Thursday, May 26, 2011

Return to Love

I am continually looking for ways to raise my vibration, to release limiting beliefs, to let go and just allow. (Aren’t we all?) I’ve studied Abraham, EFT, Theta Healing, hypnosis, Zensight Process, Z-Point Process, InnerSpeak, NLP, The One Command, 21st Century Energy Medicine and read hundreds of books and taken on-line courses, too. It is so interesting when I hear a truth and it really clicks.

Several years ago, I studied with a Reiki Master who was teaching people about manifesting in a beta group. He showed us a simple formula:V + E + R = M

Visualization + Emotion + Releasing = Manifesting.

He took us through all types of tools and techniques for releasing and ended with going back to LOVE. We watched videos of Lester Levenson, the creator of The Sedona Method, as he talked about Love and returning to unconditional love to manifest our dreams. He gave an example of a woman he had loved and lost and how he decided to focus in on her and remember the love they shared and just focus on LOVE:

“this thing called love is your basic nature. All the love in the universe is in your basic nature. You will discover that happiness—your happiness—equates to your capacity to love and conversely all your miseries equate to your need to be loved. Just love, love, love and you will be so happy and healthy and prosperous. Remember, you need to release your non-love feelings. Try it, you will like it.”

Lester's six steps
1) Want freedom more than anything else.
2) Decide you can do the method and be free.
3) See all your feelings as expressions of three basic wants: the want of approval, control, and survival. Release the want of approval, the want of control, and lastly the fear of death.
4) Release continuously.
5) If you are stuck, let go of wanting to change the stuckness.
6) Release more and more and become happier and lighter, until you move beyond happiness into imperturbability and freedom.

Lester was sent home to die at 42 and found the secret to life and lived to 84!

Now, I was exposed to this 2 or 3 years ago. Last year, I met my friend Tina Ferguson, who also talks (and lives) it’s all LOVE and you can return to Love and just step into that wonderful place of LOVE.

Then, I read The Shadow Effect and loved Marianne Williamson and her cool, loving way, so I found her book A Return to Love. What a wonderful book! So powerful, empowering and inspiring. Then, this week, I find Florence Shinn. Her book about The Game of Life has a similar theme and instructions: LOVE

Then, I was reading Why Good People Do Bad Things by Debbie Ford and she talks about one of her mentors, Emmet Fox. His short treatise on The Golden Key includes these great instructions about releasing your troubles by focusing on God (love).

I finally get it. LOVE.

And this helps me so much with the current rift in my family. Due to some things that happened last Fall, my middle sister and I aren’t speaking. This is very painful for me. I’ve done all I can by apologizing and extending my hand. Now, I give it to God and return to LOVE.

Seems like I learned that in Sunday School.

I guess I am just remembering this truth.

My sweet sister-in-law says:
“I am happy that we are a part of each others’ lives and what has happened in the past is in the past.”

Couldn’t say it better myself.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

My Granny Was Pure Love



As I read Marianne Williamson and work with local mentors, I keep hearing, “return to love.” I remember almost 2 years ago hearing Michael Beckwith of Agape in Los Angeles lead his group on a meditation for manifesting and he instructed us to go back to a place of unconditional love. Tap into that love, that wonderful place and, from that place, begin to dream and design your life.

Well, for me that is a time when my Granny lived 7 houses down the block and I spent a lot of time at her house. Many times, I would ride my skateboard down to her house, get a casserole or something and fly back home. I spent many Friday nights down there, too, hosting slumber parties for friends or the cousins.

My Granny was ALL LOVE. She exuded love, lived love and danced love. (Don’t know where that last bit came from, but I’m going with it!)

She was a farmer’s daughter, farmer’s wife and mother of 9 kids. When her first husband died of the swine flu in 1920, she packed her 3 kids up in a covered wagon and came back home to Texas from Colorado. Once back home, she moved onto her parents’ farm in West Texas and went to town and found her next husband, the man who would become MY grandfather. They had 6 more children together.

My Granny had a typical farmhouse and no toilet until I was a toddler. I remember going to the outhouse and the commotion when they decided to build the bathroom. It was an “add on” which also added a screened-in porch to the back side of the little white house. Here, me and my cousins would line up on pallets of warm and comfortable blankets for the family visits.

My Granny made me feel so special. She had a way of truly “being” with you. When I was in her presence, I was present. Do you know what that means? I can still close my eyes and smell the smoke house that was a portion of the barn/garage that was built to the side of her house. Later, when she moved to Lubbock to be near us and I was in her kitchen, I watched her bake biscuits, make that terrific gravy and fry chicken. (I can still remember seeing her ring the necks of chickens and visualize the poor, headless creatures running all over the yard at her farm!)

Yes, my Granny WAS pure LOVE.

One of my favorite summer activities was eating watermelon on her back porch at the house that was down the street from us. She had rusty old lawn chairs and an old bed spring that we all sat on. We would put the watermelon on a little table and get spoons and dig in. Some people liked to add salt, some did not. We all ate out of the same watermelon half!

When my husband bought a watermelon and cut it into slices and gave me my slice on a plate, it just wasn’t the same. Yes, I can imagine that there were germs and all kinds of stuff being swapped in our spit and such. But, in those days in the innocent ‘60’s, we didn’t have a phobia of germs, bacteria or viruses of any kind. No worries about eating after a loved one.

“Loved one.” I’ve said that word thousands of times and never stopped to think.

One that I love. That’s my Granny!

Thank you for teaching me about love!