"I am as God created me."

Creative Practice

The purpose of this lesson is to heal the mistakes about who you think you are and to seek and find your True Self.

 Gathering Life Force

There is a reason why spiritual teachers speak about "getting centered". Centering means gathering all of your scattered energies into your core - into the center of your body. This is how we gather energy and concentrate our life force so that we can evolve and grow forward in our life.

When your energies are "out" of your body you are usually trying to "get something" or fulfill a need. We all have many psychological parts of self - of our mind - that need to express themselves - that need to be integrated, accepted and healed.

Your Center is Your True Self

The center of yourself is who you really are. It is where you can feel the unique flavor of your authentic self. You can start to move towards you core by gathering your energy inwards and becoming sensitive and present to the moment. We all have different ways of feeling integrated - of feeling all in one piece. Getting centered usually involves some way of concentrating your energy. For myself, it would be time spent in water and nature, engaging in the expressive arts and meditation. What do you do to gather or raise your spiritual energy?

Dissipating Energy Keeps you Small

How do you dissipate your energy? Each day we are either building our energy or dissipating our energy. Dissipating can include any way we try to "discharge" excess spiritual energy because it feels beyond our comfort zone. We can do this by engaging in behaviors such as eating too much, or judging and separating from others - such as gossiping and talking negatively about other people behind their backs. We can play our emotional patterns of negativity over and over because it feels familiar and comfortable, even if it is painful.

Releasing the Defenses to Openness in the Body

We also can literally close up our bodies physically to spiritual connection and openess. We unconsciously keep ourselves the defended and the same because it feels familiar. We all hold defensive attitudes in our bodies that block our connection to our core, authentic self such as cringing, defiance, hypervigilance ect. Psychotherapist Judith Blackstone author of The Enlightenment Process offers a way of releasing habitual body tension:

"Let your body move into the bound attitude. Really experience yourself in this attitude. You may find that parts of your body that you did not know were involved in the attitude move into the pattern of tension. Because the whole body is connected through the fascia, our bound patterns often involve a line of tension throughout our whole body.

"When you feel the whole pattern of tension, try to attune to the consciousness that is holding that tension. Originally all of our binding was volitional, even though unconscious. The same part of your childhood mind that organized the contraction in your body is still preserved in the contraction. Try to experience the childhood mind that is holding the attitude that you experience in your body. You may experience the age that you were when you first formed this pattern. You may also experience the emotional content of the pattern.

As that childhood consciousness, you will be able to feel and discharge the bound emotion. The emotional release may occur as tears, or as the movement of energy through and out of your body. The emotion with have the quality of your age when it was bound in your body. For example the rage of a two year old will have a different quality than the age of the a six year old, or the age of an adult. You will also be able as the childhood consciousness, to let go of the physical tension, as simply as you relax you hand after making a fist.

This is not a method of regression in the usual sense of experiencing oneself entirely as a child. Our present day consciousness remains alert and witnesses the fragmented part of our consciousness, energy and body that is bound in the childhood memory."

Holding More Energy Builds Joy

As we grow in spiritually - as we improve our attitudes and behavior and release the body armoring - we can learn to hold more energy in our bodies, more pleasure, more joy, more gratitude, more self-esteem, more abundance. Spiritual energy and all of these joys of life feel good and yet we have to become aware of how we block and turn the energy away and willfully dissipate our birthright. We can learn to turn our will to open to the spiritual and loving energy that is always available to us and learn to hold and sustain more of it. When we do our life changes for the better and moves us forward.

Some Good Questions to Ask Yourself:

1.) How do you best gather all of your scattered peices and center yourself? How often do you consciously center yourself in a day?

2.) Notice when your body feel armored and your attention is outside of the center of your body. What does this "constellation" of feelings, body tensions and thoughts feel like. Start to record and notice your "holding patterns" and see how you avoid centering  yourself in your authentic, spiritual core.

Healing Guilt with Self-Love

I have had a few letters from my newsletter subscribers about how to release guilt and wanted to post up this ACIM Lesson that explains the roots of guilt in more depth. Guilt is such an interesting feeling. In my own experience I can feel myself moving into guilt when I start to judge life and other people. I can actually feel myself separating away from my core sense of well-being as I begin to judge. I can feel myself hurting myself.

Usually if I can catch myself I can sense that I have moved away from my connection to my spiritual center, from my presence to something Larger. If I do not catch myself, I move away from my presence to the God and the inherent Good of life, and I can feel myself getting frightened and defended and even more self-protective.

When I become self-protective I start to worry about only myself and I stop giving my gifts to life. I stop contributing to life and may even disrupt or disturb other people's lives with my fears and judgments. I used to let this self-protection move me into a full depression or and illness where I would withdraw from life and nurse my inner wounds for days.

Now when I catch myself heading into this downward spiral I stop as soon as I start to feel uneasy, and grouchy and disgruntled. I check to see what I am disowning in myself by seeing what I am judging others for. Perhaps it is an unaccepted quality that I fear in myself. Perhaps it is an unmet need that I am trying to get others to meet for me that stems from an old sadness or hurt. When I am judging others, I know I am projecting my own inner hurt onto the world and it is time to love myself. When I have compassion for myself and my own inner pain, I can find the strength to have compassion for myself and the world again.

I am writing a book called A Course in Miracles for Creative Women that is a simple, non-denominational, creative interpretation of A Course in Miracles. This lesson focuses on the deeper roots of guilt.

Lesson 70

"My salvation comes from me."

Creative Practice

The purpose of this lesson is to understand that nothing outside of you can save you. You create both the sickness and the remedy within yourself. When you are joined with God/Creator within you are inviting all the healing that you need. We can only feel good to the extent that we are connected to God/Creator/Higher Mind. The closer we are to God the better we feel. The further we move into separation away from seeing the Goodness/the God-ness of the world the worse we feel. And it is entirely our choice.

2 times, for 10-15 minutes repeat, "My salvation comes from me," and add a statement to the effect of, "It cannot come from anywhere else."

Close your eyes and think about all the external situations, circumstances, people and self-concepts you have sought to try to make yourself feel better. Think of all the life situations that you thought would "save you". Say, "My salvation cannot come from any of these things (and really sense into the truth that if you had them without a deep connection to your spirit, anything would feel empty). My salvation comes from me and only from me." Your salvation comes from the depth of your connection to God/Creator. Your level of presence to your deeper connection to your Higher Creative Mind is the only thing that can bring you happiness.

Then enter again into meditation, trying once more to travel through the clouds to the light within you. Using the same technique as you did yesterday today, rather than the clouds being your grievances, the clouds are now all of the external things from which you have tried to find salvation - all the outer things you thought would save you from your inner pain.

Frequently remind yourself throughout the day, "My salvation comes from me. Nothing outside of me can hold me back. Within me is the world's salvation and my own." Only your thoughts separate you from joining with God/Creator. You can choose to make room in your mind for this connection.

Spiritual Idea

We are all tempted to lay blame for our problems outside of ourselves. It is part of the human journey to project and blame our our own unprocessed psychological material onto the world.  After the guilt of creating this kind of havoc in the world we might begin to realize that we have the power to feel good in any situation if we choose to take every upset back into ourselves and look at our own inner pain. We stay away from God through the projection of our unfelt feelings and unexamined thoughts onto life and others and then we feel guilty for those thoughts. The Course says, "All guilt is solely an invention of your mind".

It seems devastating and overwhelming at first to take responsibility for all of our problems but if we lay blame outside of ourselves we leave ourselves powerless and victimized. It is very deep work to look inside of our minds and to see our part in everything that happens to us.

If you think of your guilty thoughts as clues to what you are unwilling to feel and own inside of yourself you will start to clear the guilt. Often it feels too painful and we do not think we have the strength to look within so we project it outwards. This makes us feel really guilty and tortured because we have continued to deny our own pain and have continued to avoid ourselves. Letting go of guilt involves asking the higher part of your mind to have compassion for your pain and to gather the strength to feel and process it.

We are free when we know we are solely responsible for our inner well-being and we have to do the inner work of meeting all the parts of ourselves that are in denial of our inner pain. Every time we felt pain in our lives we disassociated from our spiritual selves, we stopped believing in a Spiritual Source. The level of our inner pain is in equal measure to our distance from God and our spiritual, emotional and physical wellness.

Yet nothing outside of ourselves will ever rescue us. We heal the pain to move back towards our Source of Life. When we move into spiritual maturity all that we hoped would saves us begins to fall away. If we are not connected to our deeper Source, no amount of money or good circumstances can make us happy. No one will further our connection to Creator unless we first desire it and say yes to it. We each have tremendous power to move our life towards a deeper connection with God/Creator.

The good news is we are meant to be happy. We become sick with our own unprocessed psychological material and when we do not do our own inner work we contribute to a sick world as well. We can choose to do our inner work and enjoy a life of well-being.

Good questions to journal about:

1.) What do you feel guilty about? What clues can you find that lead to what you are unwilling to feel inside?

2.) The next time you feel guilty ask yourself, "Who or what am I judging?" and then, "What am I judging them for?" Then ask, "Where do I judge or disown this same quality in myself?"

What Do You Need To Learn?

Lesson 39

"My holiness is my salvation."

Creative Practice

You could say that this lesson means in a nutshell, "My wholeness, my oneness with all of life releases me from guilt." When we are focused on our oneness with other people, we are looking for connections, sameness, and we are seeking to meet and join with others. When we look at others through our judgemental ego mind we are separating away from other people and we are judging them. The purpose of this lesson is to get you in touch with your holiness/your divinity, which is your salvation or your release from the hell of ego guilt.

Meditation: 4 times (more are encouraged), for 5 full minutes repeat the idea,  "My holiness is my salvation (from guilt)."  

Close your eyes and slowly search your mind for unloving thoughts.

With each say, "My unloving thoughts about.....are keeping me in hell. My holiness is my salvation." Our unloving thoughts keep us in hell as they produce guilt and guilt feels like hell.

Spiritual Idea

The Course teaches that guilt is at the root of all our problems, and yet at the beginning of our inner journey we don't even suspect guilt as the cause of our pain. We may not understand that unloving thoughts torture us internally with guilt. I sense on an unconscious level we understand the oneness of humanity and can feel how on a deep level we are poisoning and hindering other people with our unloving thoughts. We blame our problems on many things but rarely on our disowned connection to people and our own internal guilt for judging them and condemning them.

The Course teaches that guilt is insane and there is no reason for it. It serves no useful function. If we understood the extent that we manufacture our own guilt through our unloving thoughts and actions we would have no need for the Course.

Unloving thoughts are guilty thoughts. Holiness is wholeness - which is a loving connection to others. Holiness is lovingness. When we realize that our unloving thoughts keep us in our own personal hell, as well as have a very real affect on the well-being of others, we will more easily be able to transform them. We automatically become fearful and guilty when we indulge in our unloving thoughts."

Unloving Thoughts 

One thing I have learned in my own life is that if I think better of people it helps them. If I focus on what is wonderful about them, it always grows and through this practice I have come to enjoy people immensely. Most people I meet have something truly admirable about them. Everyone has a unique gift, a purpose, a strength of character that is waiting to recognized and celebrated. I find it I have an intention to find what is uniquely good about another, they will reveal it quickly to me. I find that it is easy to see the world as a dark and difficult place and indeed I could easily focus on what is wrong with someone's character, but it is much more joyful to focus on the gift, or the good quality that shines in another.

"We cannot live only for ourselves.
A thousand fibers connect us
with our fellow men and women;
and among those fibers,
as sympathetic threads,
our actions run as causes,
and they come back
to us as effects.”

—Herman Melville

Love as a Lifestyle

 Once in a while I come across an elderly man or woman who glows from the inside, whose eyes are clear and bright and who sits with a peaceful countenance. I met such a man recently. What inspired me about him was he said he made a conscious decision in his 40's to dedicate himself to loving. He was devoutly religious and when I asked him to describe his life philosophy to me in terms that someone who is non-religious could understand he did so most eloquently. He said:

"We are only human and everyone has certain weaknesses in their character. Some people do not get the basic thought pattern of love and are not ready to live the truth of love in their lives. At any cost we should forgive others. This is the workings of the universe. We are meant to play our part in making love stronger in the world.

Love is a quality that very few people will turn down when they are offered it. There is a thought pattern to loving and caring about others that puts others into the right frame of mind. Love is a lifestyle and we reach others by loving them. We build inward strength over time by loving others."

In reference to building inner strength through loving - just at we were finishing our conversation he softly said. "It should be said that many have a hard time being loving all of the time because they feel so hurt. You have to learn love through the hurt." It is indeed true that in the course of a day and a life our hearts open and close. It is is difficult to keep the heart open all of the time. Loving on a continual basis takes a deep commitment to honestly looking within at what is blocking our full expression of love.

Indeed simply loving and caring can be a dedicated spiritual practice. My experience is that if I keep my heart open for an extended period of time, often a layer of hurt or heartbreak will come up to be cleansed. Whatever beliefs that block loving we have in our psyche - will come up to be looked at when we dedicate ourselves to move closer to loving. Often our beliefs about love are how we experienced love as children. Often our beliefs about love are buried away from our conscious understanding. Yet they still operate under the surface of life and unconsciously drive our behaviors.

The parts of ourselves that do not believe in love form constellations of behaviors that run under our conscious understanding. Psychologists Hal and Sidra Stone put it this way,

Exploring Subpersonalites

"It is important to learn about how sub-personalities operate within us. Without this understanding, we are in the powerless position of watching different sub-personalities drive our psychological car while we sit in the back seat or, worse yet, hide in the trunk. It becomes a matter of great importance to dicover what these selves are and how they operate within us. This journey of discovery is the evolution of consciousness.

It many seem strange to think of our car being driven by different selves, each demanding it's turn, yet this is exactly the situation. We have usually been so conditioned by the time we reach adulthood and generally long before, we have lost connection to our true being. We no longer know who we are or what we feel." 

Integrating Into Love

Ultimately the goal it to bring every part of ourselves into alignment with love and this takes a kind of constant and daily intention as we discover the many parts of ourselves that run counter to our desire to love. I have been meditation on this passage from spiritual teacher Aster Barnwell for years:

Love the Ultimate Spiritual Practice

"I am often asked what daily spiritual practice I engage in. My answer to this question is that I practice LOVE. In the sense that I use it, Love is equanimity. It is a steadinesss of purpose, openness to what life has to offer, sensitivity to the presence and needs of others, effort with patience, and the willingness to make sacrifices. In this sense, it is the ultimate spiritual technique. To attune oneself to Love is to attune oneself to God, to the energy that holds the Universe together. This is why Love is the ultimate technique; if we attune ourselves to love in this physical dimension, we become attuned to Love everywhere that Love is observed. That way we use Love as a "carrier wave" to expand our consciousness. We cease to feel separate, cease to feel insignificant, cease to feel disinherited and disenfranchised."

Questions to ask yourself:

How deeply do you love the various aspects of your life? What do you give your heart to? What do you withold from?

What area of your life could you step up your loving in? Could you dedicate yourself to pouring love into that area of your life? Keep journal notes about your process.

"Two levels of self have been postulated. One is solid (true/authentic) self, made up of firmly held convictions and values. It is formed slowly and can be changed from within the self, but it can never be changed by coercion or persuasion of others. (It is non-negotiable.)

The other level of self is the pseudo self, made up of knowledge incorporated by the intellect and beliefs acquired from others. The pseudo self is acquired from others and it is negotiable in relationship with others. It can be changed by emotional pressure from others."  -Roberta M. Gilbert M.D.

Defining our values helps us make conscious choices and live a life on purpose from the unique calling of our souls.  What an interesting exercise choosing...or rather recognizing the highest values we live by is. If we do not define our highest values we are caught in out our living out our conditioned, pseudo selves.

My values will be different than yours but once you find your primary values you can begin to make all of your life decisions in alignment with your values and you will know what you stand for in every situation. Your values might be integrity, or connection, or health, or love, or loyalty, or respect, or beauty, or creativity. Whatever they are, they will form the basis of your choices.

Thus, we see that Values determine the intensity and flow of our psychological energies.

In the end, the quality of the values we embrace and the intensity of our commitment to them determines the level of our accomplishment in life.  -Roy Posner

Some common personal values are:

"Most traditional methods of working on oneself are mostly pain centered. People get to repeat over and over their painful emotions without knowing how to use the body's own inherently positive direction and force."  Eugene Gendlin

I have a true love of psychologist, Eugene Gendlin's work and I employ his philospphy of listening to the body in my own counselling practice. I will share some of the intuitive process for you here on how to address those "stuck feelings" in our body:

1.) Clearing a Space

On any given day we are all likely to have half a dozen problems that keep us stuck inside. Ask yourself. "What is bugging me?" Why don't I feel wonderful right now?" "How is my life going?" "What is the main thing for me right now?"

Stay quiet and let what comes come. Do not try to list every problem you can think of but only what has you tense right now. Let all these problems come up and out. List them, stack them in front of you and survey them from a distance.

Stay cheerfully detached from them as much as you can. "Well, except for all of these, I am fine."

2.) Felt Sense of the Problem

Ask which problem feels worse right now. Ask which one hurts the most, feels the heaviest, the biggest, the sharpest, the most prickly or clammy or sticky - the one that feels bad in whatever way you and your body feel bad. Or just choose one problem.

Don't go inside the problem as you usually would. Stand back from it. Ask, "What does this whole problem feel like?" But don't answer in words. Feel the problem whole, the sense of all that.

At this stage you will likely begin to feel a lot of static from your mind: self-lectures, analytic theories, much squacking and jabbering.

It is a matter of getting yourself to be quiet, listen and feel. Try to feel the whole inner aura of the problem. Try to get down to the single feeling of "all that" about the problem. The feel of the problem comes to you whole without details, like listening to a piece music made up of many notes and having one whole sense of it. I also find the problem is located in a very specific part of my body.

The felt sense is the holistic, unclear sense of the whole thing. This is something most people would pass by. because it is murky, fuzzy and vague. You might think, "Oh that!" "But that is just an uncomfortable nothing!" This is how your body senses a problem, it is at first quite fuzzy.

3.) Finding a Handle for the Problem

Find a quality word for the felt sense. Find a quality like "sticky", "heavy", "jumpy", "helpless", "tight", "burdened" ect. Or find a short phrase such as, "like in a box", "have to perform". A combination of words might work best like "scared tight" or "jumpy restless". Or an image might work better.

Try out different qualities until you feel a bodily shift and then discard everything else. You will know which one is right.

4.) Resonating Handle and Felt Sense

This is a double checking of the word and the felt sense to see if they resonate. Make sure the word is just right with the feeling. Once you get the sense of rightness, your body will shift again.

5.) Asking

Listen to the word you have decided is right and tune into the unclear felt sense for one minute. Using your word if it is say "jumpy", ask "What is it about this whole problem that makes me so jumpy?"

If you hear a lot of fast answers from your head, just let them go. What comes swiftly is old information from your mind. The mind rushes in and gives you no time to contact the felt sense directly. Ask yourself the question and wait.

Words and images will flow out of the feeling and offer a freshly felt difference. Just repeat your open-ended questions until the felt sense stirs. Ask, "What is the worst of this?" What would it take for this to feel okay?" "What does this felt sense need?"

This is not meant to be work but it is a friendly time within your body, inquiring.

6.) Receiving

Whatever comes in focusing, welcome it. Take the attitude that you are glad your body spoke to you, whatever it said. This is only one bodily shift and is not the last word. You do not need to believe, agree with, or do what the felt sense says. You just need to receive it. With each shift, your body changes and your life direction will appear step by step. Be willing to receive just one step. Once you locate this one shift it is very much like a place, a spot in your inner landscape. Once you know where it is and how to find it, you can leave it and return to it later.

"A felt sense is a bodily awareness of a situation or person or event...an internal aura that encompasses everything you feel and know about a given subject at a given time. It encompasses it and communicates it to you all at once. Think of it as a taste, or a great musical chord that make you feel a powerful impact, a big, round, unclear feeling."  -Eugene Gendlin

Try this process and see if it works for you!

Mystics would call our childhood thought system the "conditioned mind".  Very rarely do we think there is any way of being outside of our habitual thought systems. We come into this world, open, unique, authentic beings. Quickly however, we learn how to belong and how to be taken care of by our family and by society. We learn how to fit in.

Children learn within their families what to say and what not to say, what to do and what not to do in order to keep down the anxiety in the family system. If for example, as children, we learn that expressing anger brings up anxiety in the family, we literally grow up feeling like a "bad" person for expressing ourselves authentically in this way.

As children we are often praised for being "good and nice". As children, we are taught to behave. To behave means to defer to others, to not make choices for ourselves, and to be externally referenced to the thoughts and feelings of other people. When we make another person's thoughts or feelings more important than our own, we "lose ourselves". This is how we stay victims and dependent children inside, often for our entire lives.

Differentiating out of our family systems rules around authentic self-expression takes such incredible courage and strength, many of us will not choose to make that journey. The mere thought of expressing ourselves authentically within our family and societal systems can bring up tremendous anxiety. It might feel easier to shut down our self-expression down in order to belong.

I received a most surprising and supportive gift in the mail this week. Someone very dear sent me her inner world - she mailed me her entire collage journal to read. Her gift moved me beyond belief.  What I read in her journal is what I see in myself. As women we often feel like we are "bad" when we speak our truth. We are taught to be nice at all costs, even to the point of not standing up for ourselves.

As we come to know ourselves outside of victimized and dependent thinking patterns, it becomes easier to stand up to life's challenges. The more we touch into our true being, the more we we need to learn how to choose how we want to live our own lives from inner values rather than outer family and societal rules. This is how we become real. This is how we become our "authentic selves".

Good Questions To Ask:

1) Where do you feel victimized in your life? Where do you feel life has "done" you wrong?

2) Can you see places where you choose to keep yourself small and avoid taking the next step in your life by hanging onto your feelings of victimization?

3) What would your life look like if your did not feel victimized? How would you move into your day? What steps would you take?

A quote written in my 5 year old journal:

"When struggling with defiant, unconscious, self-destructive selves we must realize that these selves are activated when we fail to take action; when we fail to make necessary changes in our life. When we fail to give birth to a more mature self, to begin deeper unfoldment.

One's destructive aspects can serve to force change, breaking up ordinary lifestyles, routing one into chaos, suffering, new possibilities. The unconscious is extraordinary in it's capacity to orchestrate events in outer reality to achieve it's ends.

Equally destructive inner selves are those which represent the perfect models of what according to society one's life should be. What always lurks under such behavior is is the need to feel loved and accepted."

David Schnarch Phd. writes: "Many people assume we are our feelings. It sounds like a validating and accepting of feelings, but it creates other problems - that is if you get your identity from your feelings then you cannot afford to have them change. You'll feel like you won't know who you are. When you have a stable sense of self, your feelings can come and go like the weather. I've seen people who have an identity  a "hot head" start to get angry even though they are not really mad. Getting angry reinforces their identity and organizes whatever is unfamiliar into familiar patterns.

Good questions to ask yourself are:

1.) What emotional patterns do you use to keep your self small and preoccupied?

2.) What are the higher qualities that are opposite of your addictive emotional pattern?

3.) How long can you sustain them in your daily life?

What is success? What blocks success? My in-depth study of psychologist Chuck puts a new depth of thinking into the roots of success. You can read all of the abundance books you like but the ego mind is a wily creature and to see the roots of why you are abundant...or not...you have to be willing to look at the underlying ego motivations that we all have for blocking success.

To be successful in any area you need to want with all of your heart. If you are not successful...you do not want it with all of your heart!!

Here are is a question in Lesson 14 in Chuck Spezzano's e-book The Deeper Dimensions of Success...to ask yourself many times over...give as many answers that you can...from the deepest part of your defensive ego-mind until you realize what is holding you back. Be prepared to accept that much of it will be negative. These represent the areas of your split mind that need to be seen with awareness and reintegrated.

The question is:

In my situation regarding...what I really want is.....

The Negative Motivations:

In my situation regarding ...what I really want is... 

Write out as many motivations that you can think of.

Now the Positive Motivations:

In my situation regarding ...what I really want is...

Write out as many motivations that you can think of.

"Our lives show the accumulation of all of our varied wishes. Wanting something with all your heart will begin to slough away all of your untrue and idle wishes. Success comes from an undivided heart."

-Chuck Spezzano

The question is:

In my situation regarding...what I really want is.....

Try it!

I love to look at what I create and see what my inner symbology has to say. Everything we create in our lives, our paintings, drawings, collages, houses, families, jobs all relate to an inner feeling we hold. This painting indicates an opening to me towards a larger life, towards a more infinite mind that trusts that everything is unfolding as it should.

I have been reflecting on flow...going with the flow of life. Following one inner urge at a time, listening underneath the surface of things. Not resisting anything...moving into a mature consciousness and just sitting on the pulse...and listening.

How do I attend to this moment? How do I best respond? This is intuition. This is flow. This is clear seeing where we can see where we fit into the divine order of things.

I look at his painting and muse how much my life is my co-creation. Every feeling I have had is represented in solid form all around me. Life is a such a creative play!

There is always a right response to every situation. If we get quiet, we can sense it. Life is guiding us all of the time. When we respond with our instincts, with our inspiration, with our clear, quiet intuition, everything is in flow and we are in sync with events as they are meant to unfold.

A Few Things To Consider:

1.) What are you relisting in your life right now? What if you were to accept it? What would it be  teaching you?

2.) How is your current situation a reflection of your inner world of feelings?

I have been wanting to make many grand gestures in my life as of late, such as finding a new job, moving my house and changing my financial picture in one fell swoop. But intuitive guidance is gentle, it is always so gentle.

This weekend I went on a grand cleanse, understanding that I cannot change anything in my life until I love my life just as exactly as it is. So I loved my little car. I washed it with the hose, I vacuumed it. I loved my yard. I mowed my lawn and tenderly watered the flowers.

I swept my sun deck. I picked white daisies and the hearty ivy from the garden and put arrangements all over the house. I cleaned my studio and looked at all my earnest art journals, my writing journals, my hundreds of collages.

When my house was clean from top to bottom, I was suddenly in love with my life and wondered why I was in such a hurry to change it. After a period of quiet in the evening, a craving for stillness, that stopped me in my tracks, I sat on my bed and looked at the daisies and the ivy I had picked, and a simple message came into my heart:

"Let Love In."

When I did this drawing some time later I saw love pouring into all parts of my mind, healing me, relaxing me, joining with me.

Some questions to ask yourself:

1.) In what way have you let love into your life today?

2.) How does your body feel when you let love in? Can you feel where you are open and closed in various parts of your body? Ask the closed pars of your body what you can do to open up to more love.

I like the look of this jester because try as he might to be "happy", "positive" and "nice" his face belies that he cannot push down his repressed feelings any longer. They want to come into the light.

Everything must be brought up to the light, as much as we would like to pretend and wish otherwise. This is a process we rarely learn how to do.

The process itself is intensely difficult, yet rewarding...cleansing...relieving. Usually when repressed feelings come up, there begins a black despair. Nothing feels right. Everything feels horribly wrong...tainted.

We want to run but we cannot hide! We feel terrible, but the darkness is benevolent. This is where the present moment comes in. We have inner thoughts, stories, beliefs ect. within that suck us into tremendous emotional suffering and these are the very hardest to stay present for.

Richard Moss, so generously writes:

"We must learn that when we are powerfully contracted, we must turn our attention fully towards the sensations of angst and despair instead of the thoughts that such dark feelings always generate.

I have learned that I must stop thinking at the feelings, which means I must stop trying to interpret or explain them. I intentionally resist letting my mind race with thoughts that invariably begin to generate stories about why I am feeling this way and what I should do.

Instead I enter into a pure relationship, a profound intimacy with this suffering, and simultaneously sink into the Now of my body as though falling into infinite space.

 My attention never breaks with the bodily sensations. When my energy moves back to into my reactive mind, as it does for a while, I just renew the single pointed attention to the feeling. Suddenly whether it happens all at once or after many long hours, the darkest place becomes stillness, and even bliss.

It is as if I suddenly become transparent, so that both the terrible feeling and the self that hosted it disappear, and there is openness. I return to the beginning of myself, the Now."

So many presence teachings do not explain this process. This is what we have to present for...the hard stuff...so it can transform in the light of our attention.

I have been working with this process of attention to my darker feelings for many years and it has tested everything in me. This kind of presence requires tremendous strength and willingness, and it must be built up gradually over time.

A good thing to consider:

Consider that the minute you feel a contraction in your body, you are resisting the present moment as it is meant to be. Notice how often you fight the present moment in a day. See how often you say no to life because you cannot withstand the tension within you. See if you can turn towards it instead of away from it and touch it with your gentle, unwavering attention. Watch it as it dissipates in the light of your awareness.

We need to learn how to contain anger without projecting it outwards and be present for it until it moved and shifted on its own. Anger is a hot and uncomfortable emotion - it seethes and boils - it is enough to drive you crazy. It is very easy to project it outwards..."Someone or something has done me wrong" stories abound, and they are so easy to dissipate anger towards.

Richard Moss says it best:

"Demanding someone change (including ourselves) is fruitless; in fact it is a form of violence. We all have the potential to change, and it happens completely naturally the more we realize our essential selves. In the absence of this fundamental understanding, requiring someone to change is a weapon used against that person. It means attacking what is and an attempt to protect ourselves from feelings we are not meeting in ourselves. We must not attempt to manipulate other people to protect us from our core fears. Who they are, as they are, is the reality of them. To fight against this is to suffer."

Some good things to consider are:

1.) It is interesting to keep track of how much you resist your own life. When you consider that nothing can be other than what it is in this moment, it releases a good deal of inner pressure. Note how much you resist your life today.

2.) See how much you can withstand uncomfortable feelings inside yourself today as people say thngs you don't like, or events happen that go contrary to your plans. Welcome your anxious and uncomfortable feelings as you would any other feeling.

Know that as you welcome your disturbing feelings you are denying no part of yourself. This build a strength of presence and allowing that feels very rich.

The Force of Anger

Look at the force of this anger in this drawing. The figure is filled with cherished ideas about herself that dare not be challenged in any way. If this figure's cherished self ideas are challenged, some amount of force and control will be implemented to try to change the experiences and people that bring out these uncomfortable feelings.

The trick to meeting intensity in any form of conflict is to trust and remember that no matter how it appears, life is never against us. Life is always trying to show us some truth about ourselves and it serves us better to not try to withdraw and distance from the truths that are being constantly being revealed.

Usually our pain comes from not accepting the multi-dimensionality of our humanness. Most of choose to be blind to our own weaknesses and tend to see them more easily in others. Yet if we refuse to see the whole truth of ourselves we will continue to suffer endlessly. Life will always bring conflict to our door to wake us up to our part in things.

Pain and anger is usually about the loss of a cherished self-image. Perhaps for example, we prefer to see ourselves as all-kind and all-loving. When conflict arises it brings up all of our hidden pain and we realize how angry we actually are. How hard it is, and how unrealistic it is to be "nice" and "kind" all of the time.

We can become unraveled in group or family dynamics because usually someone is expressing some dis-owned part of ourselves. It provides us something to argue with and fight against. In disowning our own feelings and the truth of our own lower human tendencies, we tend to want to disown the people who bring them out in us. Whenever we do not want to see a particular, less than savory truth about ourselves, division, separation and conflict is born. The nature of wholeness is to allow everything into it's expression.

As I experience and accept my own anger, instead of retaliating and trying to change a person or situation that "makes me" feel disturbed or uncomfortable, I can let it transform into personal power and creativity.

Consider this quote about anger and let it transform you:

"Anger is born out of the fear you feel when others won't conform to your point of view. Give up your anger towards others and yourself by seeing that the force of fear is not strength. Remember that for any and every action of force there is an equal and opposite one. This explains why the fighting never ends. Let it end."   -Guy Finley

Some good questions to ask yourself:

1.) Who or what are you angry about right now?

2.) Is there any way that you can see that the current situation or person is attacking a cherished self-image of yourself?

3.) What if what the person or event that is "attacking you" has some grain of truth in it. Can you allow yourself to relax your defenses and take a look deep inside at your own areas of weakness?

4.) When you see what you are disowning in yourself you will feel more compassionate and integrated. Could you explore your anger and allow yourself to see what you do not normally allow yourself to see in a collage or a journal session?

Family of Selves

Life requires a tremendous amount of deeper vision. We can get hurt in daily small ways by the opinions of others and then choose to add another layer of defense over our coat of armor. When we protect ourselves in this way, we withdraw from life more and more. On the opposite end we can choose to take a step towards what is wounding us and look for the gift about what it is telling us. Anything that bothers us is pointing us towards something we are afraid to look at in ourselves. Usually it is something in our character that is not contributing to the whole of life and that we selfishly wanting to defend and not change.

Group dynamics are an amazing experiment that we all must learn to flow in and co-operate with in order to be part of a larger interdependent expression of the whole. Within a group, our individual edges, preferences and strong likes and dislikes have to get rubbed down in the interest of a harmonious working group. This is a good thing, even though the comfortable, primary expression of our personality would like to convince us otherwise.

Working in groups is uncomfortable. In groups we have to stretch in directions that we would not normally choose to. Groups teach us not to be so self-centered and only focused on our own interests. It shows us where we hold back, where we withdraw and where we act victimized and attacking. It shows us where we feel better than others, where we seek our approval from, and it show us where we feel less than others. Group dynamics are an amazing mirror. If we truly give to the good of the group and set aside our selfish and isolated interests, there is less conflict and more cooperation. Groups teach us to step outside of our small selves and give to something larger than ourselves.

Here are some good question to ask yourself:

1.) Take a good look at a current group you are involved in. Who do you like and approve of in the group? Who do dislike or are irritated by? Can you name the characteristics in these people that you like and dislike? This will provide a map of what you allow and dis-allow inside of yourself.

2.) It is helpful to view every member of a group as a part of yourself. Can you find a name in your "Family of Selves" that represents every member of your group? This will help you feel less outwardly attacking towards others. You can say, "Hello victim!" to yourself when someone is feeling sorry for themselves and look for all the ways you have felt sorry for yourself today.

Psychologists Hal and Sidra Stone say that the inner critic makes absolute pronouncements as though it has the truth of heaven behind it. It is for this reason that it is initially difficult to separate from the critic's voice. We think it is all encompassing...it this voice is all of us...it is God or our parents speaking and condemning us.

It is helpful to see that underneath the critic's voice is a fear of shame and of not being good enough. Our entire society is based on perfectionism, of having the right things, of looking good. To give ourselves the permission to be human and to know we are doing our best given our current emotional circumstances and life situation is a relief.

Luckily all parts of life are simply energy with a dark and light side. The positive side of the critic is that it is extremely discerning and able to analyze everything. We could reassign it to be a firm but benevolent inner coach urging us forward. It keeps us on track and does not let us get off with the job half done. It has focus and discipline. We can see clearly where we need to grow. With the inner critic applied in balance we can pull up our socks and move forward in a focused way.

It is extremely helpful to keep a journal for a while and record your inner critic's voice. What is it telling you on an ongoing basis?

Ask yourself:

Is this inner criticism valid or just plain cruel?

Where did the criticism come from? My parents? Society?

Am I allowing myself to be human?

Is there a shred of truth to my inner criticism?

What part of the criticism is true? How could I take a gentle step forward?

Our daily mind constantly demands that life make us happy in this way and that. It is the place from where all of our unecessary doing comes from. From this place of demands we create false ideas about what would make us happy and all the seemingly necessary tasks to go along with those false needs.

To see through "higher eyes" takes persistence and great dedication. When we see through our higher eyes we realize that there is not that much we have to do. We do not even have to have elaborate goals or dreams. Life is truly laying itself out at our feet. To take life in richly and simply is often the only task. "What is my life revealing to me?" is often the only question.

"Just the way you look at it...change the world." As you practice seeing the light and meaning in every moment you will start to see beauty where there seemed to be none before. We can never think or dream ourselves into happiness - we can only be present for life to come to us in each unfolding moment.

Some good questions to ask:

1) How much do you complain in a day? Can you see that your every complaint is an unreasonable demand that life should conform to your personal wishes?

2) Can you step back from your own thought and watch them with curiousity? What do you see when you view all of life as helping you?

After I did this spontaneous collage I reflected on how a good mother would love her children unconditionally. This kind of love is unending and it echos and resonates infinitely in our souls like the corridors upon corridors in the collage. This feeling of utter peace - self-embracing - I am perfect as I am - love is actually something most of us experience quite rarely.

It is helpful to reflect on how much you love yourself. By this I mean so you talk inwardly to yourself in an encouraging way at all times? Or are you hard on yourself? Rarely in our minds do we feel "good enough" yet. Do you feel utterly at peace and in full acceptance of who you are on a consistent basis?

It is interesting to contemplate that when we do not have the feeling tone of self-love within we are forever looking on the outside of ourselves - to our loved ones, our coworkers, our friends and even our own children to validate us.

Jack Lee Rosenberg, author of Body, Self and Soul speaks of all the various feeling tones that need to feel utter self-love. He calls them "Good Mother Messages". Read them over and see which ones you feel complete with and which messages you feel you are missing. If you meditate regularly on the unique feeling tone of each message you will likely notice a considerable decline in the often hidden but desperate search for outside approval.

Good Mother Messages

1.) I want you.
2.) I love you.
3.) I’ll take care of you.
4.) You can trust me.
5.) I’ll be there for you: I’ll be there for you even when you die.
6.) It’s not what you do but who you are that I love.
7.) You are special to me.
8.) I love you and I give you permission to be different from me.

9.) Sometimes I will tell you “no” and that is because I love you.
10.) My love will make you well.
11.) I see you and I hear you.
12.) You can trust your inner voice.
13.) You don’t have to be afraid anymore.

As we create our lives more honestly we are often called to round ourselves out in ways that feel unfamiliar. Sometimes disowned selves come up for acceptance and if they have been judged harshly by ourselves or others in the past there will be fear associated with their assertion into our consciousness. I for example have a strongly developed feminine side that is soft, easy and natural.

Fear seems to intensify with our resistance of it. Sometimes I will just sit quietly with it and let it seethe and pulse through my body. Feeling into the tone and texture of fear diffuses the resistance and allow fear to form into a message or a question. Fear implies that there is something that a part of me is not quite ready for. Usually a more limited part of myself is trying to keep me safe. 

An exercise to explore your fears and believed limitations in your art journal is as follows:

1.)What am I afraid of?

2.)What is my fear protecting me from?

3.)What would happen if I were not afraid of that?

When you are in a fear state it is often helpful to collage your fear. It is almost like creating a visual nightmare. I was in a state of fear when I created the above collage but I felt very satisfied and my fear was diffused after the collage was finished. Be gentle with yourself. If you are feeling overwhelmed step back and do not push through your fears too intensely. Let yourself unfold in a relaxed manner. It is ok to stop and take a rest.

Another good way of dealing with fear is to watch and record your dreams. This will help you understand the interaction of the full cast of characters that live below in your unconscious mind. It may help you identify which part of you is begging to be integrated and accepted into your conscious life. Once you identify which part of you is begging for acceptance you can soothe your everyday mind that is feeling fearful by repeating to that unaccepted part, "I love you."

The part that begs for acceptance may not feel very desirable or attractive to your conscious mind hence it's relagation to the disowned dungeon of your unconscious. It is likely a very young and vulnerable part that needs to be accepted into your everyday life. Whenever I feel needy for example, in my fear, I get to work on further disowning my need by working harder and doing more. The exact opposite is needed. If I take the time to express and reclaim this needy part I can find the courage to ask others for help. This brings more wholeness and balance into my life.

"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do."

-Eleanor Roosevelt