Life is Really Very Simple....

A beautiful life affirmation from Louise Hay.

She writes: "Life is really very simple. What we give out, we get back. What we think about ourselves becomes the truth for us....Every thought we think is creating our future. Each one of us creates our experiences by our thoughts and our feelings. The thoughts we think and the words we speak create our experiences.....No person, place, or thing has any power over us, for "we" are the only thinkers in our mind. When we create peace and harmony and balance in our minds, we will find it in our lives."

As I read these affirmations out loud to myself, it's interesting to observe which parts my mind rejects as being untrue or impossible. This is a sure sign of which areas need the most work! Our thoughts create our reality. Why not create the most amazing reality imaginable?

In the infinity of life where I am,

all is perfect, whole, and complete.

I live in harmony and balance with everyone I know.

Deep at the center of my being, there is an infinite well of love.

I now allow this love to flow to the surface.

It fills my heart, my body, my mind, my consciousness,

my very being, and radiates out from me in all directions

and returns to me multiplied.

The more love I use and give, the more I have to give.

The supply is endless.

The use of love makes me feel good;

it is an expression of my inner joy. I love myself;

therefore, I take loving care of my body.

I lovingly feed it nourishing foods and beverages,

I lovingly groom it and dress it, and my body lovingly

responds to me with vibrant health and energy.

I love myself; therefore, I provide for myself a comfortable home,

one that fills all my needs and is a pleasure to be in.

I fill the rooms with the vibration of love

so that all who enter, myself included, will feel this love

and be nourished by it.

I love myself; therefore, I work at a job I truly enjoy doing,

one that uses my creative talents and abilities,

working with and for people I love and who love me,

and earning a good income.

I love myself; therefore, I behave and think in a loving way

to all people for I know that which I give out

returns to me multiplied.

I only attract loving people in my world,

for they are a mirror of what I am.

I love myself; therefore, I forgive and totally release the past

and all past experiences, and I am free.

I love myself; therefore, I live totally in the now,

experiencing each moment as good and knowing that my future

is bright and joyous and secure,

for I am a beloved child of the Universe,

and the Universe lovingly takes care of me

now and forever more. All is well in my world.

Finding Peace in the Holiday Season

The holidays are just around the corner, which for most of us means time spent with close family. In some cases, this is not always a pleasant thought, thanks to old, negative family dynamics. These bonds are deep and powerful, and can affect us greatly. If there is someone in your family who really gets under your skin, who really pushes your buttons, this post is for you.
The only person we can change in any situation is ourselves. If you are waiting for someone else to change so you can be at peace and be happy, you are setting yourself up for disappointment. It is our failure to accept people exactly as they are that gives us pain in a relationship. The key is self-love. If you love yourself deeply enough, you won't be looking to others for validation, and you won't be affected by what they say and what they do. 99% of the actions of others have nothing to do with you. If you love yourself deeply enough, their actions can be seen for what they truly are, an indication of their fears and inability to love, nothing to do with you. When you are able to separate yourself, you will see how afraid they are, and how that fear manifests itself as anger, resentment, bitterness, and guilt, which they then project onto others. You will see their fear, and realize the only answer for it is love and compassion.
Our families, especially our parents, are able to push our buttons, because they programmed them! No matter our age, when we spend time with our parents in some ways we become 5 years old again, still looking to them for love, nurturing and approval. If they say negative things to us or start pointing out our faults, chances are on some level we are still buying into it, still believing it. "What happens to us externally does not determine our internal condition. It is what we tell ourselves about what is happening externally that determines our internal condition." If your parent (or sibling, or grandparent) is still able to push your buttons, then on some deep level you are still telling yourself that they are right. Chances are you can't change the other person, but you can change yourself, by changing what you are telling yourself at that moment. Refuse to buy in, refuse to play the long-established game. Love yourself deeply enough to know your own worth and to reject their fear. By having compassion and realizing that their negativity has nothing to do with you, you are meeting their fear with love. And when love meets fear, love always wins.
Wishing you a happy and peaceful holiday season!

Making the Mind, Body, Spirit Connection.

Pain is the body's way of telling us something is wrong. It's a red flag, signalling "I need help!" Emotional pain works the same way. When we feel angry, resentful, ashamed, guilty, or afraid, these emotions are a message from our soul, "I need help!" Unfortunately, many of us ignore both kinds of pain, or try to medicate it away at the encouragement of the medical experts, or numb it with alcohol or street drugs. The problem is that taking a painkiller or an anti-depressant will mask the pain temporarily, but it won't cure what's hurting, what's actually causing it.

Looking at why something hurts emotionally is hard work and many of us don't have any idea how to begin, so we bury it, try to pretend it doesn't exist. We try to just keep going, "tough it out". Which is fine until you just can't anymore. A nervous breakdown or anxiety attack occurs, or depression hits thanks to all the feelings you're repressing. Or your body starts to manifest these emotional ills physically so that you can't ignore the issue any longer. This is how many serious illnesses begin. It's recognized by medical science now that cancer, heart disease, strokes, brain aneurysms, etc. can all be caused by unaddressed emotional issues. I've learned this the hard way in my life, diagnosed with a stomach ulcer at age 12 from repressing my worry and feelings over my mother's health issues. I was literally swallowing my feelings, terrified to let them out, until they ate a hole in my stomach lining.

For the last 2 years I've suffered periodically with severe lower back problems. The medical explanation is that I have an old injury and my muscles tighten to protect that area and the scar tissue there. I've been in and out of physical therapy, tried regular deep tissue massage, muscle relaxants, dietary supplements, yoga, and exercise. Nothing has worked, long-term. For the past 2 months I've been having a flare-up. I was so tired of being in pain, and had no idea what else to try, I guess you could say I'd "hit bottom". So I asked the Universe to please help me heal this......coincidentally, (except I don't believe in coincidences!) I won a gift box from an inspirational website. In the box was an amazing dvd by Louise Hay, called "You Can Heal Your Life". In it she talks about the direct link between physical issues and our thoughts and emotions. It made so much sense to me. I guess I was finally ready to consider that my back pain might be related to my thoughts, and not something that was confined to just my body, that I might actually be creating this situation somehow. If that was true, maybe I could also heal it! I began to really look at this, analyzing when the pain flares up, and seeking to uncover the underlying emotional causes.

After doing some really hard work, lots of journaling, meditation, and using some transactional analysis-inner child techniques, I found the source of the problem. An old emotional wound is causing deep-seated fears, triggered when I allow myself to be vulnerable with another. My fears were causing me to tense up, literally a "fight or flight" response, so much so that I was causing my back to completely seize up. As soon as I realized this, I was able to start working on those fears, and my back immediately responded by relaxing. Now, two weeks later, my pain is almost completely gone.

What an incredible gift, and lesson. Our thoughts are powerful beyond our wildest dreams, and can be used for us or against us. Awareness is the key. So the next time you have pain, either physical or emotional, stop for a minute and consider that it's possible that you can heal your life.

Sending you love and light.

Love, Healing and Romantic Love

Over the past year I've been working to revise my vision of a romantic relationship, and to change the way I show up when in one. In May I wrote about the "myth of happily ever after". Don't misunderstand, I believe in LOVE more than ever, but I no longer believe in different kinds of love. I've come to believe that love just IS. Period. I often think of life as a classroom, and relationships are like the "lab" part where you actually experience what you're learning. Paraphrasing Mariann Williamson in "A Return to Love":

Relationships are assignments. They are a part of the vast plan for our enlightenment, by which each individual soul is led to greater awareness and expanded love. Spiritual progress is like a detoxification. Things have to come up in order to be released. Once we have asked to be healed, our unhealed places are forced to the surface. People will be brought into our life who help us see where our walls are. Our walls protect our wounds, the place where we can't love anymore, can't connect any more deeply, can't allow anyone in any further, can't forgive past a certain point. We are brought into each others' lives in order to help us see where we most need healing, and in order to help us heal. Spirit brings together people who have the maximal opportunity for mutual growth. No meetings are accidental. Those who are meant to meet will meet , because together they have the potential for a holy relationship.

However, our culture has bred the idea of the "special" relationship into us, through books, songs, movies, advertising, and the conspiracy of other egos. The "special" relationship is a device by which the ego keeps us separate from others, rather than joins us. The special relationship makes other people, their behavior, choices, opinions of us, too important. It makes us think we need another person, when in fact we are complete and whole, just as we are. In the "special" relationship we're more interested in what our brother can do for us, fix us, complete us, etc. This is not love but exploitation. When we try to use a relationship to serve our own purposes, we falter because we are reinforcing our illusion of need and incompleteness.

In a holy relationship, we're just interested in our brother (or sister), period. We are not put here to audition one another, put someone on trial, or use other people to gratify our own ego needs. We are not here to fix, change, or belittle another person. We are here to support, forgive, and heal one another. The holy relationship is above all else, a friendship between two souls.
In the holy relationship, it's understood that we all have our unhealed places, and that healing is the purpose of being close with another person. We don't try to hide our weaknesses, but rather we understand that the relationship is a context for healing through mutual forgiveness, unconditional love, and compassion. A relationship that is used by Spirit becomes a place where our blocks to love are brought into our conscious awareness. The holy relationship is a divine relationship, a temple of healing.

Our fearful places have to be revealed before they can be healed. The ego thinks of a perfect relationship as one in which both people show a perfect face. Our ego is where we are wounded, our fear. We are all afraid on some level that if we reveal who we really are, people would recoil in horror. But our true selves, the Spirit within us, is that which is most beautiful. "Spirit is in me, as me." If a relationship exists to support our growth, then in many ways it exists to force us out of our limited tolerance, and inability to love unconditionally. Spirit's purpose is always that we might learn to love ourselves and others more purely. We love more purely when we release other people to be who they are. The ego seeks intimacy through control and guilt. Spirit seeks intimacy through acceptance and release. "Fear holds on, love lets go."

Love is a decision. A real relationship is supporting another person to be the best they can be. Partners are meant to have a priestly role in each other's lives. They are meant to help each other to access the highest parts within themselves. The most productive responses in relationships come from committing to playing your own role on as high a level as you can. Spirit will take care of the rest.

There are no different categories of love. The love that is real is the love of the spirit inside each person, the perfection within them, whether your mother, brother, child or lover. We must reveal ourselves at the deepest level in order to find out how lovable we really are. When we dig deeply enough into our real nature, we do not find darkness, we find endless light. True love asks for nothing, but peace for our brother, knowing that only in that way can we be at peace ourselves.

Wishing you light and true love.

A Poem for the Modern World

Someone gave this to me as a book, many years ago, and I loved it. I recently rediscovered it, and in reading realized how much of it has become an integral part of my personal beliefs, and the way I try to live my life. Although it was written almost a hundred years ago, I feel it's still very pertinent to our modern world.

"Desiderata"

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender,
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly,
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant,
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexatious to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others
you may become vain or bitter,
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble,
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs,
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is,
many persons strive for high ideals,
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love,
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars,
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life,
keep peace in your soul.

With all it's sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.

Max Ehrmann, circa 1920's

As always, sending you light and love.

Choose Love, Not Fear

One of my favorite sayings is "Choose love not fear." A Course in Miracles teaches this, and that every day we are constantly presented with opportunities to choose between the two. It says that at our core, our deepest essence, we are beings of pure love, sparks of the divine light and that everything that's been added on since our creation, by society and conditioning is useless. This explains why small children are so pure, so full of love and joy. They haven't been wounded, or taught to fear yet. I think maybe we are here to learn how to un-learn everything that's been added on by our experiences, so that we can return to that state of pure love.

The Course teaches that only love and fear are real, everything else is an illusion. Marianne Williamson writes: "What we think of as people's guilt is their fear. All negativity derives from fear. When someone is manipulative, they are afraid. When someone is cruel, they are afraid. There is no fear that love does not dissolve. Like the dark is the absence of light, fear is merely the absence of love." Don Miguel Ruiz puts it this way: "Anger is nothing but fear with a mask. Jealousy is fear with a mask. Sadness is fear with a mask." Understanding this is big. When we feel those things we need to ask ourselves "What am I afraid of?" And when others come at us with these emotions our challenge is to stay present in love and awake to the fact that the person acting out is choosing fear. This person has fallen asleep momentarily, to who they are. Our job as a miracle worker is to stay awake and love that divine being. This gives us the power to reawaken him.

"Everything that someone does is either love, or a call for love. If someone treats us with love, then of course love is the appropriate response. If they treat us with fear, we are to see their behavior as a call for love. Love is always the appropriate response. Our power lies in remaining non-reactive." Of course this is often a hard thing to do, we all have our wounds, our walls. And it doesn't mean that we should allow others to mistreat us. If someone refuses to wake up to his true essence, love them, forgive them, and remove yourself. This is the most loving thing you can do, for yourself and for them.

Staying fully present in love means not reacting out of fear. The ego always emphasizes what someone has done wrong, it seeks to keep us separate, it thrives on our fear. It's a defense mechanism, overly-developed. We have to learn to recognize it's voice, and to choose love anyway. We are all allies in each other's healing. Being a spiritual warrior and choosing love is not an easy path. When someone attacks you, or judges you guilty it takes tremendous strength not to respond in kind. If we can just stay centered and not take it personally, most likely we'll find that their actions have little or nothing to do with us, it's merely their fear talking. "99% of what other people do has nothing to do with us." It's about where they are in their lives, their healing, the stories they are telling themselves. It's tempting to choose fear, to lash back at them or try to convince them we are in the right. The ego really wants us to prove we are "right"! But sometimes it's better to ask yourself, "Do I want to be right, or do I want to be happy?" Because the only thing causing us pain in most relationships is not the love we think we're not getting, it's the love we're not giving.

Choosing love is always the right response. Not always the easiest one, but the right one. When I'm able to keep my heart open and choose love, it brings me peace because it's in keeping with the integrity of my divine higher self. When I'm able to do it, it feels right and I feel "in the flow" of life's energy, walking my path in the light. And that's the only place I want to be.

Sending you light and love.

My Mother's Daughter

Today would have been Patricia Patrick Wood's 75th birthday. I've been thinking of her a lot lately, feeling her around me. She and I were very close in my younger years, and almost completely estranged for the last 7 years of her life. It's only been recently that I've begun to make my peace with that, and I'm sorry it couldn't have happened sooner. I think eventually we would have found our way back to being friends, we just ran out of time. But I believe she is in a place now where it no longer matters. She knows I love her, and always have, and I know the same about her.

I believe in a higher power, a divine loving Spirit that loves and guides us all. (Call it what you'd like. I stopped using the word "God" because it conjures up childhood images of a stern bearded old man with flowing hair and robes, ready to judge my words and deeds, and to punish accordingly.) I believe this Spirit has created a loving, nurturing universe to be our classroom so that we may learn and grow. I believe that our souls are small sparks of this divine source, and as such are eternal and divine as well. I believe our ultimate mission, through each lifetime (and yes, I believe in reincarnation) is to overcome fear and to learn to manifest ourselves only through love. In doing this we return to our natural state, to one-ness with the divine. I believe that Spirit offers us guidance and assistance in our lessons and journeys. Everything that happens to us is to help us learn and grow. Spirit is like a loving parent, only seeking to help us return to our natural state, pure loving energy. We are provided with everything we need, if we only choose to see it. I believe we can't always get what we want, but we always get what we need. (The Rolling Stones were onto something!) What we choose to do with it is up to us however, and often we squander or waste it.

I believe our higher selves, our eternal, wise souls, know all. Everything that's happened to us, in lifetime after lifetime, since the beginning. On that level we understand the ways and workings of the universe, it all makes sense. This higher self tries to communicate what it knows with us, to help and guide us. This is the little voice we call intuition. It's not mysterious, it's the way we all are built, one of our natural senses. We've gotten out of the habit of using it, so it has atrophied, much in the same way that we no longer need our appendix to process ingested bones. We have become focused on listening to external voices, losing the ability to hear our own in the process. My inner voice has told me some seemingly impossible things, but it has never been wrong. It has led me to wonderful adventures and great loves. I find that when I listen to it and follow where it leads, amazing things happen. Connections are made, doors fly open, red carpets roll out, magic happens! This is how I know I am on my path, doing what I came here to do, in sync with the universe and my purpose for being. At times like that I see how beautiful and perfect life can be.

Sending you light and love.