Tag: healing

The Fork in the Road

Mar. 26 Featured Posts 11 comments

We all have experiences from our past that haunt us, influence us and affect the decisions we make today.  Some experiences are so painful that we alter the very course of our lives based off of decisions that were made while in the midst of the resulting pain or despair.  The precise moment that we have such an experience, combined with the resulting choices and decisions that we have to make, become a fork in the road of our lives.

Here is my fork in the road…

For as long as I can remember I have been a person who I consider to be either in the middle of the road or sub-par.  In school I knew I could do much better than I did, but for some reason, I wouldn’t put in the effort to even try and do better. I tried so little in fact, that I eventually just dropped out.  At work I would let myself get to a certain comfort level and then back off.  It’s not that I didn’t have plenty of opportunities to excel and go further.  Rather, with every new opportunity to do something a little more challenging – but something I knew I would love doing and could raise me up the corporate ladder – I would find a way out of it.  My job at a news radio station is a perfect example.  I worked really hard to get the job and I loved it beyond belief, even though I was in the lowest position a person in the newsroom could work.  I was given three different offers that would have promoted me but I talked my way out of all three and I eventually left.

Another example was when I was hired as a writer for an online city guide. I liked the job but it was hard for me because I really struggle with grammar.  So rather than pushing ahead with being a writer, I took a position in what was probably the lowest team on the company’s totem pole doing mainly data entry.  Even though I eventually worked my way up to managing that team, I always knew I could have been doing so much more.

Recently, I had an opportunity to co-host a Blogtalk radio show and help grow Soulgineering.com.  For a time there, I was soaring pretty high; I actually loved waking up every morning.  On radio show days, I would wake up hours earlier then I needed to, just so that I would have the chance to think about the upcoming show, what I would learn from our guest and the questions I would ask. I was in love.  But the moment the opportunity came up to take over the Soulgineering site or take over the Blogtalk radio show and do them on my own, I reverted right back to the old me that I had become accustomed to.  If it takes too much effort, or if I am putting myself out there too much, I will just find a way to make it all go away.

And this is how the story of my life has gone.  Now for the fork in the road.

A couple of weeks ago, I was at a restaurant where I had done some photography work and one of the employees, a young man in his early 20’s, said he wanted to ask me a question.  He explained that he didn’t want me to get offended or misunderstand him. Immediately my curiosity was piqued.  Little did I know that what he would ask me would spark a huge shift in my life.  He asked me one simple question:  “Why aren’t you great yet?”  The moment those words flew out of his mouth, I knew exactly what he meant by it. It was almost as if I knew that someday, someone would ask me this very same question. He wanted to know how someone with a personality like mine had not yet become well-known or successful.  He added, “If someone like you hasn’t managed to become successful, how am I supposed to?”  I was completely floored but more than anything, I was embarrassed.

The young man at the restaurant had picked up on a secret dream of mine.  When I worked at that radio station or even when I co-hosted that little Blogtalk show, I had wanted to be well known. I know this might sound vain but it really isn’t. I love talking, asking questions, sharing information and the more people I could share it with, the more I loved it.  Even though I wasn’t surprised by the question, I was stumped because I didn’t have a ready answer. However, I did know that it all just didn’t make sense. How could I have these daydreams and yet not believe in myself to actually accomplish what I was dreaming?  What was causing the roadblock that seemed to get in my way everywhere I went?  I thought long and hard about what he was saying and then I I came to a realization:  all along the way, I had had people in my life that tried to lift me up, people that supported me and people that believed in me a lot more than I believed in myself.  I could see that the supportive network was there, yet I still didn’t know what these people saw in me that I couldn’t see in myself.

When I came home from the restaurant, I told my girlfriend about it and she posed the same question to me, why haven’t I become successful?  I even called one of my close friends and when I told them about the conversation, they literally said they felt like they were pounding their head against the wall with me about this very same thing.  It suddenly dawned on me that I owed it to that young man, to my girlfriend, to my amazing friends that kept offering support, but mostly to myself, to look for the answer.   I asked myself “Why am I so afraid to put myself out there and just go for it?” I tried all the rational answers on for size, but the truth is that I am not scared of failure or success.  The truth is that there was something much deeper at play.

For a couple of days this conundrum was constantly on my mind. Then one night while sleeping, I kept replaying a childhood memory almost as if it were a nightmare.  Only it wasn’t a nightmare but a very real experience. In my memory-dream, I was about 10 or 11 years old. My mom was at work and my brother and I were going to spend the day with my dad’s best friend and his kids. I got all dressed up, in a long brown skirt and boots (with a little heal).  I even did my hair.  I wanted to make sure that I was I perfect so that my dad would be proud of me and to not give him any reason to lose his temper on me.  As far as I can remember the day did turn out to be perfect.  We had a lot of fun and I have no memory of anything going wrong.  However, when we got home my dad started telling my brother and I what a disappointment we are and how his friend’s kids were so much better and smarter than we were. Then my dad focused his attention solely on me and told me that I could try and dress up however I wanted, but that I would still be fat and ugly and stupid and worthless, and so on and so forth. He paid special attention to making me understand how ugly and fat I was – probably because he knew I had tried to look pretty.  All I could do was cry, but he just kept getting angrier and angrier until he found the perfect solution.  He grabbed an apple and put it in my mouth and made me sit in the corner of the kitchen and said, “Now you look like a real pig.”

I don’t know how long I sat there like that or for how long my dad and my brother teased me with pig sounds and laughed at me.  Eventually I found that I had drooled all down the front of my shirt and my skirt (because I couldn’t swallow due to the apple in my mouth). To make matters even worse, my dad broke out the Polaroid camera and took a picture so he could show my mom when she got home.  When she did, I was still sitting in the corner with the apple in my mouth. He showed her the picture and laughed the whole time.  She laughed right along with him.  That was the end of the memory-dream.  It was very powerful and was played on a loop all night long. I even woke up, watched television for an hour, and fell right back into the same dream.

At first, I didn’t understand the connection between this memory and the puzzle I was trying to solve.  I was perplexed.  Why was I remembering this now? Why did it play repeatedly in my mind? This was one of many childhood memories I had never wanted to remember again. That’s when the answer came to me. This was the fork in my road. The present-day me had traveled back to hear the thoughts of the little me:  how it felt to get all dressed up and how happy I thought my dad would be by my efforts, only to find myself sitting in the corner humiliated with the apple in my mouth. I felt the heat of that little girl’s tears and heard her think to herself, “Never again.” And from that moment, I never again tried too hard at anything.

Even though I could feel little Dawn’s pain, I knew the present-day me, the big Dawn, could change how this moment affected me from now on.  I was able to look back and see and experience the same situation, but I was now able to see it from the perspectives of my dad, my brother and my mom.  I saw that my brother was just looking for my dad’s approval and at the same time, if he kept my dad focused on me, then the abuse wouldn’t fall on him. My mom laughed only out of fear of what would happen to her if she didn’t. In truth, she was horrified at his treatment of me.  As for my dad (I could say a lot about how I know this but that will have to wait for another article), what I now saw was that every awful, horrible thing he was saying to me was exactly how he felt about himself. The truth was, he thought his friend was better looking because he was thin, tall, dark and handsome. My dad felt he was fat, short, dark and ugly.  My dad resented that his friend was a great dad and his kids genuinely liked him; unlike my dad, whose kids were terrified of him.

When all these thoughts dawned on me, both little Dawn and big Dawn were able to see the truth.  Even though we had had this humiliating experience, it truly had nothing to do with my attempt to try to be the best I could be. The truth was that when I was getting ready that day, I felt pretty and I felt proud. That was my truth. The horrible results were because of someone else’s thoughts of failure within themselves.  And the other people involved responded out of fear and not because they thought I was fat and ugly. As I realized the truth of the situation, I also realized that this was my chance to change things for the better.  I found myself back at the fork in the road – the moment when I could make a decision to have this experience propel me rather than inhibit me.  I have decided to take the fork that leads to success.  However, this time I am grabbing little Dawn’s hand and taking her with me.

Join me on my new quest for greatness:  Soulgineering Radio, on Blogtalk radio starting April 4th at 10am PST.

 

Image courtesy of Photos8.com.

 

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What is a Life Coach?

Oct. 31 Featured Posts 3 comments

We all want to be Happy, Healthy and Successful. The good news is that it is all within your reach. A life coach can help and guide you to reach your goals, to
become who and what  you want to be, and to free you from all your self-limiting beliefs.

Life coaching is based on overcoming your obstacles and then using practical, forward thinking techniques you can use in everyday life and decisions that will achieve a change in direction for a better future. It is one of the most powerful support systems to help get you moving in the direction you want.   A life coach can help you to clearly identify your goals and then guide you towards making them real.

The life coaching process is a journey of self-discovery and will offer you alternative life choices. You will be amazed at how this process with benefit you and helps you move forward with a positive outlook.

Life coaches make use of several techniques to assist you.  They begin by helping you to identify the issues that may be preventing you from moving forward towards a better and more successful future. By working closely with your life coach, you will be able to plan the right steps for you to take in order to reach your future goals, whether they are short or long term.

The truth is, all the complex situations and issues in your life, both personal and professional, start from an unresolved first incident. The situation becomes more complicated over time as more incidents occur with little or no action being taken to resolve it. Let us look at this objectively.  Maybe you had the chance to resolve an issue at the time it first happened but you chose not to think about or work on it.  You might have thought that if you just left it alone, it would go away. The end result is that you are now stressed and unhappy.  You might even be in denial – acting as if nothing is wrong and still avoiding tackling the matter. However, you have to take responsibility for whatever this issue is that is holding you back. It is in your hands to nip the incident in the bud before it becomes a bigger issue.

We all know the tale about the little Dutch boy who stuck his finger into the dam to plug a water leak and stayed there all night until the leak could be mended and so saving the entire town from certain flooding. The boy could have left the leak in the hope that it would lessen, but instead his quick thinking and courage prevented a small leak from becoming a flood. The moral of the story is that it is better to resolve a situation when it is still small and manageable otherwise it can snowball and become a crisis. Once you start doing this it will make it so much easier to deal with any situation.

Where life coaching comes in is in guiding you through a process of understanding your current  situation and the issues surrounding it.  A life coach will work to help you to discover your true potential and then show you how to prioritize your life in order to fulfill your goals.

Everyday, you have to make decisions, some minor, some major but the first step in the process is to ask yourself: do I need a new way to look at the decisions I am making?

If you are not totally happy with the direction of your life ask yourself the following questions:

  • Why did this happen?
  • What can I do to avoid this happening again?

If you have difficulty answering, then a life coach would be the perfect solution.  They will help you to unearth and reveal deeply seated and hidden values that shape all your decisions in life.

Nadia Sylvester is a qualified Life Coach and the founder of NSP Coaching.

Visit Nadia’s official website to learn about her methods of Life Coaching.

Listen to Nadia’s interview on Spiritual Perpsectives

Listen to internet radio with Sara Vitale and Dawn Kaztin on Blog Talk Radio
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Reunion: How We Heal Our Broken Connection to the Earth

Jul. 26 Books no comments

Reunion: How We Heal Our Broken Connection to the Earth by Ellen Gunter and Ted Carter. Foreword by Caroline Myss.

From the earliest mythologies, it’s clear we all start as a little bit of dirt. But these stories aren’t just entertaining. They also carry a profound message: each of us is born with a deep and abiding connection to the earth, one that many of us have lost touch with. The authors, Ellen Gunter and Ted Carter, spent more than two years interviewing organic and biodynamic farmers, environmentalists, filmmakers, authors, farming advocates, teachers, and spiritual leaders to understand how that connection is present in our lives-and how we can begin to see it ourselves. Using historical narratives, dozens of simple and profound practices and examples of people whose adventures in earth stewardship are showing us the way to our own roles in the world’s environmental crises, REUNION: HOW WE HEAL OUR CONNECTION TO THE EARTH is about how we rediscover and repair that connection ourselves-and by doing that, open ourselves up to solutions we had never considered before.

 

“Reunion is a book that should be required reading for every single person. Something radical has changed in us and it’s not good. We have strayed from our fundamental nature and we must find our way back to our primary rapport with the earth and our own life instincts before we lose sight of those precious instincts entirely.” -Caroline Myss

Visit official website

Follow Ellen Gunter’s blog Earth Calling

Ellen Gunter is a writer, a spiritual director and an environmental advocate. She lectures about the connections between spirituality and the environment in the Chicago area. She lives in Oak Park, Illinois.

Ted Carter has been designing earth-centric landscapes along the northeast coast for more than thirty years. His award-winning work has been featured in many publications. He lives and works in Buxton, Maine.

 

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Feel the Need to Heal, and the Urge to Heal Others?

Jul. 13 Featured Posts no comments

First it begins with knowing you want to help others, probably not knowing how or what to do, just a knowing that you want to help others. Then that may turn into the wanting to help others heal, and in order to do that you must first begin to heal yourself and sort of clean out your own junk so you can better help others heal from theirs.

You may not fully understand what to do, you just have this overwhelming urge to start healing yourself and a burning desire to help others. As you wake up to this calling you may find yourself going through alot of changes and letting go of the old or unnecessary things in your life. This letting go and balancing is necessary in this healing process. When we learn through experience what it is to heal from circumstances and experiences that are challenging, we are better equipped to help heal those we cross in our path.

When we are feeling as though we have no idea what we want to do, we are what seems to be stuck, there is a good possibility that you are in the process of healing and balancing what needs to be, in order for your next step to be shown to you.

Once we begin to understand what is involved in the healing process we can truly help others to heal on theirs. When this urge seems so strong and you are not sure what to call it… you can almost guarantee you are in the process of becoming aware or awakening to the fact that you are a lightworker, indigo, starseed, wayshower or anything alike. There is more than likely something stirring within you, telling you it is time to wake up and start the process that is necessary for you to become a healer. Which ALWAYS begins with healing yourself first, through looking within and letting go of anything old or useless from your past and present, that no longer serves you good, in order to make room for new and beneficial.

If healing is in your vocabulary, than make good use of it. It is there for a reason. If your intention is to heal, then events, experiences, or people will be brought into our life and experiences will manifest to help show you the process in which, will be most beneficial to you personally on your healing journey. Be forewarned it can be a challenging and sometimes confusing journey but one you will be fully supported and guided on that will have rewards that last a lifetime.

 

Article by Spirituality InYou which is a collaboration of a variety of healers including reiki, healing touch, reflexology, card readers, psychics, work shops and more.

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The Power Of Forgiveness

Jul. 10 Featured Posts no comments

As We Heal Others, We Heal Ourselves

by Walter E. Jacobson, M.D.

Forgiving others is a compassionate thing to do. We know this. Nonetheless, oftentimes, we don’t do it. We want those who hurt us to suffer for what they did.

By withholding forgiveness we think we are punishing them, we think we are keeping them stuck in a prison of guilt and shame. But the fact is we’re just punishing ourselves in the process.

We’re prolonging our own suffering. We’re withholding from ourselves our own peace of mind. We’re keeping ourselves emotionally tormented. We’re keeping the albatross around our own neck. We are fanning the flame of our own discontentment and emotional suffering.

We’re, essentially, keeping ourselves locked in an emotional prison cell that is now of our own making. We are now victimizing ourselves long after having been victimized by our offenders.

Anger Hurts, Forgiveness Heals

When we forgive others we free ourselves of our anger, our judgments, our grievances, our resentments, and our bitterness, all of which interfere with our present moment joy and inner peace.

When we refuse to forgive others, we relegate ourselves to living in the past and never being in the present moment, in the Eternal Now, where all the good things in life happen.

Consequently, it is always in our own best interests to forgive.

Everyone. No exceptions.

Forgiveness decreases our anger, our depression, our stress and our anxiety. We sleep better. We relate to others better. Our general attitude is more positive, optimistic, and joyful.

All of this contributes to our physical as well as emotional well-being, and maximizes our potential to attract people, places and circumstances into our lives which will propel us towards our dreams and our goals.

 

Walter E. Jacobson, M.D. is a board certified psychiatrist, motivational speaker, and author of Forgive to Win! His primary goal is to help people build their self esteem, overcome self sabotage, and get what they want in life.  To find out more about Dr. Jacobson visit his official site.

Image courtesy of Latuff2.

 

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10 Steps to Awaken Your Intuition

Jul. 10 Featured Posts no comments

 

Intuition.  We’ve all felt its effects at one point or another.  That nagging feeling that we should be doing something.  Or that the right answer lies in a particular direction.  Or that something is going to happen.  The voice in your head that tells you what to do or warns you of danger.

By definition, intuition is a sense or feeling that cannot readily be explained away by conscious logical or rational thought.  It is an instinctive knowledge that triggers a particular response from you.   People who place great value on common sense and rationality are afraid of it.  Others swear by it.  But where does it come from?  And what if you were able to tune into it more frequently?  What if you were able to harness its power?

Where does intuition come from and why should I awaken and develop my intuition?

Intuition helps you tap into your subconscious mind.  It helps you get to know yourself better and make better decisions as a result.  By developing your intuition you will be better able to find answers to your problems, or better yet, avoid problems altogether.  Less problems leads to less stress and less stress means a healthier you.  Intuition also allows you to have better relationships and better communication because you instinctively know how another might be feeling or what they are or aren’t ready to hear.

If you learn to develop your intuition you will have the added benefit of joining a club that includes many successful businessmen, CEO’s, artists and other highly successful people who constantly state that it was a “gut feeling” or their intuition that led them to make better decisions.  An article on Quadrant1.com states that

“When we have modelled the cognitive strategy of CEO’s we have found that intuition is actually a super-fast review of past experiences and decisions, using the visual mode of thinking. In fact it is often so fast that they are doing it unconsciously. This can, and has, made their CFO’s and CIO’s nervous as they appear to be basing their decisions on no analysis at all – just a gut feeling. What they have missed however are the many events of visualising the past and future in order to formulate their decisions. Because it is so fast other people misinterpret the signals, especially if they have not been trained to model a person’s thinking process.”

What steps can I take to build up my intuitive muscles?

1)  Quiet the chatter in your mind so that you can hear your intuitive voice. You can practice meditation or talk a quiet walk.   Perform a mindless task that will allow your mind to clear itself.  Without a quiet mind,your intuitive voice might be talking but you might not be able to hear it.

2)  Get to know yourself and how you make decisions.  Do you make decisions impulsively, based on knowledge, based on a gut feeling, or a combination?  This will in turn lead you to having intuitive instincts that lead you in increasingly better and better directions.  The Harvard Business Review recently posted an article about this subject and declared that

“Successful and consistent deployment of intuition, however, requires more than just domain knowledge. It also requires deep introspection, “an intense journey into yourself.” If you are going to understand the biases, emotions, and offsets of your decision-making compass which may effectually trump your domain knowledge and result in poor judgments, you must learn to “observe all men, but yourself most.”

3) Let go of expectations.  Just because you need your intuition to kick in immediately doesn’t mean it will.  By expecting a particular outcome by a certain time, instead of listening to your intuition you run the risk of listening to wishful thinking.  Go slow.  Developing the intuitive muscle takes time.

4)  Use your dreams as an intuitive tool.  Before you go to sleep think about a problem you’d like to solve or a situation in which you’d like to gain clarity.  Make a mental note of any dreams you have and either write them down in a journal or tell them to someone.  When you are in a quiet but alert state, review the dreams and see if you get any feelings from them.

4)  Once you’ve found your intuitive voice, trust it.  Notice it.    Make a mental review of the first impressions you’ve had lately.  Now think about those same situations in a rational, logical way.  How often were your first impressions right?  Use intuition to pair it with logic to help you make the right decisions.  As the saying goes, “When intuition and logic agree, you are always right.”

5)  Write down all the instances in which you’ve felt your intuition’s guidance.  Do you see a pattern?  Is your intuition highly developed when it comes to danger but not so much when it comes to work or relationships?  Work on those areas that have room for improvement.  Focus on one area at a time.

6)  Practice hypnosis.  Hypnosis helps you develop a stronger bond between your conscious mind and your subconscious, ultimately leading to a stronger intuitive muscle.  Enter into a state of complete physical relaxation but induce a state of acute mental concentration.  Focus on the thoughts that come up.  Have someone record your session so that you can study it at a later time.   Do you see images, do you have feelings, hear sounds, or just have a general sense of knowingness?  Make a note of how you receive the intuitive messages so that you can notice them better when they appear in your everyday life.

7)  Do blind readings to answer a particular problem or issue you are having.  Concentrate on the problem at hand, write all the potential solutions on an index card or piece of paper, turn these over, and pass your hands over each one.  Start pulling out the ones that you are drawn to the most.  Turn them over and read them.  Were they the ones you were leaning towards in the first place?

8)  Get a coach, instructor or personal trainer who you work with regularly to strenghten your intuitive muscles. For example, Sonia Choquette teaches you how to get a psychic six pack by exercising your psychic muscles through her Psychic Sit Ups Course.  She gives you seven-minute exercises via video that will help you work your intuitive muscles to the point that it becomes second nature for you to use them.  You can watch the videos in the privacy of your home and as often as you like.

9)  Stay informed.  Read articles or books on intuition.  Download podcasts or audiobooks.  Talk to others who already have a developed intuitive muscle.  Find out how others have done it and chances are you will find an exercise that works perfectly for you.  About.com’s Holistic Healing section has a great listing of sites around the internet that will give you more information.

10)  Share your experiences with others that are like-minded.  The more you tell others about your intuition, the more details you’ll remember and the better and faster you will get at it.

 

Image courtesy of Lilichka.

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Love Be Thy Name

Jun. 23 Featured Posts no comments

by Matt Kahn

If we take a moment to look around, we realize how life as we know it is changing in such rapid and extraordinary ways. The structures of the government, financial institutions, and even the physical landscapes of other countries are changing in dramatic fashion. Each seemingly external change reflects the inner change occurring within the unfolding odyssey of human evolution. In this evolution, we are now facing what is necessary to be faced within ourselves, as we participate in the expansion of consciousness, like a turbulent rollercoaster of transformation in the amusement park of form.

It is no surprise that if everything within and around us appears to be changing at such a dramatic rate, so would the spiritual path appear to change just as dramatically. What was spiritually relevant, even one or two years ago, now somehow seems like ancient history. We are now experiencing a time in history where nearly every belief, idea, preferred coping mechanism, or even our most-treasured spiritual tools, now appear out of date. This is happening only as a means of opening us up to a deeper sense of simplification in our lives. Through these words, you are invited into the spacious landscape of eternal freedom – to know the truth in your own direct experiences of life, versus searching for the many empty meanings only ideas have assumed to be true.

With changes in our physical, emotional, or perhaps energetic aspects of body, we perceive such changes, whether exciting or terrifying, through the surging of nervous energy expressed by the human nervous system. This nervous energy is often defined by thought, and labeled as something called an emotion. Whenever emotions arise, they are categorized as being either good or bad, and either fought or embraced depending on the given viewpoint we have about a given feeling. It is important to know that no single expression of nervous energy feels any particular way. Rather, whenever an emotion arises, we are actually experiencing our own psychological history of assumptions made about such feelings.

As we are called to wake up, we may begin to openly feel these temporary expressions of nervous energy, not to maintain the tragic tale of victim consciousness, but as a means of exploring what the truth of these emotions happens to be. The truth of any emotion cannot be defined in mind, or contained in thought, but must be realized by surrendering to the curiosity of what it feels like to simply feel such feelings.

When a feeling arises, you may ask yourself, “What does it feel like to feel this way?” Notice the difference between that experience of pure openness, and our usual experience, which often asks, “What is it like to only experience what I think about this feeling?”

Be like a child whose courage stems from the innocence and curiosity of wanting to know what it is like to feel however you are feeling, without any preconceived ideas of what is good, bad, or otherwise. Every feeling is valid to explore, whenever it is here. And, if it is here – it is here to be fully experienced. It is here to be experienced, so you may experience the truth of it, which has nothing to do with the many ideas ever imagined about any such feelings.

Verbal or written pointers such as “be present” or “accept what happens” are very helpful, but they’ve now been so overstated in our spiritual circles, they have actually lost their usefulness and potency.

In most instances, there are many of us replacing incessant mental noise with incessant spiritual noise, reminding ourselves to try and practice what only thoughts believe will earn a better reality or a more fulfilling living experience.

These words you are reading are here inviting you beyond that paradigm of conceptual confusion, knowing the true fulfillment of life you are searching for is only discovered when there is nothing for you to spiritually maintain, so that you may fully allow whatever comes and goes, to come and go of its own accord.

When something comes, you are free to explore with your feelings – what is it like to experience this? When something goes, you are equally free to explore with your feelings – what is it like to experience that?

Fulfillment is not found in any goal you attain, any dream you actualize, or any purpose a clever mind has imagined and continues to chase. Fulfillment is how deeply and vividly you are experiencing whatever you appear to experience, and how freely, you allow what comes and goes, to freely come and go.

May we surrender all known ideas of ourselves and the world we see, knowing we only perceive lack in a world we fail to explore. Perhaps the only thing that is ever lacking in our lives is the lack of adventure and exploration that we came to this planet to freely experience in the first place. Inevitably, we fail to explore whatever we have organized into the trance of conceptual thinking. We maintain these illusory thought structures by believing that any of our thoughts and ideas have something to do with truth.

Truth be told, you are that which is aware. Everything arises within the vast formless awareness that you are, and you are here exploring a lifetime of infinite possibilities in a world of many appearances. Therefore, you are that which gives life to thought, to ideas, to opinions; not what any thought, idea, or opinion ever dares to speak about. Nearly every thought, idea, and opinion assumes to be speaking about the truth. In reality, thoughts, ideas, and opinions only refer to other thoughts, ideas and opinions.

You are that which gives life to the body that experiences all temporary ideas in awareness. You are that which gives life to the incredible world this body of awareness explores and experiences. You are that which experiences a journey of a lifetime, seeking to understand all that is here, while discovering the ever present truth of one’s self, that rests in the many reflections of that you see.

May we meet as this truth by daring to be ourselves – however imperfect, incomplete, whole, unique, or seemingly ordinary that we may believe we somehow appear to be.

May we no longer require the spiritual path to be a space where problems are temporarily extinguished, and then quickly exchanged for other dilemmas. May this path be a renewed space of sacred honesty, where we may notice whenever the heart is not exploding with joy, cascading with grace, and overflowing with the purity of love, the celebration of awareness that is here in your honor is being overlooked.

Whenever you notice you are innocently unaware of the eternal love that you are, seek those who are pure of heart to assist you in dissolving any sense of obstacle, any trace of terror, any degree of difficulty within your world of perception – so the breaking free of all self-imposed barriers may be as effortless as waking up from a vivid dream you forgot was being imagined.

If you are wishing to experience the truth of fulfillment, right here, right now, and you are willing to even discard your greatest insight in order to lighten the load, and experience the profound reality of infinite possibility no thought can anticipate, or actually describe, then I am here to be with you, as you gracefully wake up from the dream of limitation, and dance in the freedom of eternal love.

May you honor these gifts that are here being offered with the utmost sincerity, and receive them into the fullness of your being through the radiant innocence of your divine heart space.

May there be no reasons or restrictions that prevent our meeting, as the gates of the heart open to the melody of freedom – singing itself into the innocence of every experience. When listening closely to freedom’s song, you may hear these gentle words:

There is no one to forgive. There is no one to forget. Love be thy name.

Matt Kahn is the author of the book, “Effortless Freedom – A Timeless Dialogue of Life’s Deepest Teachings.”

Matt Kahn is a spiritual teacher, mystic, and intuitive healer. His spontaneous awakening arose out of an out-of-body experience at the age of 8, and his direct experiences with ascended masters and archangels throughout his life.

Many spiritual seekers have experienced amazing, unexplainable healings, and have awakened to their true nature through Matt’s profound and loving teachings and his transmission of sacred heart wisdom.

To learn more about Matt Kahn visit his website at True Divine Nature

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Faith and Psychiatry

May. 26 Science 1 comment

Spirituality and/or religion are often integral to helping fix some of the emotional problems that send average Americans running into the offices of mental health specialists.  For example,when a patient is depressed, they will often ask what the point is in continuing their lives.  Sometimes the answer can be obtained by having the psychiatrist integrate the patient’s spiritual or religious beliefs with traditional psychiatric treatment to find out what gives their lives meaning.

The need to integrate a person’s spiritual or religious beliefs into their treatment is embodied by Victoria Maxwell.  In 1992, Victoria had a psychotic event where she ran around shouting “I am one with God”.  That episode began a series of treatments which didn’t really address the root of the problem: 

“The one element, which could have helped me accept treatment more readily, was overlooked. My spiritual beliefs were not only ignored, but more accurately actively avoided. Care providers were reluctant to discuss spiritual topics for fear of destabilizing my mood…  But this was a most heartfelt dilemma and conflict I needed to reconcile in order to start the healing process… Because facets of my psychoses felt life changing, I was at odds with the medical profession. How could I label something of such significance as only pathological? I sat on the edge of my hospital bed, despondent and unclear as to how to reconcile accepting that I had a mental illness without abandoning my spiritual insights by calling them delusional.”

Victoria would be glad to know that if she had faced the same problems today, things might have turned out a bit differently.  On Friday, May 20, 2011, one hundred experts in the field of psychiatry came together  to discuss this very subject. The conference was held in Vermont and was  titled “Spirituality in Clinical Practice: Exploring Advantages and Pitfalls in Addressing Client Spirituality.”

At the conference, psychiatrists stated that now that they’ve actively decided to integrate a patient’s spiritual beliefs with treatment, they face two distinct challenges:  1) not letting their own beliefs interfere with the patient’s needs and 2) patients feel guilt or mistrust of psychiatry because they are not giving God a chance to heal their suffering.  In the past, psychiatrists have solved issue # 1 by tactfully and respectfully refraining from discussing their own beliefs.  However, this has started to change as some psychiatrists start working with local pastors and other local religious leaders to find a way to help their patients.  Regarding issue # 2, one man’s answer was: “I’m going to sound simplistic, but the key question (for the patient) is do you know all the ways God heals? And perhaps a follow-up. Aren’t you limiting the ways God can carry out healing (by) creating a distinction that what we’re trying to do in psychotherapy is unfaithful or ungodly.”

Finding the right kind of help is of utmost importance for a rapid healing and recovery process.  Therefore, if you or someone you know is in need of psychiatric treatment, don’t be afraid to ask your practitioner if they are willing to incorporate your spiritual or religious beliefs into the treatment.  The worst thing that could happen is that they refer you to another psychiatrist.  And that wouldn’t be so bad would it?

 

To read the Bennington Banner article go here.

To read Victoria Maxwell’s story go here.

Photo courtesy of nondani.

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Celestine Prophecy Series

May. 15 Books no comments

by James Redfield

The Celestine Prophecy series gives insight into human nature and gives us a peek at what the next evolutionary step can be.  Encased in an adventure story, it leads us into the road of self discovery and awareness of our thoughts, actions and the world around us.  The series shows us how we share energy not only with each other, but also with nature and the world around us.  Most importantly, it shows us how to raise our vibrations so that we can become who we need to be.

In the rain forests of Peru, an ancient manuscript has been discovered. Within its pages are 9 key insights into life itself — insights each human being is predicted to grasp sequentially, one insight then another, as we move toward a completely spiritual culture on Earth.

THE CELESTINE PROPHECY tells a gripping story of adventure and discovery, but is also a guidebook that has the power to crystallize your perceptions of why you are where you are in life–and to direct your steps with a new energy and optimism as you head into tomorrow.

The series was written by James Redfield and includes: The Celestine Prophecy, the Tenth Insight:Holding the Vision, the Secret of Shambala: the Search for the Eleventh Insight, and the Twelfth Insight: the Hour of Decision.   You can also watch the movie, work on the accompanying workbook, or take a musical voyage on the Celestine CD.

Insights:

  1. A Critical Mass
  2. The Longer Now
  3. A Matter of Energy
  4. The Struggle for Power
  5. The Message of the Mystics
  6. Clearing the Past
  7. Engaging the Flow
  8. The Interpersonal Ethic
  9. The Emerging Culture
  10. Holding the Vision
  11. Extending Prayer Fields
  12. You’ll have to read the book for this one!

To find out more about the series visit the Celestine Vision website.

 

 

 

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Hands on Healing, Science and Bonding

May. 14 Science 4 comments

There is a lot of skepticism in the scientific community about the effectiveness of healing through laying of the hands.  For those unfamiliar with the concept, this process involves having someone (healer) lay their hands either directly or in close proximity of someone who is sick (healee) or injured and making a conscious decision/prayer/intention to heal their injured cells.

Dr. William Bengston is a professor of sociology at St Joseph’s College in New York, the president of the Society for Scientific Exploration and author of the book The Energy Cure: Unraveling the Mystery of Hands-on Healing.  Dr. Bengston has specifically been working with attempting to heal mice who have been injected with cancer.  Through his experiments he found that not only was he 100% effective in curing the diseased mice, he was also able to positively affect up to 80% of the control group.  These findings led him to study the interconnectedness of not only mice but people as well.

In a paper published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, Dr. Bengston describes his findings while using Electroencephalograms:

Under Jay’s technical direction we procured a couple of very sophisticated EEGs to be able to test two people at the same time. One person, the healer, was in one room and another person, the healee, was placed in a different room. The healer produces a specific brain state, which is seen to be mirrored in the healee.

Based on the experiments he’s conducted over the years, Dr. Bengston is convinced that living beings have a bond with each other that can be measured in a scientific way.

I am sure at this point that mice can become bonded together; that humans can become bonded together. I am sure at this point that the bonding is not permanent. Just as everyone has probably had the subjective sense of connection, they also have the experience that the subjective sense of connection is not fixed, it’s a fluid thing.

A person can be attached to things, places, people, and pets, and the same is true of mice. They can grow closer together and they can grow farther apart. Perhaps this is where a conscious aware connection comes in, but I am speculating of course. I don’t really see how consciousness or awareness affects healing all that much, but the healing does appear related to connection. In so far as some kind of connection is involved in healing, it seems that it would only be some kind of indirect method or indirect means by which consciousness would affect healing.

To read the full Super Consciousness article go here.  To find out more about Dr. Bengston go here.

Photo courtesy of Bengston Research.

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