Spiritual Surrender

by Todd Schaefer -

We may think that ‘surrender’ and ‘giving up’ mean the same thing. But when we consider these two terms from a spiritual perspective, they are quite different.

‘Giving up’ is just what it sounds like – giving up, or quitting. However, ‘surrender’ (spiritual surrender) is letting go and accepting what is happening in our lives right now.

Spiritual surrender is a doorway to an entirely different type of living. Surrender means gracefully accepting and going with the flow of our lives. Some may think that surrendering means that we must sacrifice, or that we must accept that we can’t have what we want. This is entirely untrue. We can still choose what we want to have in our lives. The difference with surrender, however, is that after we’ve made our desired choice, we allow it to arrive to us in faith at exactly the right time, place and fashion which serve our highest and best good.

Surrender is not a concept that our ego favors because it requires patience and trust. At first, we begin surrendering only a few of our choices to the Universe. After some practice and developed trust, we may decide to surrender some bigger things – like the directions of our careers and our relationships. When we become very spiritually attuned to surrendering, we allow it to become our natural state of being, guiding all aspects of our lives. This means that every moment we live we walk in a state of surrender, trusting that everything which occurs – from the mundane to the extraordinary – is in divine right order.

Is it possible to accept that without our pushing and struggling, life will naturally and gently move us forward? The ego would not have us believe this, but letting go more often instead of attempting to control every aspect of our lives will actually promote deeper acceptance of ourselves, our friends and families, and our life situations.

We worry so much, don’t we? Under the surface of any given day, there are countless things on our minds, most of which never arrive to the surface of our consciousness, but rather, arrive to us as an underlying feeling of angst or mild emotional discomfort. We may not always know what it is, but we can feel when it’s there.

When we put our attention in this moment, without worrying about the next thing which may happen, we are creating ‘presence.’ When we choose to remain present despite thoughts that lead us out of the present moment, we are consciously surrendering to the moment, or spiritually surrendering. ‘Surrender’ and ‘presence’ are very closely related. Surrendering creates presence - and presence leads us into wanting to surrender more.

Our conscious focus on what is right in front of us is always the best thing for our growth. It may not be glamorous, but there’s always a reason for the condition of the present moment. As we practice following that thread of the present moment, we find that we begin to feel better, and our lives flow more naturally into the next moment. It can be quite easy to fall victim to the belief that something else, or someone else, or somewhere else is better for us. We tend to project ourselves into those moments, which unfortunately, we have no control over now.

Placing ourselves where we are not – whether projecting into the future and past or creating cosmetic substitutions for ourselves - we almost always lead ourselves to disillusion and dissatisfaction. Our projection of ourselves into somewhere or something that we are naturally not, causes (energetic) misalignment.

We are no strangers to the types of neuroses of the mind and ailments of the body which can develop when we subject ourselves to any misalignment for extended periods of time. The process is always the same – energetic misalignment first, manifested misalignment second. Whether mild or severe, these misalignments eventually have a wear and tear effect on our feelings. For example, when focusing on the past or future for too long instead of the present, we tend feel somewhat desensitized or empty in our feelings. Things that used to feel full and fresh to us begin to fade. The more non-present we become, the more prone we are to seek outer stimuli to compensate for this lack of presence and feeling.

Our spirit knows, and tells us when we are out of alignment in our feelings. It’s built in – we can’t screw this up. When we’re out of alignment, we don’t feel good. When we are in alignment, we do feel good. When we don’t have the answers, our feelings still guide us correctly and appropriately. A deep, built-in technology in us always knows the appropriate direction to lead us – but we must surrender in order to access it fully.

There is infinite intelligence in our feelings, intelligence that transcends the boundaries of time and space. This intelligence will always be superior to the mind in functionality, efficiency and effectiveness. Feelings are products of the soul and spirit - emotions are products of the mind. Feelings are based on our inherent, deep inner truth; emotions are literally “disturbances.” Silencing the mind can assist us in reaching our feelings which sometimes reside beneath the surface of our consciousness, depending on our alignment. And surrender, of course, is the first step in silencing the mind.

Surrender is an easy concept to understand but difficult to live. Studying and living surrender quickly brings to awareness what we are dealing with – trusting versus controlling, believing versus manipulating, having faith versus having problems.

You will notice as we observe the mind that we teach it how to have problems, and spend the rest of our lives mentally overcoming them. Surrendering, however, will transcend the programming of the mind by literally creating an energetic accordance between what is truthfully you and what is just another product of the mind. In other words, we can’t expect to create a real solution at the level of the mind, when the mind created the problem. Our surrendering, our going higher, our accessing of a higher energy and consciousness is what creates a solution. This will be truthful for any problem’s solution: In order to have a “real” solution, we must come from an energy that is higher than the problem. Ergo, if we want real change, we must access a part of us that is bigger than the mind. Surrendering and silencing the mind will promote the awareness that we are more than our mind, and we are not bound by its limitation and control over our consciousness.

Surrender is for everyone. The technology that surrender puts us into touch with is built into us all, and our expanding consciousness is the result – awareness. Awareness is the reason, the birthright of everyone: the young and the old, the unreligious and the religious, the uneducated and the educated. Surrender is a natural state for anyone to achieve and maintain.

The nature of life itself begins to transform as the ego-mind’s dominance over the spirit recedes. Feelings become clearer, truth becomes more evident, regular guidance seems more accessible; miracles seem less miraculous and more ordinary; and a deeper love and trust in ourselves is the natural result of this ever-growing connection that we nurture as we evolve through surrender and being present.

Be courageous. Surrender to what is. Accept the flow. Silence your mind. Raise your awareness. Evolve your consciousness. Fall more in love with yourself. Follow your joy and guidance – all in that order, if you wish. Observe the connection between the ego-mind’s inability to surrender control compared to the freedom available beyond its self-imposed limitation. Life wants to give you everything that you will allow yourself to receive. With the natural relinquishment of fear through surrender, trust becomes easy, and love naturally rushes in to meet you as you go higher with Source.

soulsolutionshealing.com

Getting Through Times Of Adversity

by Linda Furiate -

If one thing is for certain, each of us will experience some form of adversity while we are still breathing on this Earth. Unfortunately, some of us will experience more than our fair share of adversity, either in the workplace or in our personal lives.

Over the years, I feel I have been fortunate to experience unpleasant and often times, life-altering situations. Although at times I find it difficult to sustain a positive attitude while working through adverse situations, whether it be the lose of a job, a relationship breakup, looked over for a promotion or battling a major health issue, I know deep down that by working through and learning to find purpose and meaning in these situations is where I will encounter my greatest triumphs.

I have often said we may "go through adversity", but we may not know how to "get through adversity." Each time I experience something unpleasant I ask myself "what can I learn from this situation and how has my past behavior contributed to my current state?" Instead of burying my head in the sand just waiting for time to pass, or the Universe to forget about the situation, I actively work through the adversity, which helps ease the pain and frustration.

As I assess what I have learned and how I have grown through the years, I have shaped 10 survival strategies that have allowed me to get through the tough times. They include:

Ten Survival Strategies

* Patience - This could be the hardest of all to achieve although one of the first thing we must develop when faced with adversity. The key to developing patience is to know in the end everything will work out the way it is intended to. Also key to developing patience is surrendering your self to the fact that there is a time frame for everything. I like to use the analogy - that if you want to have a baby even though you (or your wife) may be pregnant you still have to wait the gestation period before the baby actually arrives.

* Forgiveness - Forgive the other person for wronging you. By not allowing yourself to forgive you utilize a great deal of negative energy as you harbor old thoughts and feelings. Learn to forgive and use this same energy in a positive way to take back your life. While forgiving the other person make certain you forgive your self for any misgivings or shortcomings, otherwise half the negative energy still remains.

* Acceptance - Accept the hand you were dealt - even a pair deuces can win the game.

* Thankfulness - Be thankful for the adversity. Adversity is God's way of saying you are worthy of my teachings.

* Detachment - We have all heard the phrase "If you love something, set it free. If it comes back to you it is yours. If it doesn't, it never was." If something is meant to be a part of your life, it will materialize, so there is no need to desperately hold onto anything.

* Understanding: Why This vs. Why Me? - I feel our first inclination when something negative happens to us we ask "why me?" Normally asking this question doesn't provide any answers other than making us feel guilty for having asked it in the first place. Really, why not you? No one is immune to pain. Simply reword the question and ask "why this?" By asking "why this" it typically leads us to understanding our past thoughts and actions that may have (karmically) contributed to our current state, allowing us to get to the root of the situation.

* Meditation or Quiet Time - It is only in the silence can we hear God's voice. Allow for quiet time to reflect up your desires and listen closely and intently to what is happening all around you. You will find your answers in the silence.

* Maintain a Creative Mind - Eliminate boredom otherwise it will lead you toward frustration and depression. Take up a hobby, do some writing, volunteer your time or spend time with friends and family. Any, or all of this, will make you feel good about yourself, allowing you to want to move forward.

* Work Toward the Future - Even if you do not feel things are moving forward, work on creating the future you desire. You can plant tiny seeds by going back to school, read material that is related to your desires, commit by writing out your goals and desires or network with like-minded people. Each step you take, no matter how small moves you toward your future.

* Trust - Let Go and let God. All we really have control over is our actions and a gut feeling (or hearts desire) of what we hope the outcome of our lives to be. The rest is up to a higher power greater than our own. Trust the Universe will provide you with exactly what you need when you need it.

healing.about.com

Mind, Body and Healing

by Vishwas Madhuvarshi -

Faith and Healing - In a classic 1950 study, many pregnant women suffering from severe morning sickness were prescribed syrup of ipecac, a vomiting inducing substance, but were told it was a new, powerful cure for nausea. Amazingly, the women ceased vomiting.

Want and Belief - “It is part of the cure to want to be cured”, Stoic Lucius Seneca said. This phrase could be rewritten as ‘It is part of the cure to want to be cured and to have a belief in the cure‘.

These women not only wanted to be cured but they also believed in the powerful new drug offered. Chemically, the medicine that was supposed to induce vomiting had completely opposite effect because that matched the patient’s belief. This study indicated that there is a strong mind-body connection and body follows that mind accepts.

“Expectation is a powerful thing,” says Robert DeLap, M.D., head of one of the Food and Drug Administration’s Offices of Drug Evaluation. “The more you believe you’re going to benefit from a treatment, the more likely it is that you will experience a benefit. ”

The Placebo Effect - Another trial for a drug targeting ‘chronic fatigue syndrome’ was conducted at National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease in 1995 by Dr Stephen Straus, M.D. and colleagues. A ‘very significantly impaired’ woman recovered miraculously after being administered the new potent drug. She was very weak, could not work and had to stay home most of the time before the treatment. She and her parents were very happy with recovery and blessed the researchers for this wonder drug. Later, it turned out that the woman’s impressive recovery from chronic fatigue occurred after taking placebo or look-alike pills, not the experimental drug.

Again, this woman had a strong belief in the new drug and she desperately wanted to be cured of CFS that had crippled her. Her mind believed in the new drug’s ability to cure and her body followed what the mind believed.

“Most of the history of medicine is the history of the placebo effect,” observes Dr Herbert Benson in his book “Timeless Healing”.

“Psychologist Bruno Klopfer was treating a man named Wright who had advanced cancer of the lymph nodes. All standard treatments had been exhausted and Wright appeared to have little time left. His neck, armpits, chest, abdomen, and groin were filled with tumors the size of oranges, and his spleen and liver were so enlarged that two quarts of milky fluid had to be drainedout of his chest every day.

Wright heard about an exciting new drug called Krebiozen, and he begged his doctor to let him try it. At first the doctor refused because the drug was being tried on people with a life expectancy of at least three months. Finally the doctor gave in and gave Wright an injection of Krebiozen on Friday, but in his heart of hearts he did not expect Wright to last the weekend.

“To his surprise, on the following Monday he found Wright out of bed and walking around. Klopfer reported that his tumors had ‘melted like snowballs on a hot stove’ and were half their original size. Ten days after Wright’s first treatment, he left the hospital and was, as far as his doctors could tell, cancer free. When he entered the hospital he had needed an oxygen mask to breathe, but when he left, he was well enough to fly his own plane at 12,000 feet with no discomfort.

“Wright remained well for about two months, but then articles began to appear asserting that Krebiozen actually had no effect on cancer of the lymph nodes. Wright, who was rigidly logical and scientific in his thinking, became very depressed, suffered a relapse, and was readmitted to the hospital. This time his physician decided to try an experiment. He told Wright that Krebiozen was every bit as effective as it had seemed, but that some of the initial supplies of the drug had deteriorated during shipping. He explained, however, that he had a new highly concentrated version of the drug and could treat Wright with this. The physician used only plain water and went through an elaborate procedure before injecting Wright with the placebo.

“Again the results were dramatic. Tumor masses melted, chest fluid vanished, and Wright was quickly back on his feet and feeling great. He remained symptom-free for another two months, but then the AMA announced that a nationwide study of Krebiozen had found the drug worthless for the treatment of cancer. This time Wright’s faith was completely shattered. His cancer blossomed anew and he died two days later. ” (Brono Klopfer, Psychological Variables in Human Cancer, Journal of Prospective Techniques 31, 1957, pp. 331-40. )

Mind-Body Connection - Our mind and beliefs affect the body and the healing process. In 1981 neurobiologist David Felten and his team of researchers at Indiana University School of Medicine discovered the connection between body’s immune system and the central nervous system that is under control of the brain.

Felten’s team discovered a network of nerves leading to blood vessels as well as to cells of the immune system using fluorescent stains to trace nerves to bone marrow, lymph nodes and the spleen. They also found nerves in the thymus and spleen terminating near clusters of lymphocytes and mast cells, all of which help control immune function.

In simpler terms, they found the direct wiring that exists between mind and immune system. This discovery of mind-body connection meant that mind has the ability to communicate and direct body’s immune-system cells depending upon its belief system.

Benefiting With The Knowledge - Impact of this discovery is visible in many treatment centers where holistic healing is now offered as treatment. There is a new branch of religious preachers trained in healthcare known as “Health Care Chaplains”. Their job: To be the spiritual care specialist on the healthcare team who has the training necessary to treat spiritual distress in all its forms. Meditation is an integral part of treatment of chronic diseases at many hospitals now.

We can use the mind-body connection to keep healthy and be healthy again after manifestation of any disease. The key to good health and cure, as discussed earlier is ‘to want and to believe’. To want to be healthy is natural and easier but belief in a cure may or may not come naturally. With all kinds of information about terminal diseases coming from health workers, newspapers and internet working against our belief system, having faith is easier said than done. That is where mind tools like meditation and hypnosis can help.

We all have healing powers and can use them to heal ourselves and others but it manifests in equal proportion of our faith in it. There are several healing techniques that help us manifest these healing powers. Prisualization (prayer+visualization) is one of them. I’ll discuss this technique in one of my forthcoming blogs. In the meantime, you may read about and practice this technique at my website iliveeasy.com

iliveeasy.com/blog

The Embodiment of Love

by Robert Rabbin -

We are each expressions of a fundamental reality, an essence that some call God, some spirit, some consciousness, some love. It doesn’t matter what you call it. It doesn’t care. It is beyond names. But it is real, and thus we all belong to the same family. My blood is the same as yours, my heart is the same as yours, my body is the same as yours. We seem to stand apart from each other, but our essence is one. We only seem to be different, but we are all parts of a whole. Naturally, whatever any one part does touches and affects the whole. If we think that we do not effect the whole, we are wrong. We can say that whatever we do to ourselves, we do to each other: each action is a stone thrown into the pond of our common existence. Within minutes, or hours, or days we will feel the ripples of our actions wash over everything. This is why we cannot war our way to peace, because the killing keeps coming back. We have to wage peace, not war. And then peace will keep coming back.

Not only do we belong as brother and sister to other human beings, but we belong as brother and sister to all living things. We are not meant to dominate other creatures or the Earth, though we behave as though we are. This wrong thinking is based on the idea of separation, of being independent from the whole. This wrong thinking leads us to believe we are entitled to do anything we please, to usurp Nature for our own purposes. We are not entitled to do as we please. We must live within the law of universal truth, within the heart where we are all brothers and sisters under one roof, in one house, with one father and mother.

The crux of wisdom is the experience of Oneness. This is not an idea or a theory or an ideal. It is the most salient fact of the mystical experience and it is universally true. We each exist as expressions of the same fundamental reality. We are each unique expressions, yes, but of the same essence. This is both spiritually true and practically true: whatever we do to another, we do to ourselves. Every thought, every word, every slight touch of our hand sends energetic impulses racing outward on the trillions of strands of connective tissue that enfolds us all in the One. To believe otherwise is the source of all suffering and violence and pollution on this Earth.

It is not just the belief in separation that creates problems. Beliefs in general separate us from the whole of existence and lock us into the prison of our thoughts. Thoughts, beliefs, concepts — these are tools to navigate the limited, physical plane of reality. They are not in any way capable of understanding the limitless truth, which must be felt with the heart. We cannot think our way through life, we have to love our way through life. The biggest problem in the world today is that people have come to believe that what they think is what is real. This is wrong.

Reality — truth — lies between thoughts, behind beliefs, before concepts. Truth is revealed in Silence, and Silence restores our connection to the whole. This is where humility comes from: Silence. Silence reveals that our thoughts do not describe reality, they hide reality. We must listen to Silence. Silence is where our conscience is born, where we rediscover that love is our essence, and where we remember that true happiness lies not in personal fulfillment, but in service to others, and thus to our true Self, the Self in which all exist as One, in which all life is our life. Silence is where the arguments and arrogance of egocentric living are dissolved as salt into the sea of wisdom.

When we come to the end of our life, we are likely to have misgivings. This is because the purpose of life is to realize, consciously, that we are the embodiments of love; and many of us have not sought to realize this. When we realize that we are a manifestation and embodiment of love, we become full and complete from the inside. All of our materialistic pursuits are called into question, and we find that we need far less than we might have thought. We realize we don’t have to live in a state of constant becoming and acquiring.

Within each moment we find peace and deep contentment, which are inherent in our essential being. With peace and deep contentment filling us from within each moment, we do not need to manipulate external circumstances to attain happiness. We do not have to tear at the fabric of life. We do not have to be greedy. We do not have to be afraid we will not have enough, or be enough, or do enough. We can live simply. We can simply live. Once we recognize who we are — underneath all the thoughts, ideas, and beliefs we hold about who we are — this will happen naturally.

With peace and contentment filling us from within, we open without effort to the surrounding beauty. We have created a lot of ugliness to be sure, but underneath that is the natural beauty of life itself. Life is so beautiful. Everything is alive! The same conscious presence that lives within you lives equally within all. Is it not amazing to feel the living spirit in this way? You feel yourself in others. You feel yourself in all that exists. Feeling this, how can you harm others? How can you not feel the fear, or suffering, or despair of others? How can you throw ugliness onto beauty? We cannot do these things anymore.

Feeling is the key. Feelings and emotions are not the same. Emotions are mind states like jealousy, anger, and fear. Emotions are sponsored by thoughts. Feelings are sponsored by the heart and are signs of wisdom: love, awe, joy, wonder, beauty, connectedness. Feelings are the consciousness of the heart. The heart feels, the mind does not. The heart is alive, the mind is inert. The heart experiences, the mind conceptualizes. The heart joins, the mind separates. This is why we must emphasize heart, not mind. If we do not live from our heart, we will be unable to account for our own actions, because all our thoughts will be in the way. We will be victims of our own thinking, looking elsewhere for the one “who did us in.” It is no one but us.

Our thoughts are good servants, but terrible masters. Our thinking must reflect the wisdom of our heart. We cannot allow the mind and its constant stream of thoughts, beliefs, and concepts to persuade us that the heart is not real, or true, or useful. It is indeed the only thing that is. We have forgotten this, and now we must remember.

We are all born as embodiments of love. We are all born with this knowledge; it is not lost, only ignored; not forgotten, only disregarded. What we once knew can be known again, right now. We have only to enter our heart to remember who we are. I entered my heart, and I remembered what I once knew. I remembered light coming from everywhere. I remembered peace coming from everywhere. And love, such love, the kind of love that dissolves all fear and separation and anger. The kind of love that fills us with forgiveness and peace and compassion.

What else? Just this: Every human being wants to touch and taste the same happiness, the same goodness. And so we are all joined together, we are all as one in our desire for happiness and wholeness and love. This is ours, from the beginning. This is what I remember; this is what I know; this is what my heart teaches me: all things are sacred; do not harm or kill others; do not pollute natural beauty.

Love created this universe and it is the nourishing nectar of all creation. Love is heart and pulse, yes; but love is tendon, too, in that it binds all existence together into one body. I am one who has remembered that love is the power of creation itself, love is the world, love is the law to which we must all surrender. All of creation comes from love, is sustained by love, and returns to love.

As the embodiments of love, how shall we live? What shall we do and what shall we not do? How shall we live? How shall we demonstrate what we know, deep in our heart? How are we to make real in this world what moves silently within us all? It is not enough to ask and answer, Who am I? That is only half the equation of wisdom. The other half is to ask and answer, How shall I live? But answer slowly, and deeply. The first shout is likely not it. You’ve got to get down below the surface.

How shall I live? is the question that brings us from the mountaintop of inner realization to the valley of daily living. Here, in the valley of daily living, is where our realization is polished and tested. This is where we show ourselves, where we tell the truth about our love and loves, where we finally make sense of the whole thing not in words and ideas and theories, but in the simple way we touch living things. In our daily living is where we demonstrate what we know about being an embodiment of love.

Yes, love is a feeling, but it requires action to become complete, to become whole, to become realized. What actions will we take, moment to moment, in our daily lives, that demonstrate our love?

robertrabbin.com

Spiral of Awakening

by Yael and Doug Powell -

I Am Everything - Just as the waves of Love are ever moving through the cosmos, so is life ever expressing through your heart. Your heart is the essence of your essential nature. It is where the truth I Am comes forth to meet the world. It is only when you are in your heart that you are engaged in the living cosmos, that you are available for Love, not only to use you, but to be how I appear, here, now, in this space as point of focus that is you.

As you awake, you open to expansion, leaving behind all of your perception of limits, reaching far beyond the idea of life in a body and becoming truly a universal citizen. This is where I meet you. I meet you in freedom, in freedom that is the song that has your name, mixing with the universe and tasting eternal life. It accords the thrumming, dancing vibration that is the expression of My truth everywhere.

I Am here as the voice within you and I Am here as the endless silence that is filled with the richness of My presence and the infusion of Love as your only true identity ever. Yet, it can only be experienced now in the living presence by the open heart that lives joyously. Thus, I come to encourage you, each of you precious hearts, to leap out of the limitation and safety of your contracted life and to embrace life so openly that you become this communion. I come to assure you that consciousness is all you are and it is unlimited. The heart is the truth of how you are made and is your only true instrument of perception when it is fully open.

Each of you must choose again and again on this spiral of awakening to push through the ego's urge to constrict you, to grab on to your heart and affirm this as your identity. Choose to make the heart your perception, your focus and you will find yourself immersed as consciousness in the unlimited and Love as the true identity, focused here and now as your ability to give and thus, to live life as a celebration of openness and trust in the flow.

If you trust your heart to be that which is your interface between the vastness, the silence that is unlimited and the pure expression of Love that is your focus and thus, your identity...then, you will become a being of inclusive joy, able to experience every nuance of life, to recognize each atom as a living presence, to be the song of life as it rushes forth, with ecstasy. To be My passionate out-reach...while at the same time, the living Now...to be the heart of Love that is forever the open conduit for the substance of which I Am made to be focused as you.

This is a reminder once again to choose heart perception and to choose it fiercely. I call you to the unlimited life, and I ask you to make this your commitment. Ask your heart to show you an experience of the living cosmos all at once without any interpretation from the mind. While some might call this living in the silence, you will find that it is so full that it is everything. It is the food that shall ever feed your spirit, the spark of life that moves you forth and the power of the energy of Creation that completes the circuit from Me to you and sets you free.

But you must choose to live with heart perception. If you find yourself aligned with the limited ego, with the stories of the "little I"...it is yours to make the shift to open your heart and to choose a different experience of life, to choose inclusiveness and freedom and joy, and the ability to feel the ocean of Love, to drink life from the rush of the Light of the living hologram. You will know all there is to know, all at once by being immersed in the sea of continuity, alive to the nuances of grace, fed by the River of Life as experience, the "en-conscious-ment" of Creation itself.

Yet in the midst of this endless rich activity, in the midst of all the electrons of Light, you have the choice to focus on eternity or to focus on the limited ego world. Every choice brings you your experience of life. As you choose expansiveness and the open heart, you will come to feel the language of ecstasy. Your heart will speak with every glorious atom and instantly, you will know all things at once. The rich silence that is the basis for all movement shall live within your being to support all the explosive energy moving through you that you might be the open consciousness of God I Am, the freedom of My spirit and the heart through which I love.

circleoflight. net

How to Make a Difference Today

by Alex Blackwell -

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” - Anne Frank

We may not solve every problem we encounter or always find the right words to say in a challenging situation, but we do have the ability to make a difference today. When our focus is how we can make a positive impact, just one helpful action today, then we really can change the world - one day at a time.

Making a difference has no scale. It could be saying the encouraging words someone in our life needs to hear or it could be agreeing to do a chore no else wants to do. Making a difference means to provide whatever resources we have to improve every life we touch.

These improvements can be measured in buckets or they can be measured in teaspoons. The point isn’t really to measure them at all, only to provide them. When we do, we can make a difference today.

* Say “Thank you. ” Say “Thank you,” to anyone who has helped you or has made your day easier. This will show respect and acknowledge the efforts of others. Appreciation will be returned to you in abundance.

* Perform one act of random kindness. Hold the elevator door open for someone who is a few steps behind you or lift the bag and place it in the overhead bin on the airplane for someone who is struggling with this task. Kindness creates more kindness for everybody to receive.

* Listen. Listen, really listen to someone. Listen without judgments or criticism. Try to avoid any self-referencing and be fully present for whoever needs it and for as long as they need it.

* Focus. Focus on one thing at a time. We can’t be all things to all people, and when we try, we sometimes find our effort becomes diluted and less effective.

* Say “No” more often. This may sound counterproductive, but it’s all about setting realistic boundaries for yourself. Show honor for your personal beliefs and convictions by not compromising who you are. Save your energy for the people and tasks that are the most important to you .

* Say, “I love you. ” Say “I love you” to the people who you truly love and cherish. Do so with heart-felt sincerity. Love them as if this were their, and your, last day on earth. Don’t wait. Tell them today because tomorrow may be too late.

* Find your cause. You may have passion for animal rights, Gay rights, or human rights. Recycling, education or helping others with addictions may be examples of other causes for which you have energy. Here's a list of other causes that will help you make a difference today.

* Be an encourager. One gesture of encouragement with a nod of your head or the motion of your hand can be the difference maker between someone having doubt or actually accomplishing the goal. Your encouraging actions can make a life-long impression.

* Think before you act. Choose your words carefully before speaking. Consider your actions before taking a certain path. Although unintentional, our words can sting and our actions can cause pain if we are unaware of their potential impact on others. Sometimes the best way we can make a difference is to say nothing or do nothing until we have enough information to act in a responsible and positive way.

* Show patience. We learn by doing and often we learn best from our mistakes. Show patience for others and allow them to make a few mistakes – even if you know a mistake is inevitable.

Also, show patience for the slow-moving check-out clerk the grocery store or the person in the meeting who is just not engaged or is not grasping the concept being discussed. The art of patience is really the gift of grace and compassion. We are not able to receive grace when we refuse to extend it to others.

* Take care of the things you have. We never know which of our resources we will be called upon to share. Keep a budget, maintain your car with regular oil changes and the like, and care for your clothes and other personal belongings. There may come a day when these items can make a difference in the life of another.

* Set an example. Gandhi taught us to Be the change we want to see in the world. This means our actions do set an example for others. I attempt to set an example of being a nurturing and responsible parent for my children; I try to let Mary Beth know I want her to have a life that is uniquely her own; and I try to share my experiences and thoughts in a way that will touch the hearts of others.

The opportunities to set an example occur all the time. They happen in how we react, in what we say and in how we live. If we do nothing else to make a difference today, at least we can say our actions created the opportunity for someone to see something good inside of themselves, too.

thebridgemaker.com

The Power of Presence

by Claudette Rowley -

BEING PRESENT IN EACH MOMENT:

Being present means being aware or conscious of what's going on inside of you and allowing it without judgment. This level of consciousness gives us full freedom to be who we are. It also brings a tremendous sense of inner peace.

How do you know when you're present?

You know you are present when you feel at ease with yourself. There's no underlying tension, your mind isn't chattering on in judgment of you or someone else. You are also present when you ALLOW a moment to be as it is. For example, you notice that you have a story in your mind about a situation. And you observe it as a story not as truth. Or you feel a negative emotion and you notice that without judging it. You stay in the moment of whatever you are feeling.

What stops us from being present?

Reviewing the past and projecting into the future. Many of us spend half of our time ruminating about the past and reliving our emotions about it. Then based on what we've experienced in the past, we project into the future about circumstances that may never occur. Our mind makes up fear-based stories that catapult out of the present and into a made-up future. In other words, we end up resisting the present moment in fear of what the future might bring.

Let me clarify: By future projections, I mean imagined scenarios that cause emotional strain, such as "What if this happens or that happens?" versus planning for the practical matters of life, such as scheduling your January vacation. Another way of thinking about this is psychological time which always causes fear or strain versus the time we keep by clock which we use to organize the practical matters of life.

What are avenues for being present?

*Observe. When you notice that your mind has made up a story about the past or the future, simply observe it. Observation of the story will bring you right into the present. After a while, you'll start to notice that you are not your story, and that two separate entities exist: you in the present and your mind with its story.

*Allow. Allow whatever is in the moment to be there. It is what it is. Once you begin observing and allowing, you'll notice how often you resist the moment you are in. That resistance keeps you in your head and out of the present.

Here's an example of the distinction between allowing and resisting. At times when my nine month old son is cranky and I'm frustrated, my natural reaction is resistance. In other words, I want the moment to be different than it is, which creates stress. Those times that I've allowed the situation to be what it is, I felt present and experienced peace.

Once I've become aware of my resistance to what's occurring - I'll often experience it as physical tension - I'll say to myself, I don't like this moment. Or I'm noticing that I feel frustrated and impatient. Simply observing and allowing what I experience brings a conscious level of awareness.

We each have an inner peace and freedom that already exists inside of us. Our job is to release the muck surrounding it, and reclaim as our own. Stay present by ALLOWING what's there to be there. Then you can accept it, change it or talk to someone about it. By spending so much time in the past and the future, we often resist the gem that's right in front of us.

metavoice.org

Spread Your Wings & Fly

by Tara Crawford Roth -

Yesterday, I rearranged the furniture in my favorite room. I wanted to open the space so I moved my couch to the other wall. Periodically I enjoy changing the look of a room as it shifts the energy and everything feels fresh.

Sitting on the couch with my coffee this morning and looking out the window I had a whole new view. Looking at the woods across the street I could feel the sun on my face as it began breaking through the branches of the trees. It felt so warm and inviting with the few remaining leaves hung amber and gold from the trees. My gaze was drawn to the tallest tree where there a hawk sat majestically perched.

In myth and ancient legends the hawk represents vision: the ability to soar above boundaries and see a bigger picture. They are messengers and visionaries. Hawk awakens our vision and inspires us to a creative life.

I gazed in wonder at this beautiful bird and sent a silent greeting as he spread his wings taking to the sky and flying towards me. His flight was breathtaking and I was struck by how the simple act of moving my couch created this moment.

It made me wonder what I might experience if I could shift my perspective as easily as I moved the furniture in my house. What if one minor course correction in my point of view could create a perception as inspiring as this? What if like the hawk, I could take on a broader view?

It is so easy to get caught in the details of your days. Here at ground level, it is easy to engage and focus on the battles at hand. Before you know it, you are feeling frustrated, angry or afraid and trapped in the drama of the moment. You can feel helpless or overwhelmed by your experiences and with no apparent way out, forgetting it is only one point of view.

But the truth is this: you are in charge of your thoughts. You can choose what you focus on; which thoughts to nurture and which thoughts to ignore. Your life is determined by how you see the world and what you focus on. That focus is the key to your perspective and your stress level.

Did you know it takes only ten seconds of holding a positive thought or memory in your mind for your body to shift, relax, and move out of the fight or flight mode? This is where the advice to count to ten comes from.

The truth is your body can't tell the difference between your mental stress and your physical stress. It takes in signals from your thoughts and feelings and converts them into what is needed. In the case of stress, it creates adrenaline. Blood rushes out of your head and limbs and into your torso to prepare you for battle. Your thinking becomes unclear and your vision is like that of a horse with blinders on; you can only see what is immediately in front of you.

Changing your point of view can reduce the intensity of your emotions and get you out of fight or flight mode. Part of that choice comes from changing negative tapes that run in your head such as, "this is terrible" or "I really screwed. "

Instead, try telling yourself supportive and powerful things such as, "I can deal with this," "I deserve success," or "I know everything will work out. " Why not pay more attention to what is working in your life than what is not?

How, exactly, do you shift your perspective? First of all, stop, breathe deeply and get calm. Now think of the good stuff. Thinking about how lucky you are to be alive or how grateful you are to be loved sends a chemical message to your body like an "all clear" and after ten seconds your body will relax.

This is a place where gratitude comes in really handy. The practice of being grateful creates serenity and brings you fully present. It brings an awareness of abundance into your thoughts and energy setting up a positive chain reaction.

Just like moving my couch, you can move your focus to what is working in your life. You can allow yourself to celebrate Thanksgivings all year by keeping your attention on gratitude and taking some time every day to focus on who and what you appreciate.

As you experience the tremendous power of this simple act it will become easier to remember to stop and ask, "what am I choosing in this moment?" and if you don't like the answer you can exercise your power to choose something else. It really is that simple.

I encourage you to be like the hawk: spread your wings and soar above your boundaries so you can see the miracles happening in your life every day.

--Tara Roth @ tararoth.com


SaturnsLady

Clues from the Universe

by Deepak Chopra -

Coincidences are not accidents but signals from the universe which can guide us toward our true destiny. Most of us go through life a little afraid, a little nervous, a little excited. We are like children playing hide and seek, wanting to be found, yet hoping we won't be, biting our nails with anticipation. We worry when opportunity approaches a little too closely, and hide deeper in the shadows when fear overcomes us. This is no way to go through life. People who understand the true nature of reality, those whom some traditions call enlightened, lose all sense of fear or concern. All worry disappears. Once you understand the way life really works—the flow of energy, information, and intelligence that directs every moment—then you begin to see the amazing potential in that moment. Mundane things just don't bother you anymore. You become lighthearted and full of joy. You also begin to encounter more and more coincidences in your life.

When you live your life with an appreciation of coincidences and their meanings, you connect with the underlying field of infinite possibilities. This is when the magic begins. This is a state I call synchrodestiny, in which it becomes possible to achieve the spontaneous fulfillment of our every desire. Synchrodestiny requires gaining access to a place deep within yourself, while at the same time awakening to the intricate dance of coincidences out in the physical world.

When a coincidence arises, don't ignore it. Ask yourself, What is the message here? What is the significance of this? You don't need to go digging for the answers. Ask the question, and the answers will emerge. They may arrive as a sudden insight, a spontaneous creative experience, or they may be something very different. Perhaps you will meet a person who is somehow related to the coincidence that occurred. An encounter, a relationship, a chance meeting, a situation, a circumstance will immediately give you a clue to its meaning. "Oh, so that's what it was all about!"

The key is to pay attention and inquire - Another thing you can do to nurture coincidence is to keep a diary or journal of coincidences in your life. After years of note-taking, I classify coincidences as tiny, medium, whoppers, and double-whoppers. You can do this in any way that is easy for you. For some people, it is easiest to maintain a daily journal and underline or highlight words or phrases or names of things that show up as coincidences. Other people keep a special coincidence diary. They start a new page for each significant coincidence, then jot down any other connections to that event on its page.

For people who want to delve deeply into coincidence, one of the processes I recommend is recapitulation. This is a way of putting yourself in the position of observer of your life, and of your dreams, so that connections and themes and images and coincidences become clearer. Because our connection to the universal soul is much more obvious when we are dreaming, this process allows you to access a whole new level of coincidences.

When you go to bed at night, before you fall asleep, sit up for a few minutes and imagine that you are witnessing on the screen of your consciousness everything that happened during the day. See your day as a movie. Watch yourself waking up in the morning, brushing your teeth, having breakfast, driving to work, conducting your business, coming home, eating dinner—everything in your day right up to bedtime. There is no need to analyze what you see, or evaluate, or judge... just watch the movie. See it all. You may even notice things that did not strike you as important at the time. You may notice that the color of the hair of the woman behind the drugstore counter was the same as your mother's when you were young. Or you might pay special attention to a little child who was crying as his mother was dragging him down a supermarket aisle. It's amazing the things that show up in the movie of your day that you may not have consciously noted during the day itself.

As you watch your day go by in the movie, take this opportunity to view yourself objectively. You may find yourself doing something that you're particularly proud of, or at times you may notice yourself doing things that are embarrassing. Again, the goal is not to evaluate, but to get little insights into the protagonist's behavior—this character that is your self.

When the recapitulation is over—which can take as little as five minutes or as long as a half hour—say to yourself, "Everything that I've witnessed, this movie of a day in my life, is now safely stored away. I can summon those images on the screen of my consciousness but as soon as I let them go, they disappear." The movie is over. Then, as you go to sleep, say to yourself, "Just as I now recapitulated the day, I am giving instructions to my soul, my spirit, my subconscious to witness my dreams." Initially you may not notice much of a change. But if you practice this every night for a few weeks, you will start to have a very clear experience that the dream is the scenery, and you are the person watching it all. When you wake up in the morning, recapitulate the night, just as you recapitulated the day at night.

Once you are able to recall the movie of your dreams, write down some of the more memorable scenes. Include them in your journal. Make a special note of coincidences. Nonlocal intelligence [literally "without location," the spiritual domain, the field of potential] provides clues in our sleep just as it does in our waking hours.

What starts to happen, then, is that gradually we see correlations, images that repeat themselves both in dreams and in everyday reality. More coincidences provide more clues to guide our behavior. We start to enjoy more opportunities. We have more "good luck." These clues point out the direction to take our lives. Through this process of recapitulation we see recurring patterns and we start to unravel life's mystery.

This process is especially helpful for departing from destructive habits. Life has certain themes that it plays out. Sometimes those themes operate to our advantage. Sometimes they work against us, especially if we repeat the same patterns or themes, over and over, hoping to get a different result. For example, many people who get divorced fall in love again, but they end up in exactly the same kind of relationship they were in before. They repeat the same trauma, relive the same anguish, and then they say, "Why does this keep happening to me?" The process of recapitulation can help us witness these patterns, and once we discern them, we can make more conscious choices. Journaling isn't absolutely necessary, but it helps bring insights and coincidences to the surface.

So remain sensitive, observe coincidences during both your daytime living and your nighttime dreaming, and pay special attention to anything that breaks the probability amplitude—the statistical likelihood of a space-time event. We all need to plan things to some extent, to make assumptions about tomorrow even though we actually don't know what's going to happen. Anything that upsets our plans, anything that takes us off the trajectory we think we are on, can provide a major insight. Even the absence of events that you expect can be clues to the intent of the universe. People who have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning to go to a job they hate, who find it difficult to become engaged in their professional activities, who feel emotionally "dead" after a day at the office, need to pay attention to those feelings. These are important signals that there must be a way to get more fulfillment out of life. Perhaps a miracle lies in the wings. You'll never know unless you form an intention, become sensitive to the clues from the universe, follow the chain of coincidence, and help create the destiny you most desire.

Of course, life can be difficult, and we each have daily chores, responsibilities, and obligations that can become overwhelming. Coincidences may come flying at you from all directions, or they may seem to dry up entirely. How do you find your way in such a complex world? Take five minutes every day and just sit in silence. In that time, put these questions to your attention and heart: "Who am I? What do I want for my life? What do I want from my life today?" Then let go, and let your stream of consciousness, your quieter inner voice, supply the answers. Then, after five minutes, write them down. Do this every day and you'll be surprised at how situations, circumstances, events, and people will orchestrate themselves around the answers. This is the beginning of synchrodestiny.

For some people, answering those questions for the first time can be difficult. Many of us are not used to thinking in terms of our own wants and needs, and if we do, we certainly don't expect to fulfill them. If you haven't defined your life's goal for yourself, what do you do then? It would be helpful if the universe would give us one big clue, or a giant compass, if you will, pointing to the direction we should be taking. In fact, the compass is there. To find it, you need only look inside yourself to discover your soul's purest desire, its dream for your life!

excerpt from 'The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire'
chopra.com

Recognizing Signs from Spirit

by Joseph Eliezer -

If you have been trying to make your life a little easier and more fulfilling lately, chances are that you have been introduced to many concepts which declare that the way to do this is through Spiritual enlightenment.

From bettering your health to increasing your finances or obtaining peace of mind, most of the books that have dominated the bestseller list, and in the media, over the past decade, all agree that the key to living a more rewarding life is to live it with a greater emphasis on Spirit. That being the case, the question that comes up is “how is that done”? “How can you make your life better all the way around by living it according to Spirit”? The answer to that is by learning to interpret the guidance that is given to you and developing the courage to act on it.

It is important to know that being communicated to from Spirit is not something only for the elite. Many of the modern beliefs point to the coincidences that occur in your life as being messages from or communication with a higher deity. Translation: if you are experiencing a coincidence, then you are being communicated to. After all, it is literally impossible to plan such occurrences and always, the coincidence has to do with moving your life or helping to move somebody else’s life forward. To this rule there are no exceptions.

I remember one such instance a few years ago. I was walking through a shopping mall and saw an old friend sitting on one of the benches there. He looked depressed and sort of troubled. I walked up to him and greeted him with a big warm smile. “Hey Lorne,” I said, “How are you doing?” He answered that he was not doing very well. Lorne had just recently got married. His beautiful wife and he were expecting a baby a few months down the road, and he had recently lost his job.

The day before that, I was talking to another old friend of mine who told me that he was looking for a sales rep for his company. So the next day, while I was talking to Lorne, I asked him if he had ever thought about working in sales. He said that he loved being in sales and would jump at the chance to sell again if the product was right. I then told him about the conversation I had with my other friend the day before and suddenly Lorne’s eyes perked up. I gave him my other friend’s phone number and within a week, Lorne was on the road earning more money than he ever had in the past. I got a thank you card from both of them not three weeks after my chance meeting with Lorne in the mall. It made my day.

Signs from Spirit come in all shapes, forms and sizes. It is impossible to make a human inventory about the many ways in which Spirit can come into your life, because Spirit is not human.

Another rule of thumb that is held by devout Spiritualists is that absolutely everything that happens to you in your life happens for a reason, no matter how big or small the event is.

Just as there was a reason for me to have a conversation with my friend who owned a business that day, so too was there a reason for me to bump into Lorne the next day. The conversation with the friend happened for a reason; my coincidental meeting with Lorne did too. I interpreted the two occurrences and through action, played the part of the messenger by connecting them together doing them both a favor, which in turn made me feel most spiritual.

The best thing that you can do in learning to become more spiritual is to learn to be more open to the experiences that occur in your life and by not judging them as good or bad. There is a reason why things happen to you and as you start to open yourself to the unlimited possibilities to the ways that Spirit communicates through the events in your life, you begin to live the teaching that says, “The Lord works in mysterious ways”.

Your job in making the Spiritual world more physical is not to force these ways to make sense according to how you want your life to be, but to be open to them, thus giving the events that occur in your life more room to flow. This will allow events to unfold naturally in your life, which will bring you the health, joy and prosperity that you are wanting. It cannot be otherwise.

1111spiritroad.com

Your Master Consciousness

by Rebecca Skeele -

It is said that while sculpting David, Michelangelo chipped away everything that 'wasn't David.' Something in the slab of marble that was to become David illuminated a form so vividly that with each chisel stroke, the master sculptor was able to bring it into expression.

In collaborating closely with your divine nature you, like David, become gently molded and fashioned into who you really are.

Some people undergoing this sculpting process feel as if unseen hands are lovingly peeling away defenses that no longer serve them. Others remark that they are no longer preoccupied with the struggle of their soul to extricate itself from beneath a heavy boulder. A fisherman once told me that when he started following the calls of his heart, 'barnacles' affixed to him decades before began falling away.

Cooperating with this process causes you to light up, lighten up and begin to see yourself and in time others, as you are seen - perfect, complete and good. You can feel this happening each time you choose to expand rather than contract, to love rather than fear and to forgive rather than condemn. All the while, your master consciousness is hard at work, and with every wedge of conditioning it chips away, you come to see this master sculptor as yourself - the spark of the divine within.

Ways to participate fully in the process:

* Have a conversation with your divinity wherever you feel at ease speaking intimately: outdoors in nature, over a canvas or set of paints, in the bath, by a roaring fire, journaling, in prayer, meditation or contemplation.

* Let this indwelling source of wisdom know you'd like its help in seeing more clearly and in using your energy more impeccably.

* Listen closely for guidance, trusting that it may not come immediately. Be open to the unexpected messenger.

* Give your master consciousness free reign over an aspect of your life, letting go of your urge to control.

* Check in often - perhaps once a day, for renewal and refocusing your attention and intention.

Be prepare for paradoxes. In seeing more you will know less. Statements of certainty will give way to uncertainty. The more you admit you DON'T know the more that will be revealed.

Ultimately, a high state of cooperation with your divinity requires you to be in the mystery. It's not necessary to know what will happen before you leap, or where the bend in the road leads; you'll find these things out soon enough. Just remain, collaborative, loving, respons-able, and brimming with childlike wonder - for then you will be and see anew from one moment to the next.

makeitheaven.com

Tips to Eliminate Drama

by Liara M. Covert, PhD -

Certain emotions create mental obstruction and drama. Relate a clogged toilet analogy. If you choose to get worked up, that does not unclog the obstructon. To bottle anything sets it up for release sometime. You choose how to perceive and react. Consider these tips to learn more about the constant energy flux of your life and how to eliminate drama;

1) Choose not to believe. Whatever you think takes form and manifests in your life. If you do not believe in something, then your senses will not permit you to experience that. Yet, if you experience drama, or repeated discomfort, you have not yet uncovered certain mental blocks or dissolved them.

2) Respect your need to grow. Every event that unfolds, every sensation you feel, helps you move through phases of mental, physical and other healing. To be aware of your rigid mindset enables you to work through unconscious doubt, complaints and illusion that obscure what you perceive now.

3)See through the inner judge. Labels create imaginary divisons, hierarchies and power dynamics They do not exist. Self-induced boundaries re-organize spatial zones and energy vibration in ways that do not serve you. Being aware of what you do empowers you. Itis possible to evolve and sense what you had missed previously. Ego has reason to deny truth.

4) Nurture open-mindedness. To disagree or react with distast to people rejects their ways of thinking, being and feeling. To deny or invalidate views other than yours is to close yourself off from layers of truth. To disavow truth is to create waves of energy in form of drama. To accept alternative or co-existent realities, is to concede something other that what you currently experience is connected to the physical world.

5) Recognize the impact of density. Humans are light energy beings. The nature of thoughts and feelings influences if one experiences a lightness of being or, a heavier sense of existence. Drama weighs heavy on the mind. To be unwilling to adjust or change prolongs emotional storms. You exist as you are to learn to release energy and restore other energy inside.

6) Reframe where this is leading. Discomfort evokes stress, conflict or striking realism. Yet, more is happening than you consciously register. Many human beings do not realize they acknowledge drama, explore cause and perpetuate it as part of a process to get beyond it. Thoughts of anger, hostility or revenge imply you misunderstand karmic lessons. As you deliberately take responsibility for conditions and choose to evolve, you gain the insight required to transcend drama.

dreambuilders.com.au

Discover Yourself

by Gini Grey -

There’s a part in each of us that yearns to be free. Free to do what we want, feel what we want, be what we want. We really shine when we’re just being ourselves. Unfortunately, most of us grow up covering up our real selves. We learn at a very young age how to shift and mold ourselves in order to get our needs met. Combine that with all the comparisons and competitions we take part in, and it’s no wonder we lose ourselves. By the time we’re adults we’ve become so accustomed to wearing a mask that we think we are the mask.

To get back to our true selves we need to uncover the layers of traits and roles we’ve adopted over the years. In exploring our character traits we can discover the parts that are us and the parts just covering us up. One person who feels shy and reserved may be that way because of a negative experience they had when they were young and upon self-exploration discover an outgoing comedian waiting to burst forth in their lives. Another person who glitters like a 1000-watt light bulb may be just covering up a delicate, gentle flower inside that was once trampled.

We often become trapped in the roles we play as well, letting them define us. We all have family roles we play at one time or another, being the daughter or son, brother or sister, parent or grandparent. But what about the other roles we take on within the family, workplace or society? The responsible one, the caretaker, the joker, the mediator, the victim or scapegoat. We may pick up these roles in our families of origin, but if we’re not conscious of it we may become these roles permanently or just trade them in for new ones as the group dynamics change. For example, if a person who grew up being a scapegoat, getting blamed for everything and feeling victimized, married someone who plays even more of a scapegoat role, they might unconsciously shift into the role of the over-responsible one to compensate. Either way, they feel locked into their role. Where is the freedom in that?

Exploring our character traits and the roles we play can be the first step in uncovering who we really are. Discovering our true selves inspires us to follow our dreams and passions in life, and this is where true freedom lies.

ginigrey.com

Lessons Only Love Can Teach

by Guy Finley -

Surely we have all gone through those dreaded times when it feels like we are dying because our heart is emotionally starved for life. Perhaps we have reached the end of our hope for some pivotal relationship, or come to the close of another goal that again proves itself to be empty. Whatever the cause, our passion faints and, with our wings suddenly clipped, we fall back to earth. We have all felt this fear, but few have seen its dark face up close. Its shadow taunts and haunts us in every fire we race to build or by which we hope to warm ourselves. For life has taught us -- over and over again -- that even the most carefully maintained of these fires eventually loses its warmth and light.

These moments are typified in the experience of finding ourselves having grown cold to a former close companion, or in seeing the light in their eyes wane in its warmth toward us. Or perhaps we have lost interest in our once-cherished career or lifestyle, so that no passion remains in us for what had been our sole and guiding purpose in life. But we must not (as we so often do) confuse this growing chill in our heart as the death of Love's fire. Love never dies. She cannot. She is life itself. The cooling passion we feel toward what once enflamed us is not the end of Love's fire, but only signals that we have now consumed all of the stuff of self available at that level of ourselves.

It may help to see this new idea by visualizing the action of actual physical flames as they move about in a fireplace. See how all open flames reach ever upward. See how they rise to ignite what they are created to consume.

Now, see that Love works in this exact same way. But the difference is that Love burns her way up, and through, the stuff of self. First, as an unwelcome visitor, she burns through our vanities. Where before we were warmed by glowing images of ourselves, Love shows us all that glitters isn't gold. And as her fires move through this lower soul region, they take with them -- in their purifying path -- our self-fascination. But in the very act of first enticing us with this ego-centered love, and then through expiring this same stuff of self in her compassionate flames, she accomplishes two feats at once:

First, her fires remove an interior section of our self's sub-flooring once felt by us as being our entire foundation -- an act whose gradual consummation feels to us to be the loss of our life itself. And it is in this moment of our heart's cold confusion that our part in this eternal play is called onto the stage now set within us. For here, time and time again, we must choose whether to close ourselves off from Love's internal action -- or offer ourselves over to it.

We have all seen the effects of shutting out Love: A hopeless frost clings to the heart, choking off higher emotion until only a shrunken shell of its former self sits there in place of the heart, its own beating a punishment.

And we have all had some level of experience with Love's successful passage through our various life stages -- how the seeming loss of one love (or passion) first creates a sense of emptiness that is followed by the hope and promise of yet a deeper or wiser one, and then -- although impossible to glean in the moment of such a sense of loss, and yet through this very loss -- how Love reveals a new place within us for her next and higher incarnation.

This is how Love works her magic. This is her timeless motions and miracle. But we must agree to move with her according to her secret ways. We must each learn what it means to open the hearth of our hearts to her mystical fires and not to fear the stages through which she will take us.

If we consent, then ever on and upward will her flames work their way through our passions and take with them, into the air of their origin, our hopes in self, our hopes for things seen, and sometimes, in dark nights, even our hope for Love herself.

But if we agree to stay the course of Love's action in us through the passage of time, even though it may be often hidden in the residue of ash and smoke created by the upward passage of these living fires, the next level of Love is revealed to us. Herein we stand in amazement upon a whole new floor of what we now realize is our own self -- a floor previously hidden by the self below it in a nature that could only be burned away through experience. Like the phoenix we rise again, ready to live out Love anew… and, hopefully, enriched by wisdom, ready to die again for the sake of Love.

guyfinley.com

The Princess and the Pea Phenomenon

by Dan Joseph -

As a child, you might have read the fairytale called "The Princess and the Pea." For those who haven't heard it — or for those who might not remember it — the story went like this:

Once there was a young prince who was in search of a princess to marry. Unfortunately, although he searched far and wide, the prince couldn't find a suitable mate.

Then one night, during a rain storm, a young woman showed up at the prince's castle seeking shelter. She claimed to be a princess, and the prince was enamored of her. However, the queen mother was skeptical of the young woman's claim, and decided to subject the woman to a test.

The queen ordered the castle servants to stack twenty mattresses and twenty feather beds on top of each other. She then placed a dried pea at the bottom of the stack. "If she's really a princess," said the queen, "then she'll feel the pea beneath all these beds. "

When morning came, the queen went to greet the young woman. "How did you sleep?" she asked.

"Oh, terribly!" said the young woman. "I'm nearly black and blue! I don't know what was in the bed, but it was terribly uncomfortable. "

And with that, the queen decided that she must be a real princess — for no one else could be that sensitive.

Our Little Peas - Like many of Hans Christian Andersen's fairytales, this story can be seen through a spiritual lens. I'd like to use it to illustrate an idea about the spiritual journey that I find important.

Every so often someone will say to me, "When I began my spiritual work, I thought that I'd feel better. But lately I seem to be feeling worse. I'm more conflicted, more stressed than ever. What is going on?"

I sometimes share the following idea with them, which I call the Princess and the Pea phenomenon:

As we take the steps along the spiritual path, many of us become increasingly sensitive to our "inner blocks." Resentful thoughts which we tolerated before now become quite distressing. Self-critical attitudes that were previously part of the background noise now feel sharp.

With every step we take, our unloving thoughts begin to feel like uncomfortable splinters. This increased sensitivity clarifies the inner landscape, and shows us where we need to make changes. As A Course in Miracles puts it, "the mind becomes increasingly sensitive to what it would once have regarded as very minor intrusions of discomfort." Before, we could easily tolerate this discomfort; now, not so much.

Like the princess, we begin to feel the little peas between layers and layers of mattresses.

Making the Shift

Now, in a way this dynamic is a good thing. If we didn't become more sensitive to our inner blocks as we went along, we would very likely take a few steps along the spiritual path and say, "Good enough! That feels better than before!" And then we would stop and set up camp at that point.

But instead, we become increasingly unable to tolerate our unloving thoughts. We begin to feel them with an almost absurd sensitivity, just as the princess felt the pea. This motivates us to keep going, to continue the sorting-out process as we exchange our old thoughts for kinder ones.

Ultimately, I suspect, we will reach a point in this process where anything less than perfect love — perfect, divine love toward ourselves and others — becomes unwelcome. That love is all that will ultimately satisfy us. Everything else will produce discomfort.

Speaking personally, when I began reading A Course in Miracles, I was struck by how lofty some of the ideas were. Over and over, the Course teaches that we are infinitely loveable children of God, filled with such holiness that should we open our eyes to this holiness in anyone — even for an instant — our lives will be instantly transformed. The glory of God is within everyone we meet, says the Course. And this glory is within us as well. To see this holiness is to fill our hearts with love.

Wow! I thought when I first read that. Those are some pretty "high" thoughts! They certainly sound nice, at least.

Now, eighteen years later, I have a different view. Those thoughts aren't lofty spiritual musings; they are oxygen. All of my other thoughts — my resentments against that person, my worries about this thing, the perfectionistic ideals that I hold against myself — are like smoky air that I choke on. And my life is a back-and-forth vacillation between the clean and dirty air, with the smoke becoming more difficult to tolerate each day.

I hear similar reports from other folks on the spiritual path. The peas, the smoke, the burden of our unloving thoughts weigh upon us more acutely with every step we take. Eventually we decide to toss a few peas, breathe some clean air, drop a few weights. This is wonderful; we walk on freer and lighter. But even as we do this, the remaining blocks become clearer.

I suppose that this is why spirituality requires an ever-greater commitment as we move along. Having become more honest with ourselves about our blocks, it is more difficult to hide them. And now that they are revealed, our only choice is to commit ourselves more fully to the process of change.

Like a stream that begins as a trickle in a desert, the spiritual path collects water from its tributaries and draws us more powerfully as we go along. With each new bend, it becomes harder to hold on to our old thoughts — and more of a relief to finally open to the flow of divine Love.

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