSD, depression, and anxiety with panic attacks, and I was immediately taken off active duty to attempt to manage my mental health. My family referred me to Heidi who helped me process trauma I faced as a Police Officer as well as trauma from my childhood. Heidi guided me to help me retrieve my soul that had been lost for years. She gave me the tools to help me evolve and I’ve been able to return to my career healthier in all aspects: physically, mentally, emotionally, and better equipped to help my community. I can’t thank Heidi enough.” – K.S. Police Officer.
“Working through the concepts in this book is so life-affirming and uplifting! I really appreciate how Heidi’s explanations and personal examples are easy to grasp and how I’ve been able to apply these ideas within my daily life. I have emerged with a clear spiritual compass, now that I know myself, I know my strengths, and I have rediscovered the light of my soul.” – E.C. Communications Professional.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Heidi McBratney
• Release date: Jul 14, 2021
• ISBN: 9781777551414

Heidi McBratney

Heidi McBratney has travelled the world, learning deep insights from elders within different cultures, and from an early age, she felt a call to support and guide others to remember their strength, their light, and their truth. She has been a practitioner in counselling, energy medicine techniques, and teaching for more than 30 years. She has achieved recognition as an expert in traumatic stress, compassion fatigue, and healing the soul back to wholeness.Heidi completed her formal undergraduate education in psychology at York University. She later went on to earn her Masters in Counselling Psychology from The Adler Institute of Professional Psychology. Heidi is a Certified Member of the Ontario Association of Mental Health Professionals, a Diplomate Member of The American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress, and a Compassion Fatigue Specialist through The International Institute of Traumatology.Heidi believes that by supporting one person at a time to remember the light of their soul, this has a ripple effect within that person’s family and community that brings further illumination and peace to the world.

Book preview

In Praise of…

Whether you are already on your journey or just beginning, Heidi invites you to embrace your soul, your light, and explore your shadows. The stories and self-discovery-moments guide you as you walk along the path and you choose the depth in which you engage in the process. Thank you, Heidi, for your guidance on my journey. – D.S. Toronto.

I have had the good fortune to sit in circle with Heidi McBratney to both experience and witness the effects of her down-to-earth teachings and exercises. The simple exercises allow participants to focus and get out of their own way and gain new perspectives. I love witnessing the ‘aha’ moments. – Rev. Gillian Edwards.

I was recently diagnosed with PTSD, depression, and anxiety with panic attacks, and I was immediately taken off active duty to attempt to manage my mental health. My family referred me to Heidi who helped me process trauma I faced as a Police Officer as well as trauma from my childhood. With Heidi, I experienced a spiritual awakening which allowed me to release all of my trauma, which impacted me so profoundly, it was life changing. I believe it would have taken years of traditional therapy to get to this level of healing. Heidi guided me to help me retrieve my soul that had been lost for years. She gave me the tools to help me evolve and I’ve been able to return to my career healthier in all aspects: physically, mentally, emotionally, and better equipped to help my community. I can’t thank Heidi enough. – K.S. Police Officer.

Working through the concepts in this book is so life-affirming and uplifting! I really appreciate how Heidi’s explanations and personal examples are easy to grasp and how I’ve been able to apply these ideas within my daily life. I have emerged with a clear spiritual compass, now that I know myself, I know my strengths, and I have rediscovered the light of my soul. – E.C. Communications Professional.

Answering the Call of Your Spirit

How to wake up and remember the light of your soul

Copyright 2021, Heidi McBratney

Published by Heidi McBratney at Smashwords

ISBN 978-1-7775514-0-7 (print)

ISBN 978-1-7775514-1-4 (ebook)

ISBN 978-1-7775514-2-1 (audio book)

Published in Canada

www.heidimcbratney.com

Cover Illustrations by Gabriela Klessen

Book Cover Design by Carolyn McNall

Back Cover Photo by Nicole Hambleton

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This book is dedicated to all of humankind,

that we each find our truth,

the light of our soul.

Table of Contents

In Praise of…

1. What in the World are You Waiting for?

Self-Discovery Moment # 1: Remembering Your Light

2. Breaking Free into Aliveness

Self-Discovery Moment # 2: If You Were Fully Alive

3. Surrendering to Claim Your Light

Self-Discovery Moment # 3: Moving to a New Neighbourhood

4. How to Know if it is Your Mind or Your Soul Guiding You

Self-Discovery-Moment # 4: Breathing Life

Self-Discovery-Moment # 5: Greeting the Day

Self-Discovery-Moment # 6: Walking with Awareness

5. Lessons in Listening to Your Body, Mind, and Soul

Self-Discovery Moment # 7: Noticing Your Power to Create

Self-Discovery Moment # 8: Using the Past to Build a New Future

6. Surrendering to Your Spirit to Heal Yourself

Self-Discovery Moment # 9: Greeting the Community Within

Self-Discovery Moment # 10: Supporting the Community Within

7. Becoming a Living Example of Oneness and Wholeness

Self-Discovery Moment # 11: Viewing Life from an Eagle’s Perspective

8. Being Wisdom

Self-Discovery Moment # 12: Becoming Like the Fisherman

9. Bringing Illumination Within and Without

Self-Discovery Moment # 13: Bringing Your Darkness into The Light

10. The Call of Spirit

Self-Discovery Moment # 14: Envisioning Your Garden of Life

11. A Message from Spirit

Self-Discovery Moment # 15: Birthing into Your Spirit

12. Becoming a Channel of Love, Light, and Life

Self-Discovery Moment # 16: Where Have I Been?

Self-Discovery Moment # 17: A New Birth

13. Access to All the Support We Require

Self-Discovery Moment # 18: Building Awareness and Connection

Self-Discovery Moment # 19: Receiving Support and Guidance

Self-Discovery Moment # 20: Accessing Wisdom

14. Claiming Our Place Amongst Creation

Self-Discovery Moment # 21: Where am I in Relation to the Fire?

Self-Discovery Moment # 22: Connecting to Your Light and Wisdom

15. The Ultimate Truth About Transformation

About Heidi McBratney

Acknowledgments

1. What in the World are You Waiting for?:

Are you in search of the perfect answers to all your worries and daily problems? Wouldn’t you love to fully understand what your life is all about and why you’re here? And while you’re at it, why not order a big dose of control over your life and your emotions, so you can better handle the whammies that keep coming your way?

If you feel this way, you are not alone. Just about everyone is seeking these things. In my healing practice every day, I hear people say they want to feel happier and more confident. They want to regain their physical health, mental health, and spiritual health.

On this path, so many people are constantly on the search for meaning, answers, purpose, and inner peace. They feel depressed or stuck, so they pick up another self-help book. They are fearful about their future, so they sign up for the next great workshop. They come home after an impossible day and they can’t wait to tune into their favorite guru to soothe them. They try hot yoga, cold juices, and warm puppies, anything goes!

I know there are literally thousands of kinds of alternative health and wellness ideas out there. On this earth today, and on the internet, you can easily spend your whole life looking for the one single ultimate solution, the one thing that puts everything right. But is there really a magical something out there, outside ourselves, that will improve our lives and be the one perfect answer to everything. Is that what you’ve been looking for and waiting for?

I think we’d all like to find that quick fix, but personal transformation just doesn’t work that way. More often, what happens is that people become bone-weary of the searching process. By the time they come to my healing space, they can barely get out of their own way. Too often, they tell me they are ready to just chuck everything that’s not working in their lives and give up. But it doesn’t have to come to that. If you’ve picked up this book, you may be ready to take a new look at the big picture, so let me jump in and see if what I’m presenting speaks to you.

Exploring Self-Discovery Moments

I have a different approach to offer you, one that you might not have yet fully embraced or considered. I propose that what’s really been happening is that you feel unsettled and unhappy because your Spirit has been calling out to you and you haven’t figured out a practical way to respond.

When you don’t respond, you remain stuck. Your life, emotions, and health start to spin even more and more out of control, and your Spirit keeps getting more insistent. Here’s what’s going on: you are being called by your Spirit to remember the light that is within you, the light you were born with, the light of your soul. When you remember your inner light, the uneasy fears you have will subside. Once you regain that light, you’ll have found a way to deal with your life so that you love each day, rather than just barely surviving.

The good news is that rediscovering the spark of your true self is easier than you think. I have guided others through this process, and I’ve been called by my Spirit to put these ideas in one place, one time, in this book. The process works because each individual who follows along is called to do their own inner work themselves, and that makes all the difference.

Let me share here that parts of what I’m proposing may sound familiar to some of you. Clearly, a number of these ideas are universal and are spoken about by many different spiritual leaders and personal development gurus around the world.

But overall, I have found that the particular series of 22 Self-Discovery Moments that I present in this book, are the best way I know of to gain a full understanding of your life, control your emotions, and attain your goals. These are 22 techniques or tools that I have been teaching for years, and when you embrace and practice each one, in order and with passion, you’ll find a blueprint to personal mastery that works because it ultimately comes from within yourself.

So yes, the good news is that your exhausting outside search is over. It took you this far and it took you to this book and this process I’m proposing. As you proceed through the chapters, personally trying each of the techniques, you’ll gradually gain mastery as you learn these new ways of approaching your complicated life.

Why stay stuck in a dead-end relationship or a job that isn’t working? Why dread getting up each day to face the same old frustrations and fears? Why continue to worry about the meaning of your life and if you’re living up to your full potential? The frustration and overwhelm is over. It is truly time for a new light to shine.

How Transformation Works

Let’s face it, we are all going through transformation on a daily basis whether we are aware of it or not. We go through different developmental stages from infant to toddler to child and so on. As adults, we are constantly in flux, sometimes as a response to outside influences and other times, we are actively seeking to create change.

We make decisions to change where we live, get a new job, or we might just try a new style of clothes or a daring haircut. We have the inner capacity to make these decisions and in our drive for constant renewal and transformation, we are like everything in the natural world around us. For example, trees sprout from seeds and grow. Their leaves and branches offer beautiful colours in the fall. In winter, those same trees may have no leaves and be storing up their life force as if they were hibernating until they are ready to emerge totally new in the spring.

Many of those trees will be taller and fuller when they bud out in the spring. Yet others may have lost some branches through the harshness of winter. However, despite the outside influences, each tree continues to find ways to grow.

As humans, we also find ways to grow. Sometimes we create transformation purposefully in our lives, because we are clear on what we want and we go for it. At other times, dramatic change will come upon us quite by surprise, through a happy event or something traumatic. This book is an honouring all of our humanness, and the many aspects within us that are movable, flexible, and wonderous.

Be ready to explore the amazingness of the physical body, which we know is both fragile and highly resilient. I often teach people about how the body supports us every day and the critical role it takes in our transformative process. Too many people take their bodies for granted, pushing their physical bodies to the limit, but I’m going to explain a much better approach to your physical health and well-being.

Then we have the most amazing computer ever built, and that is our mind. The human mind is programmed for survival, and it can deal with huge challenges from our environment and our experiences. The mind constantly computes information that guides us through our life and in its totality, the mind serves a complex purpose, which we will go into and explore.

To round out our given strengths, we have the brilliance of our soul. Our soul, which is sometimes also called our Spirit, is our life force that is always present and available. Our soul speaks to us and calls us to follow its guidance. In the whole of our human matrix, we also have our emotions and feelings which guide us to understand our likes and dislikes. Our emotions can challenge us to grow, to withdraw, and to reach deeply inward for our truth and light.

What is that Voice Saying?

Have you ever wondered what is speaking in your head when ideas pop up? Is it your rationale mind or your ever-lasting soul or something else altogether? Within this book, be prepared to finally understand what all that chatter in your mind and body is about because once you do, your life will begin to open up like never before. As you work with the various inner parts of your life and gain mastery of your own inner processing, you can tackle anything the world may throw at you!

I truly believe that you will find in these pages inspiration and openings that will give you the willingness, determination, and belief that you are, at your very essence, a brilliant light. You are more than ready and completely capable of answering the call of your Spirit to uncover that light, and the actions you take are so worth the investment of your time and energy.

You will explore some of your difficult emotions and perhaps have some uncertain feelings along the way as you undergo your own transformation, but it is worth it. The Self-Discovery Moments are gently written to support you and as you try them and work with them, you will feel your inner strength and natural resilience returning.

After all, life itself is a process of constant change. Let yourself take a few moments right now to reflect on your past life experiences. As you do this, some events or experiences will spring to mind that were full of joy and happy growth. Other memories could well have been horrendous or traumatic, and then of course, like all humans, you have everything in between these two extremes. It is the combination of all of your life experience that have formed you and have brought you to this point where you are being called to further exploration. It is my honour to walk with you in this book as you work out what your life has meant, what it means now, and the glory you can experience moving forward with your new tools in hand.

Reaching for a Greater Understanding

Once you understand the bigger picture of your life, you will find that there is no reason to remain stuck or fearful of your past life experiences. Whether they were dark and heavy or light and uplifting, they all are simply opportunities or reference points for you to recognize the call of your Spirit. Your Spirit, which is your soul, has your back 100% of the time and it wants you to survive and thrive. In fact, you were built to thrive, and you have within you, all the resilience, strength, and survival instinct to truly live your life joyously and create the world you want to live in.

If we are truthful, we are all experiencing life both collectively and at the same time, individually. Collectively, we are all impacting each other, and we can witness this in everyday life. At the same time, we experience life individually. How we feel, think, and perceive is unique to our self. Your transformation will always be unique to you even if others around you are going through a similar experience.

As you begin to recognize and embrace your light, your Spirit supports you through all your life transitions and transformations. You are a life force and as you embark on this next stage in your journey, you are choosing to actively awaken, remember, and engage your life force, the light of your soul. At the time of writing this book, all of humanity was being challenged with transformation as a result of a world pandemic. Whether people believe in the pandemic or not, it is a life experience that has impacted everyone in many different ways. We each are having to source within ourselves, and within our Spirit, to find our way through something overwhelming and unknown.

I am happy to offer these proven tools to help you through the dark times you may be experiencing now, collectively and individually, but know that your inner light is closer than you think! Each chapter takes you gently through a process of reflection and growth, and I invite you to really embrace and try each technique, as many times as you would like, until you start to see, feel, remember, and rejoice in the light of your soul. What are you waiting for? Here we go.

Self-Discovery Moment # 1: Remembering Your Light

For this first activity, obtain a photograph of yourself as an infant if you can. If you don’t have an actual photo of yourself, you can use a stock image or sketch of an innocent infant or just imagine yourself as a baby, brand new to this world. You will have had many life experiences from the time of your birth to the present moment. Some of these were good and happy experiences but you also had to face some horrible and traumatic things, plus everything in between.

The aim of this Self-Discovery Moment is for you to be in the purity and the light of the infant that we once were. Find a quiet spot, in your home or in a natural setting, and take a few deep breaths to centre yourself. Now look at the picture and focus on the eyes of the infant, your infant self. Allow yourself to have the experience that you were once that infant and you were full of light. You had purity and clarity that was not shaded by life experiences.

Let your body, your emotions, and your Spirit experience the sensations of being the eyes of light. Stay in the moment and really feel the lightness and joy.

This is a simple but powerful activity. You are on your own unique spiritual journey each day in your life. As you begin to explore and work with the concepts in this book, you are unlearning the old programs caused by trauma and strife. You are called to actively remember and ignite the true programs of your original light and brilliance.

Your cells and your brain remember everything. As humans, at any time in our development, we are able to actively re-initiate the internal program that our soul had when we entered this earth. We remember with joy that we are the eyes of light.

As you take this moment, you are not learning something brand new. You are merely remembering what was once known to you. Feel free to return to this activity at any time that you want to reconnect with the lightness of your infant self. Come back to it at any point you feel called to do so.

2. Breaking Free into Aliveness

Have you ever noticed that we as humans are the only ones who have forgotten our aliveness and who we really are? When we look out into our world, it seems that all other things know how to be in their aliveness. How do we know this is true? And what can we learn from this truth?

Consider first the order of the natural world. Water knows how to be water or ice or humidity. It allows itself to transform into whatever is present in the moment. Trees know their original truth. They don’t question whether they are an oak tree or a pine tree or a Baobab tree. They just know that they are and move forward on the quest for their seeds to break open, become rooted in the ground, and seek the nutrients that are required in order for them to grow.

Birds follow their aliveness whether they need to nestle from the weather at that moment or to fly in the ethers of the air, or to seek food, or to build a nest to