Align with Love

Yesterday, I wrote about feeling “worthy,” and The Book of Love and Creation goes on to explain that after the author (or me, or you) becomes aware of his feelings of unworthiness, he can make a conscious choice to clear those old beliefs and move into a higher state of being. Then something truly amazing happens:

“…those aspects of the self that are not in alignment will come into congruence to be cleared, or to be restructured, so that this work can commence in its perfection.”

Those of you who have read and studied A Course in Miracles understand this principle very well. What we “give to God,” changes us! When we surrender and realize that we are not broken or bad or wrong, we can simply relax into God’s grace.
With this simple act (simple to consider, maybe a little harder to “do”) we begin to allow changes in our lives.

These changes begin at a very deep level and then move throughout our beingness, our lives and our very existence.
As I let go of old beliefs, grudges, hatred and prejudices, I make room for love. My attitudes change, my interactions change, my frequency changes.

Soon, I AM Love!

Creating My Life by My Intention

I began reading "The Book of Love and Creation" by Paul Selig earlier this year. It is a channeled text, which means that Paul sits and records what his guides and angels share with him. It is a book of truth and knowledge. What I'd like to do is share a short passage and then write about how this has played out in my life, in my transformation.

A wonderful coach, Elyse Hope Killoran shared this book with me and has been my guide for a fantastic transformation over the past 18 months. Now, I am sharing these tools with others in my coaching practice and the results are truly amazing.

Today's passage:

"I am Word through this intention to release any and all creations that have kept me from my belief, and from my knowing, and from my honestly accepting my worth as a Child of the Creator. And I am now aligning myself to new belief systems that will align me to my own ability to love, to be loved and to allow myself to serve as a transmission of frequency as love." The Book of Love and Creation, pg. 32.

How many of us do NOT accept that we are worthy? Remember the old Wayne's World sketch on SNL? They would bow to whomever was in their presence and say "I'm not worthy." And we would all laugh and laugh and laugh, crying underneath, because we all felt the same way. Right?

Yes, this was true in my life, too. Although I could probably point to situations in my childhood that contribute to this feeling, more events in my school life that reinforced it and then even more decisions that I made in my young adulthood that kept it going, I can also choose, IN THIS MOMENT, to release this belief.

And in that intention, I have the power to reclaim my worth as a Child of the Creator. It is truly my birthright!

I believe that all healing begins with this intention: to reclaim my self worth. And when I start this reclamation process, my world begins to transform.

Whether I use EFT or Access Tools or Reiki or any other energy clearing modality, when I choose to release old hurt and pain, I allow myself the space to reclaim my true magnificence!

More later . . .

New Year's Intentions

Happy New Year!

Yes, I know, maybe a little late for resolutions . . . or NOT! One blogger I know talked about “Non-Resolutions” such as:

I WILL NOT TRY TO GET UP EARLY I've spent most of my life being wrenched out of bed. First by my parents, both of whom are "morning people". Then by early-morning science labs at university that cruelly started at 7am. Then by joining a sport renowned for 6am starts (rowing), then by the world of office work. So I'm having a lie-in this year. True fact: no one ever got to the end of their life and said, "I wish I'd had less sleep." Night night B. Magnanti*

I WILL NOT TRY TO SLOW DOWN I’m going to work at whatever pace I want to. I’m not going to resolve to slow down. I might slow down – I might speed up – but I’m not resolving either way. E. Sinclair*

The whole idea here is to not focus on things that you say you are going to do that you know, deep inside of yourself, that you will NEVER do! It’s a fun way to be a rebel AND be authentically You!

Another mentor of mine, Anisa Aven, recommends that we do New Year’s Intentions! What a great idea! I’ve been setting Morning Intentions for a few months now, based on the work I’m doing with my own personal coach.

As you may know from following Abraham-Hicks or other New Thought Leaders, setting an intention is a great way to focus on who you want to “be” in any given moment.

Setting intention, at least according to Buddhist teachings, is quite different than goal making. It is not oriented toward a future outcome. Instead, it is a path or practice that is focused on how you are "being" in the present moment. Your attention is on the ever-present "now" in the constantly changing flow of life. You set your intentions based on understanding what matters most to you and make a commitment to align your worldly actions with your inner values.**

To me, intentions are based on “being” and goals are based on “doing.” For example, here are three of my intentions for this year:

-Focus on joy, playfulness and being more open to receiving goodness into my life.

-Being a light that shines for others to see where they want to grow.

-Being open to opportunities to collaborate with other lightworkers to help the planet.

According to the Chinese horoscope, 2013 will be the Year of the Snake. I took a look at several books and sites that featured animal totems and learned that snakes represent transformation and healing. Just think about the medical sign that shows two snakes intertwined. Here’s more information:

Snake energy is the energy of wholeness, cosmic consciousness, and the ability to experience anything willingly and without resistance. It is the knowledge that all things are equal in creation. It also signals a transition in your life. New opportunities and/or changes.***

When you consider what we’ve just come through with the December 21, 2012 energy, snake medicine is just what we need!

I wonder what intentions you will create for 2013? What else is possible?

*Both of these examples from this blog: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/9772803/Telegraph-Wonder-Womens-non-resolutions-for-2013.html

** http://www.yogajournal.com/wisdom/926

*** http://www.linsdomain.com/totems/pages/snake.htm

Sheba . . . Wonder Dog!

We lost our Sheba two weeks ago today. After learning that she had cancer, we authorized the vet to do surgery. When he did his exploratory work, he found that the cancer had spread from her spleen throughout her body. There was nothing that could be done to save her. Sheba came into our family one Spring day in 2004. Steve had read on-line about a rescue group in Denton that had German Short-Haired Pointers. I didn’t even know about that breed, so I was open to checking it out. He drove up on his day off and took our younger daughter with him. He had a list of 3 dogs from the rescue center’s website that he wanted to meet. Sheba was not on the list. After seeing one or two of the dogs on his list, our daughter said, “Steve, look at this one. Isn’t she cute?” Sheba immediately turned her attention from Sara to Steve, as if to ask, “Oh, are YOU the decision-maker?” He was instantly smitten with her and he began to rub her ears and interact with her soft and sweet personality. That night, he asked me if I would go with him the next day and meet Sheba. When we drove up, I saw a house, sitting on acreage and lots of dogs running around a fenced yard. Then, I saw her. There was a huge, square picture window and a dog peered out, as if she were smiling to greet an old friend. “That’s her,” said Steve, as we walked up. As we entered the house (the lady had given the dogs the run of the place!) I saw a chair and as I contemplated whether to sit or not, Sheba came up and jumped on me and I sat down, with her in my lap in an instant. She worked her way into my heart immediately. She was sweet, gentle and had these piercing eyes that looked right into my soul. She said, “Love me and I’ll love you back.” Steve and I walked out to the truck to get his check book and she not only followed us, but also jumped up into the truck, as if to say, “OK, I’m ready to go now.” We couldn’t take her, as she had to be tattooed with her special code and there was a two or three day waiting period. Steve drove up a few days later and brought home our girl. We already had another female dog and we introduced them carefully. They were best friends and had many wonderful days together until we brought home a male dog to be a mate for the basenji female. That changed the dynamics of our pack and the basenji was never the same. (This is another story for another time.) Through all of the dogs we’ve had over the 12 years of our life together, Sheba was the constant. She lived with us for 8 years, bringing much joy to our evening TV watching, park walking and errand running. She even abided my crazy Christmas photos with red and green collars, pink dog snugglies and other off-the-wall ideas. In many ways, she was our spiritual companion, too. She saw our relatives, who came to visit, after crossing over. Many times, my grandmother or Steve’s grandfather came to visit and while Steve felt their energy, our sweet girl saw them. She even liked to sleep with a towel over her head. LOL Steve says that he feels that Pappaw and my Granny were there to greet her when she crossed over on that Friday a few weeks ago. So, she is chasing squirrels in heaven and having DQ ice cream every night. She is a sweet little girl. We will miss her.

The Power of Forgiveness

When people ask me for a way to heal past hurts, I always recommend forgiveness. Many times, we are carrying around the pain of betrayal or the residual feelings from words that hurt us. In some instances, these situations occurred many years ago, but we are still stinging from the pain. In a seminar I recently attended, the speaker gave us an example from his own life. He said that his parents divorced over 30 years ago and yet, to his father, it just happened and “he’s really pissed!” Does this resonate for you? Are you still focusing on something that a sibling did more than a few years ago, just like it was yesterday? When you think of a High School friend who betrayed you, does it hurt like a fresh wound? Or, what about your spouse or partner (substitute BFF, boy/girlfriend or any close relationship here) and something that happened last summer that you didn’t like? Are you still upset over this issue? When we fail to forgive and let go of something that hurt us, we waste energy thinking about it, replaying it in our minds and maybe wishing we had responded differently. All in all, we are wasting precious time on something from our past. Once I read this quote: “If you can’t forgive and forget, pick one.” Robert Brault True words! The old “forgive and forget” is often hard for us. Some people feel that to forgive and forget implies that we condone the person or the act we are forgiving. This is not true! In its most pure sense, forgiveness is for you and really has nothing to do with the other person or persons. Allow me to repeat this: FORGIVENESS IS FOR YOU! Malachy McCourt said “Resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” How ridiculous! And, yet how many of us harbor old, hurtful feelings against another, because of something that we perceive that was “done” to us many, many years ago. We think somehow that our maintaining our vigil on this hurt is protecting us or honoring ourselves in some way. Yet, the exact opposite is the case. The power of forgiveness lies in our making a choice to forgive and move on. According to University of Wisconsin psychologist Robert D. Enright, who is an expert on the science of forgiveness, it is best that we forgive the perpetrator, wish him or her well and move on. It doesn’t matter whether the perpetrator is sorry or not, according to Enright. He calls this process "making a gesture of goodness" to a wrongdoer and says that you have "to be able to see through to the end." By doing so, by forgiving the person and moving on, you benefit the soul AND the body. People who have been studying forgiveness have been able to document health benefits to forgiveness. According to Dr. Loren Toussaint’s studies, “unforgiving people are at up to 10 times the risk for mental illness as the forgiving and twice the odds of cardiovascular disease as the average population.”(1) Here are a few interesting facts from another study on forgiveness: They have shown that "forgiveness interventions" — often just a couple of short sessions in which the wounded are guided toward positive feelings for an offender — can improve cardiovascular function, diminish chronic pain, relieve depression and boost quality of life among the very ill. An AIDS patient who has forgiven the person presumed to have transmitted the virus is more likely to care for him or herself and less likely to engage in unprotected sex. Those more inclined to pardon the transgressions of others have been found to have lower blood pressure, fewer depressive symptoms and, once they hit late middle age, better overall mental and physical health than those who do not forgive easily. Like proper nutrition and exercise, researchers say, forgiveness appears to be a behavior that a patient can learn, exercise and repeat as needed to prevent disease and preserve health. Dr. Douglas Russell, a Veterans Administration cardiologist who, in a 2003 study, found that the coronary function of patients who had suffered a heart attack improved after a 10-hour course in forgiveness.(2) The practice of forgiveness has been shown to reduce anger, hurt depression and stress and leads to greater feelings of hope, peace, compassion and self confidence. Practicing forgiveness leads to healthy relationships as well as physical health. It also influences our attitude which opens the heart to kindness, beauty, and love.(3) Another one of my mentors, Author Caroline Myss says: "When we harbor negative emotions toward others or toward ourselves, or when we intentionally create pain for others, we poison our own physical and spiritual systems. By far the strongest poison to the human spirit is the inability to forgive oneself or another person. It disables a person's emotional resources.” The second part of the power of forgiveness lies in the ability to forgive oneself. The inability to forgive oneself can be especially toxic to the body, according to Dr. Toussaint: But when anger is turned inward and directed at oneself, lack of forgiveness appears likely to have an ongoing, toxic health effect that might be even more corrosive to physical and mental health than anger directed outward. "Sometimes people hurt us, and we move on, and it might fade," says Toussaint, the psychologist. As he has refined that work with better definitions of forgiveness, however, Toussaint says he has been surprised to learn that those who hold onto self-blame might suffer more. "Forgiveness of self holds the more powerful punch," Toussaint says. "The effects are dramatic." In work not yet published, Toussaint found that men who do not forgive themselves readily are seven times more likely to meet the full diagnostic criteria for clinical depression than men who do. Highly self-forgiving women are three times less likely to have the symptoms of clinical depression — a risk factor for a host of ills — than their sisters who are prone to regret and self-blame. Those more forgiving of themselves also sleep more and are in better overall health, he has found.(4) So, forgive others and forgive yourself . . . you’ll see benefits in both physical and mental health. As the author Jon Krakauer writes in the beautiful book, Into the Wild: "When you forgive, you love - and when you love, God's light shines on you" Footnotes: (1) Ryan Blitstein, Pacific Standard, “Forgive and Get Healthy,” October 5, 2009 (2) Melissa Healy, Los Angeles Times, “Forgive and Be Well,” December 31, 2007 (3) Stanford Forgiveness Project http://learningtoforgive.com (4) Melissa Healy, Los Angeles Times, “Forgive and Be Well,” December 31, 2007

Choose Joy!

On any given day, I can choose to be in joy OR I can choose to be pissed off. Yes, this is MY choice. I’ve been working with Access Consciousness clearing statements, which encourages all of us to be “choosers” of our own reality. I’ve been studying this way of thinking for well over a year now. So, it came as quite a surprise today when I experienced a HUGE “ah-ha” moment around choosing to be or feel a certain way. It all started when I became “pissed off” about something very mundane and trite. (Bought some new make-up and the sticker security tag was almost impossible to remove. Even though I used alcohol, I still got the sticky substance all over my hands AND my phone (really . . .) As I was fuming, a thought came into my head: “I am CHOOSING to be ‘pissed off’ in this moment.” WOW! What a revelation! Then, the next thought came in: “I can CHOOSE to let it go, and be in JOY!” What freedom! To realize that all I have to do is change my mind. All I have to do is CHOOSE to be in joy! Then, I did a clearing statement or two around this to speed up the process: How many decisions, judgments, conclusions and computations do I have that keeps me from knowing how easy my whole life can be? Everything that doesn’t allow that to show up, do I choose to destroy and uncreate it? YES! Right and wrong, good and bad, all 9, POD, POC, shorts, boys and beyonds. Everywhere I am not willing to receive the change that the Universe is trying to gift me, do I choose to destroy and uncreate it? YES! Right and wrong, good and bad, all 9, POD, POC, shorts, boys and beyonds. Those weird, almost non-sensical statements are part of Access Consciousness and a way to bypass the conscious mind to make rapid changes in thinking, releasing limiting beliefs and letting go of patterns that no longer serve us. If you want to know more about Access Consciousness, go to the website: http://www.accessconsciousness.com/ This wonderful modality helps you release limitations and step into your full being. The initial class teaches you how to gently touch 32 points on the head. Activating these points by lightly touching them and allowing the energy to flow through the bars releases the electrical charge that holds all the considerations, thoughts, beliefs, decisions, emotions, or attitudes you have stored. This is the beginning of the change you have been seeking. This is the beginning of more JOY!

Remembering Mrs. Wilson . . .

In 1970, my family moved across town and my sisters and I had to change schools.

I was a High School junior, so the transition meant that I left friends whom I had known for most of my life. I had also worked as a junior staffer on the prior school’s yearbook, aiming for an editorship in 3 years. When I moved, I thought I had to give up that dream. On the second day of school, my sister and I were in Study Hall before school and the class had a wall of windows that overlooked the Library. The Librarian looked right at me on that morning and motioned with her finger to come in and see her. I told the Study Hall monitor and went in. Her name was Miss. Walker and my first thought was that she knew my last name (also Walker) and had selected me based on that. No, she said she liked my demeanor and the fact that I was actually reading a book, while the other kids were talking, scribbling notes or cutting up. “How would you like to work in the library?” she asked. “Oh, you don’t want me,” I said. “You want my sister. She worked in the Library at Atkins Junior High for 3 years. We’ve just moved to this side of town.” “I’d rather work in the principal’s office. I did that at Monterey,” I added. “Well,” she said, “Go in and see Mrs. Fuller. She works with Mr. Gooch. Tell her Helen Walker sent you. Now, ask your sister to come see me.” My sister DID work in the library every year of her three years in High School. I worked in the Principal’s office half of the year. But I digress. When we moved to Coronado, I registered for Yearbook again. I told the sponsor, Mrs. Marjorie Wilson that I had edited the Sophomore section at my old High School. She told me that she could allow me to edit the Sophomore section again, to “prove myself.” So, I did. I enjoyed working with the younger kids. As an older sister, it came second nature to me. With my sister in that class, it was easy to get to know the kids and earn their trust. I did a wonderful job managing the Sophomore section and, at the end of the year, when Mrs. Wilson announced the editors for 1971-72, she called out the name of another girl in the class AND me. We would be co-editors for the new school year. I was ecstatic! I would be yearbook editor after all! Mrs. Wilson was a kind woman who gave a new kid a chance. She was always interested in our personal lives, too. She provided lots of counseling on matters related to school, love and home life. (I remember getting some sage advice from her regarding a boy I was interested in!) She was like a second mom to me. She was wise, compassionate and firm, which was necessary to keep us on deadline! My dad called the Publications office when my little brother was born and she sent someone down to English Class to tell me that I had a new baby brother! Mrs. Wilson passed away last month at the wonderful age of 89. She was surrounded by her family and her memorial page has wonderful remembrances from students all over the US. (One former student is now an anchor on Network TV, Scott Pelley. I remember Scott as one of the photographers who helped us fill out our yearbook sections. He was a nice kid!) I remember Mrs. Wilson’s kindness, her grace and her wonderful way of motivating and inspiring a bunch of teenagers to win awards year after year in communications. We could have easily gone to the movies, gone out and gotten drunk or other assorted things that teenagers do. I learned about commitment, about follow-through, about deadlines and about taking pride in a project with a long lead time. (We started work on the yearbook before school started in the Fall and didn’t deliver it until after graduation in the Spring.) Many of the skills I learned from Mrs. Wilson have helped me manage marketing brands in Corporate America AND create websites for my husband and myself now. Thanks, Mrs. Wilson. I know you are managing editor for Heaven's most popular magazine! As you reflect on your success today, thank a teacher!