Tres Leches Coconut Macaroons

Chef Keem’s Chocolate-dipped Tres Leches Coconut Macaroons. These rich macaroons are great without chocolate, too. But why bother, right? Given the choice – wouldn’t you vote for chocolate-dipped macaroons?

Emotional Dependency

Greetings, my dearest friends. Again, I shall try to help those of you who are on the path to move forward from where they may be stuck. Although each of you may have a different problem to encounter in himself at this moment, this article will converge into the one point all of you now need in order to proceed without too much hindrance from within yourself, So, let us understand certain fundamental factors, as they exist in yourself and in the universe.

It has been said by all great spiritual teachings that creation is infinite in its possibilities and that man’s potential to realize these infinite possibilities of happiness exists in the depths of his being. Almost all of you have heard these words. Some of you may believe them, at least in principle. Others may have their doubts about accepting them, even in theory. Let us now try to overcome some of the difficulties in this respect.

It is, first of all, necessary to understand that no one creates anything new by himself. Nothing new ever comes into existence. This would be an impossibility. But it is possible to make manifest something that already exists. It is a fact that everything, absolutely everything, exists already. The word everything cannot convey the scope of this concept. When one speaks about the infinity of God, about the infinity of Creation, this is part of the meaning.

There is no state of being, no experience, no situation, no concept, no feeling, no object, no manifestation — in whatever variety, or type, or degree — that does not already exist. It exists as a potentiality, and already in that potential lies the finished product. I can see that this idea is not easy for man to embrace, for it is so contrary to the way of thinking, being, and experiencing on the level of consciousness he generally lives in. But the more you can deepen your thoughts on that subject, the easier it will become to perceive, to sense, to grasp this truth.

Nothing is created anew, all exists already. It exists on another level of being, of experience, of consciousness. It can be found right now, immediately — if and when specific obstructions are eliminated. Knowing and understanding this principle of Creation — that all exists already and that man can make these existing possibilities manifest — is one of the necessary prerequisites.

Before man can create new possibilities of unfoldment and entirely new ranges of experience in his personal life, it is necessary that he first learns to apply these laws of Creation to his problem areas: to those aspects of life where he is troubled, limited, handicapped — where he feels trapped. Healthy unfoldment follows the creation of a healthy personality. The learning and comprehension of the laws of Creation can take place only if one applies them first to the afflicted area of the personality.

Whatever possibility you can conceive of, you can realize. Suppose you are in a conflicting situation from which you cannot see a way out. As long as you do not conceive of a way out, you truly cannot realize the already existing possibility. Or, if your concepts about the way out are hazy or unrealistic, so will be the temporary solutions that will appear as the only possibilities. The same applies, of course, to your life as a whole, as well as to specific areas. If you truly comprehend that an infinite number of possibilities exists in any given situation, you can find solutions where it was hitherto impossible to do so.

It is man’s prerogative to make use of these laws of Creation and to reach out for these infinite possibilities to unfold and partake of life’s offerings. If man’s life seems so limited, it is only because he is convinced his life must be limited. He cannot conceive of anything more than what he has experienced until now, and what he is experiencing at present. This is precisely the first handicap. Therefore, in order to expand your own possibilities of happiness, your mind must grasp this principle: you cannot bring to life what you cannot conceive.

This sentence should be truly meditated on, for the understanding of it will open new doors. And you should understand that there is a vast difference between conceiving of further possibilities of expansion, of happiness, on the one hand, and of daydreaming on the other. Wistful, resigned daydreaming that grabs the fantasy as a substitute for a drab reality is not at all what is meant here; such daydreaming is really a hindrance to the proper conceiving of life’s potentials.

What I mean is a vigorous, active, dynamic reality concept of what is possible. When you know that something you wish to bring about exists in principle, you have made the first step toward its realization.

Therefore, I invite everyone of you to contemplate what you truly conceive of as possibilities for your life. If you examine yourself closely, you will find, primarily, that you conceive of negative possibilities, which you naturally fear and wish to avoid. You defend yourself against negative possibilities. You use the main part of your psychic energies in order to defend against negative possibilities.

Negative motivation does not necessarily mean a destructive intent. For that matter, a positive motivation, in this context, could mean a very destructive intent or aim. The avoidance of a feared possibility means negative motivation. Upon close examination of your mental and emotional processes, you will find that you are negatively motivated to a considerable extent.

This is one of the first obstructions which encloses you in an imaginary and needless prison. This applies, of course, to all levels of your personality. It applies to the mental level, where you cannot really envisage the infinite vistas of experience, of expansion, of stimulation, of all sorts of wondrous and happy possibilities you have a prerogative to achieve in this life. It exists on the emotional level, where you do not allow the spontaneous and natural flow of your feelings. You fearfully, anxiously, and suspiciously hold back this spontaneous flow of what you really feel. And it exists physically, where you do not permit your body to experience the pleasure it is destined to experience.

All these are limitations which you artificially and needlessly inflict upon yourself. The next hindrance and obstruction in connection with expanding your life and creating the best of all possible lives for yourself is a cluster of misconceptions widespread in the world. We have discussed them in the past and in various other connections. Briefly recapitulating, they are: “It is not possible to be really happy; man’s life is very limited; happiness, pleasure, ecstasy are frivolous, selfish aims the truly spiritual person must abandon for his spiritual development, which must consist of sacrifice and renunciation.”

We do not have to elucidate these deeply lodged misconceptions, which are often more in the unconscious than in the conscious mind. We discussed this sufficiently in the past. But it is necessary that you discover the subtle way in which you abide by such concepts, no matter what you consciously believe. You may discover these subtle reactions by observing the reluctance which you feel against realizing a perfectly harmless and normal fulfillment, a genuine need, a truly constructive aim.

You feel as though something were holding you back, paralyzing your effort. Although there are often a number of other reasons for this reluctance as well — some of which we shall discuss shortly — it is also often true that you simply have accepted a negative idea that really makes no sense and has no good purpose.

Fear of happiness, of pleasure, of wide expansion in one’s life experiences is based on ignorance that such fulfillment could exist. On ignorance that you possess all the powers, faculties, and resources to create and bring about what you wish. On misconceptions, such as that pleasure is wrong, that it is selfish to want personal fulfillment. On fear of being annihilated and dissolved if one trusted the flow of the universal forces and went with them. Such trust necessitates letting go of the ego-will and the ego-forces and surrendering to the beneficial forces of your deep nature.

Every single human being in this world harbors an attitude of fear and weakness. This corner of the personality usually induces a strong shame, so that it is kept secret, often even from the conscious mind. Many different devices are invented in order to hide this weak, dependent area in which one feels utterly helpless, dependent, unable to assert the self, unable even to protect one’s truth and integrity. Here one is constantly compelled to sell out, to betray oneself, in order to ward off disapproval, censure, rejection.

The need for such acceptance by others is mostly less shameful than the measures to which the personality goes in order to submit, to placate, to appease. We did discuss some of these aspects in the past, of course, since they are psychologically so fundamental that we could not have gotten so far in our work unless considerable work had already been done in this respect. All the defense mechanisms you have discovered and, perhaps to some extent, begun to remove, are nothing but either ways to obtain this apparently vital acceptance from others, and/or ways to hide this shameful submission.

In this article we shall go into this topic with a still closer scrutiny, especially from the point of view of realizing life’s possibilities. We are less concerned here with ways in which you hide this shameful area — often by an apparently opposite attitude, such as indifference, hostility, compulsion, and blind rebellion, over-aggressiveness, and so forth.

Few things give man as much pain and shame as this weak spot in himself, which makes him feel impotent and compelled to sell out. We already know, my friends, that this area has remained a child. The child does not yet know that the whole of the personality has grown up and is, indeed, no longer helpless and dependent. An infant or a young child truly is helpless and dependent on the parents. But in this corner of your being that is still a child you either do not know or do not want to know that this is no longer true, that you are no longer helpless and dependent, that you are an adult.

To briefly recapitulate: the child is dependent on the parents for everything: shelter, food, affection, protection, and last, but not least, also on the so necessary supply of pleasure. For man cannot live without pleasure. It is one of the most harmful errors to deny this truth. Body, soul, mind, and spirit wither without pleasure. As the adult is able to establish conditions by his own forces and resources to provide shelter, food, affection, and safety, so is he able to do the same about pleasure. In all these areas he must have contact, cooperation, and communication with others — in varying degrees.

He cannot provide for himself any of these necessities without interplay with other people. But this interplay, or interaction, is entirely different from the passive, weak, dependency of the small child. The thoroughly adult person uses his own best forces, his intelligence, his intuition, his talents, his observation, his flexibility to get along with others in giving and taking. His sense of fairness makes him sufficiently pliable to give in. And his sense of self makes him sufficiently assertive not to be stepped on and abused.

The often fine balance in these forces of communication cannot be taught; it is an awareness that comes through personal growth. The child is incapable of this. He is rigidly one-sided in his insistence to receive, for this is his need. The same applies to pleasure. The child must have the parent’s permission, as it were, to have pleasure. The adult must have his own permission to establish and utilize the source of all pleasure deep within himself.

Through his own permission, he will have the force and security to make meaningful contact. If he first needs the other person to approve before he can allow himself to experience pleasure, he is still in the position of a child, or even of an infant. I repeat, this never implies that one can do without others. But the emphasis is shifted. The adult finds in himself a well of inexhaustibly wonderful feelings. Insecurity and weakness are not possible when these feelings are activated.

When man is distorted in this respect and part of his development is arrested, he waits for another person — a parental substitute — to make it possible for him to realize this deep source of his own rich feelings. He knows of them and yearns for them. But he does not know that he is no longer a child who is dependent on others for being allowed to feel them, for being able to activate and express his feelings. This is his tragedy, for he thus moves into a vicious circle. Whenever a misconception is adhered to, immediately a vicious circle comes into being, which paralyzes the pleasure forces, a good part of energy, and thus makes life dull and lusterless.

To deny the intense pleasure of being, the pleasure of the energy flow of man’s body, soul, and spirit, is to deny life. When a child suffers such a denial, his psyche receives sort of a shock — perhaps by repeated absence of pleasure and unfulfilled yearning. This shock prevents growth, so that the personality grows lopsidedly. In his conscious mind, man ignores the fact that in him exists a crying, claiming, angry, and helpless child.

He believes himself entirely grown. Yet on the unconscious level, where this child exists, he is unaware that he has not grown up, and no longer needs the parental permission, or, even more, the parent (substitute) for the source of pleasure and life. He does not know that he is free to move toward pleasure, toward his own fulfillment, toward the realization of his own powers to obtain whatever he wants and needs. This is one of the most fundamental splits in man’s personality.

Let us now look a bit closer at this hidden corner, where man has remained a child. Let us see where his consciousness ignores this and where the child ignores the rights and powers of the adult state. The particular vicious circle I mentioned before is this: not knowing that all exists already, so that it can be (re)created as a manifestation in his life, makes him dependent on an outside force, another authority, for all his wants and needs. In this distortion of facts, he waits for fulfillment from the wrong source.

This keeps the need perpetually unfulfilled. The more unfulfilled he is, the more urgent the need becomes. The more urgent the need, the greater his dependence, his hope, his attempt to please whomever is supposed to fill it. He becomes desperate. Desperate because the more he tries, the less the need is fulfilled, as it must be in this unrealistic attempt. Consciously he knows nothing of this, he does not know what forces drive him — not even in what direction. And he is desperate because, in his urgency to have the need fulfilled, he betrays himself, his truth, his best.

Both his frustrated striving and his self-betrayal create a forcing current. This forcing current may manifest in a very subtle way. It may not be overt at all, but the emotions are all cramped up with it and it must inevitably affect others and have its lawful and appropriate consequences. Any forcing current is bound to make others resist and shrink back, even if what they are forced to do were for their own benefit and delight. Thus the vicious circle continues.

The continued frustration, believed to be caused by the mean refusal of the other to cooperate and to give, brings rage, fury, and perhaps even vindictiveness, and also varying degrees of cruel impulses into the soul. This, in turn, weakens the personality even more, for guilt comes up. The destructive feelings must be hidden, so as not to antagonize the “source of life.”

The net of entanglement becomes tighter and tighter, the individual is completely ensnarled in this trap of his own misconceptions, distortions, and illusions, with all the destructive emotions that follow suit. He finds himself in the preposterous position of craving for the love and acceptance of a person whom he hates and resents for having left him unfulfilled for so long.

This one-sidedness — this insistence to be loved by a person one deeply resents and wishes to punish — increases guilt, for the ever wakeful presence of the real self flashes its reactions into a mind that is unable to interpret and sort out the messages of the real self from those that come from the child inside.

The fact that this need is not fulfilled by the other also weakens man’s conviction that he has a right to the pleasure he so much desires. He vaguely suspects that he may be wrong to want this. Thus he begins to displace the original, natural need and desire, he conducts them into other channels, where they are “sublimated.”

More or less compulsive other needs come into existence. All the while he is torn between the force of the deeply hidden original need and the doubt that he has a right to it. The more he doubts, the more dependent he becomes for reconfirmation by an authority person — a parent substitute, public opinion, certain groups of people who represent the last word of truth.

The more the vicious circle goes on, the less pleasure and the more unpleasure exists in the psyche and the more such a person must despair about life and doubt that fulfillment is possible. There comes a point when a person inwardly gives up.

There is not a single human being who does not harbor, in some way and to some degree, such a weak area within. In this secret corner he feels not only helpless and dependent, but deeply ashamed for the means he employs in order to placate the person who, at any given period, is supposed to fulfill the role of the authority to grant him what he needs in pleasure, safety, and self-respect.

The forcing current says, “you must.” It makes demands on others to be, feel, and do what the person needs and desires. This may not at all manifest outwardly. In fact, on the surface it may have the entirely opposite effect. Man’s inability or difficulty to healthily assert himself is a direct result of hiding the shameful and threatening forcing current. It is threatening because the person knows quite well that if it shows openly, it will evoke great censure and disapproval and possibly even overt rejection.

I invite all my friends to vigorously face this feared area in themselves. Some of you have done so already, others are still struggling with it and have only half-heartedly admitted its existence. Perhaps some of you may still have to face up to it. But all of you must tackle it if you wish to realize life’s and your own best potentials, if you wish to discover your own infinite powers to create infinite goodness in your life.

The stronger the “must” is secretly and inwardly thrown at others, the more man inactivates his own powers and the more paralyzed and inactive he becomes in body, soul, and mind. This inactivity exists, on the one level, where he does not move into his own nucleus, where all realistic promise lies, where all potential for every kind of fulfillment and delight exists. He inadvertently makes himself hang on to others, which must elicit hate. Finding the treasure of one’s nucleus, on the contrary, makes one free, and contact with others becomes a delightful luxury that elicits love.

By continually using inner, covert pressure on others, because he believes himself dependent on them, man diminishes his available energy supply. If energy is used in its natural, correct, meaningful way, it never exhausts itself. There are innumerable means man uses in order to send forth this forcing current. It may be from every degree of compliance, passive resistance, spite, withdrawal, the refusal to cooperate, forceful outer aggression, the attempt to persuade through false strength, and assuming oneself a kind of authority role, intimidations, etc., etc. They all mean, deep down, “you must love me and give me what I need.” The more he is blindly involved in this way of being, the more man weakens himself, and the further he alienates himself from the center of his true inner life, where all is found that he needs and can ever want.

In order to re-orient and re-condition the soul forces into health and into their true nature, the following must happen: man must let go of the particular person or persons of whom he expects his life fulfillment and whom he, simultaneously, resents for this very fact. He must recognize that he extends expectations to and makes demands on others that no one else can fulfill but himself, for himself.

The real love you all need and long for can only come when your soul is fearless and when you know that the material to love with — the strength of your feelings, with which you can give and receive — is found within you. For as long as you hang on to another in the ways of a child, denying the adult you are, you enslave yourself in the true sense of the word. The more you do this, the less you can either receive or give; the less real feelings of any sort, feelings about any vital experience, can find a place within you.

For fear and anger take up most of the “room” in your psyche. This is why it is so essential to let out these negative emotions, in the way you learn to do on this path, where no one is harmed. Letting out makes room for the good feelings. Here so many of my friends are still locked and paralyzed. It is the last thing you want to do.

Even if you admit such negative emotions in principle, you still prefer to act them out rather than express them and take the responsibility for them onto yourself. You still claim a false perfection, which you do not really believe to exist in yourself any longer, in order to favorably dispose others toward you. Also, you cling to the negative emotions for dear life because you fear the positive feelings.

The less you are responsible for yourself in the deepest possible sense — concerning the negative feelings you still possess, as well as your possibility to create happiness — the more you must live in fear. Consequently, the more you must “do” to eliminate that fear. Thus negative motivation comes about.

You live in a makeshift life of avoidance, rather than unfoldment and expansion, of positive experience and pleasure. You aim to avoid the threat of your own negative feelings, which would spoil your aim of obtaining from others that which you must obtain from yourself. You stake your salvation on others, from whom it can never come.

Apart from recognizing all these aspects, which is the fundamental necessity, the reorientation must always begin by the willingness to let go. This cannot be forced upon one who has not been made aware of the dependency itself in very exact ways. But once this is the case, it becomes possible to give up what one so tightly holds on to.

This loosening up must occur in order to bring about a change in the balance structure of soul forces so that benign circles are set into motion. You must also be willing to dispense with your rationalizations that make your “case” seem so right. For you can always succeed to present it to yourself and to others as though your wishes, your needs, and your demands on others are not only justified, but that there is nothing wrong about them, that, in fact, they are also beneficial for the other.

This may even be quite true, as far as it goes. What you want, in principle, may indeed be good and legitimate. But in a hidden, emotional forcing current you go about it in the wrong way and you do not grant the other person the freedom you wish for yourself. You do not give him the right to freely choose whom to love and accept, you coerce him; you feel rejected and hated when he asserts this freedom; you refuse him the right to be wrong without being hated and totally denied.

This is a freedom you very much wish for yourself and you deeply resent it when others do not grant it to you. You are unable to defend yourself adequately in such cases, only because you do not grant this same freedom to others on certain emotional levels. When you look very closely, you will find this to be true. And when you do so, your sense of fairness and objectivity will help you to give up what you so desperately hold on to, even while you emotionally still believe that your life depends on getting the other to feel and do as you wish.

Once you have learned this initial condition — surely with a number of inevitable relapses, that must forever be newly observed and dealt with — you will take a vast step towards the source of your inner being, where you are not chained in weakness and anxiety, in fear and anger. You all chafe at the leash around your neck that keeps you dependent and anxious in a situation in which you cannot find the strength to assert yourself; in which you find yourself absolutely caught and cannot see a way out, for each possibility seems wrong.

None of the visible alternatives give you that good feeling about yourself, that resilient strength and well-being, in which even different steps become feasible because you know they are right for you. Most of you have, at least occasionally, experienced this. It is that your real self is freed and is operative through you. It is our aim to bring it out completely. In order to do so, this weak point must be found so that you can eventually let go of it.

The weak point is where you are most bound and anxious. Ask yourself what it is that you want from the other person — where you are bound, resentful, afraid, weak, and unable to assert yourself? This is your leash, which can be given up only when you stop wanting from others what you must supply from yourself. Whatever it is you find you need from others, verbalize it concisely to yourself.

This will bring you nearer to letting go. You will then know that this is precisely where you enslave, weaken, and paralyze yourself. You will then experience a new, resilient strength coming out of you that suddenly conciliates apparently insoluble problems. You will become free as you let free.

Only when you can let go — on the ego level — in the areas where you exert force, can you gain or win — on the level of Creation — the power to form a good life.

Conversely, your inability to give up, to let free, to be fair; your insistence to win and have your way, your refusal to lose on this ego-level, makes it impossible to win where it counts and makes it impossible for you to find your real strength.

Jesus Christ spoke about this when He said, “He who wants to live must be able to lose his life.” This is the meaning. You must give up what you want to gain. Here we are dealing with levels. I hope it is quite clear that there is no sacrifice or renunciation involved.

What is meant here is that you cannot obtain what you want, and what you should have, in the manner and through the source you exert your effort to. The emphasis must shift. If you insist to win on the wrong level, you cannot win. If you can lose on that level, you will win. You will inevitably come into that nucleus of yourself where every conceivable power exists. As you grant others the right to be, whether it is convenient to you or not, to that extent you will truly find your own rights.

It is a steadily growing process to find these rights. First it will manifest by no longer selling out, in no longer downgrading yourself. You will find genuine, good defenses against abuse. You will feel good about them. Later, you will discover ever increasing “rights” for pleasure and happiness, which you can expand towards obtaining. You will find yourself move toward vistas and visions of what your life can be, possibilities you never dreamed could exist.

You will suddenly permit yourself pleasure. You will no longer cramp up against it, as inadvertently you continuously do. You will stop undermining the spontaneous processes and will learn to trust in them. This will open a richness of life and a security that truly are heavenly. By letting go and giving up inner forcing, you will experience the beauty of free relationships, not forced relationships. When you live in the dependency pattern, you force the other and are thus forced to make him do what you want.

Thus you have mutual force. This weakens you and creates a host of negative emotions through which you lose contact with the nucleus of your real being, as well as with your good feelings. When you can lose gracefully, you will find a treasure within that is an entirely new venture, a new way of life, whose beginning stages you are just embarking on. You will feel free in the areas of your life where heretofore you have felt so weak and trapped.

Reach into your inner being, communicate with it, for the purpose of eliminating this weakness in you that binds you and that wastefully and needlessly holds you back in your life, for no good purpose whatever, no matter how much you may glorify this holding back.

All of you do this in one way or the other, just as mankind has done for millennia, by saying that pleasure is wrong and frivolous and unspiritual. This way you may have your own private excuses to beautify your weakness and apparently make an asset out of it. Thus you cannot really come face to face with yourself.

Only by coming face to face with the forcing current in you that says to others “you must,” can you also come face to face with the strength, the beauty, and all the potentials that exist in you, in a way you cannot even fathom yet.

Be blessed by the great strength that is here now, but even more so by the great strength that dwells in you. Be in peace, be in Light.

Just For Today

This article is about one way to make new beginnings, based on five principles formulated by Mikao Usui, the originator of traditional Reiki. Usui developed the principles out of his realization that spiritual, emotional, and physical health depend on a change in attitude and the assumption of responsibility for one’s well-being. The principles are valuable for anyone who wishes to increase their enjoyment and appreciation of life.

The First Principle:

Just for today I will not worry

Worry may result from a feeling of separation and isolation. We are often taught that we’re individuals. We separate ourselves from the so-called lower species; as individuals we isolate ourselves from those of our own species.

Alone, we feel small and vulnerable, and we worry about our ability to bear the burden of survival. Lost in worry, we forget that we can choose to reunite with the energy of universal love, a power which can dissolve our worries and fears. The more we allow that energy to flow through us the more we come in touch with a natural state of grace. The more we consciously become open to trust and faith the more we experience ourselves as part of a safe and loving universe.

Every small step towards trust is a victory. When we review our lives we notice how little the huge disappointments of the past mean to us now. We find ourselves glad that some of the things we wanted so desperately didn’t happen. We discover a larger purpose to the events of our lives.

The Second Principle:

Just for today I will not anger.

This isn’t a recommendation to keep anger bottled up inside or to pretend that it isn’t there. I’m for feeling every emotion. I hit pillows, write letters (which I later burn) to the objects of my anger. I experience the anger until it dissipates, then examine its roots.

Once I reach the point at which I cab look at the situation dispassionately I often find that I hold beliefs which are compatible with the situation which is making me angry. Because I used to believe that bosses were unfair I regularly encountered bosses whose behavior confirmed my belief.

When a person makes me angry I ask myself if they mirror emotions or issues within me which I don’t want to face – that is, unless I really don’t want to face it. It takes courage to face those inner demons, but the reward is great. The braver I get the more willing I am to view people in my life as manifestations of lessons I need to learn. Some day (when I’m a realized being) I’ll come to appreciate them as my teachers, and love will replace anger.

Until that glorious day, I say to myself, “Just for today look at the people and circumstances you’ve attracted into your life – without blaming others or yourself. Just for today, see what within yourself needs healing.”

The Third principle:

I will honor my parents, teachers, and elders.

I (and many others) have modified this principle to be more inclusive. I hold it as, “Just for today I will honor all of life.” It’s another way of honoring myself.

When we honor other creations with the grace and love of our spirits, practical gestures are also appropriate. We can plant a tree, overcome laziness and recycle. We can honor the food we eat, the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the fire which warms us. We can thank all beings who have helped us by passing their gift of understanding and support on to someone else who needs it.

The Fourth Principle:

I earn my living honestly

This statement can be expanded to read, “I live my life honestly.” This is less a question of whether one calls in sick to work, then goes to the beach than of whether we are honest with ourselves.

If we say we want to grow spiritually, but do nothing to create that growth, we need to honestly examine the depth of our commitment. If we ignore the loneliness inside by pretending we don’t care that we’re not in a committed relationship we need to acknowledge our feelings, to honor the truth of our emotions. We can’t solve a problem if we refuse to admit its existence.

Ask yourself what longings lie hidden inside your heart; what creative urges have been suppressed. Ask for guidance through dreams and visions. Ask for an understanding of your soul’s purpose in choosing physical existence. The answer is within you’ it awaits only your receptivity to unveil itself.

The Fifth Principle:

I show gratitude to everything.

The fifth principle flows naturally from the other four. If instead of worrying, we trust that love and happiness are our birthrights, if we recognize that what makes us angry mirrors the beliefs which block us, if we honor all of life and our own divinity by being honest with ourselves, we will become grateful for the gift of physical existence.

Step by Step

The bold among us may want to take on all of The Five Principles at once. Those of us who prefer to experience transformation in smaller doses may prefer to work on one at a time.

Say, for example, that you decide to work on anger. One step in this process might be to list everything in your life that you’re angry about. To truly discover this you may find it helpful to apply the principle of living life honestly. If you do so you might find a number of issues you’ve avoided handling because someone might get angry because you raised them (or you might get angry at someone else). The next step might be to feel your anger fully, then to decide what changes you’d like to make.

I’ve found that an ongoing maintenance program is valuable, too. Anger is less overwhelming when we acknowledge it and deal with it as it arises, and when we allow the possibility that anger often stems from anger at ourselves we go a long way towards handling anger with honesty.

Programming for Peace of Mind

Crystals are invaluable tools for assisting us in keeping our commitments to ourselves. Because the molecular structure of crystals is orderly and symmetrical they radiate energy in a consistent and steady manner. Simply being in the presence of this harmonious energy field can help us to become more harmonious in our beings.

When we program crystals we intensify this energy flow. The process is very simple.

Create an affirmation (always in the present tense), i.e., “I live my life honestly;” “I have loving communication with my children.”

As you hold your crystal visualize yourself in the desired situation and experience the feelings of being in it. Say the affirmation to yourself.

Then put the crystal some place where it won’t be disturbed.

Below are some stones and flower essences which closely relate to the Five Principles. Clear quartz may be used for any of them.

Just for today I will not worry.
Crystal: rhodochrosite.
Flower essence: Chamomile (FES)

Just for today I will not anger.
Crystal: red garnet, sugilite.
Flower essence: Holly (Bach)

I honor all of life.
Crystal: moss agate and chrysocolla, in particular, but any crystal helps to reveal the beauty and wisdom of nature’s creations.
Flower essence: Nicotiana

I live my life honestly.
Crystal: obsidian, lapis
Flower essence: Deerbrush

I show gratitude to everything.
Crystal: rose quartz, rhodochrosite, rhodonite.
Flower essence: Holly, Willow

Recognizing the signs of Seasonal Affective Disorder

Last month we switched the clocks and began the season of short days and long nights. For many of us, especially women, mood changes can occur with this change of season, leaving us feeling depressed, anxious and with signs of greater fatigue – even greater than the traditional winter blahs.

Based on a report from the American Academy of Family Physicians, almost half a million people in America feel the effects of winter-onset depression or as it is referred to medically, Seasonal Affective Disorder.
Sufferers can experience symptoms including lack of energy, as well as insomnia and weight gain. The symptoms can begin mildly but become more severe as winter continues. These feelings can alleviate during the spring and summer but very often recur each winter.

While many women are already in the midst of the hectic holiday season, trying to juggle family demands and work pressures, plan family gatherings and shop for holiday gifts and cook for untold numbers of visitors, the shorter, colder days of winter seem to throw more women than men into seasonal affective disorder. Often women begin to fabricate excuses for not going out and begin to isolate themselves as a protective measure.

If any of this sounds familiar to you or someone you know, here is some advice to help you reduce the stress of winter and help keep you happy and healthy throughout the holiday season:

1. Prioritize your activities. Decide what needs to get done and what you’ll enjoy doing. Let other people in your family help by doing what they do best and then let it go.

2. Don’t be afraid to say NO. You can’t do everything. But do get yourself out there. Make a list of what’s important to you and be sure you do something each day. But don’t put too much emphasis on one day. It’s okay to stay at home in your pjs for one (or maybe two) days!

3. If you feel your depression is taking over, especially if getting out of bed is difficult or you find you don’t want to socialize and can’t sleep, get some help. Sometimes just talking about how you’re feeling can release pent up stress.

4. Incorporate some natural solutions into your daily routine to increase your mind-body health. Try meditation, relaxation techniques, guided visualizations, light therapy or even walk through the woods with a friend.

5. Don’t forget your other healthy habits. Be sure to get lots of sleep, eat a healthy, balance diet and take time for yourself. Don’t use alcohol, food or unprescribed drugs for relief.

6. Finally, lighten up in more ways than one. Try to find ways to turn your home into a lighter, brighter place. Be sure your blinds are up when the sun is and let in the light! And don’t forget to laugh. Spending time with friends who can make you smile is one the best ways to bet the blues.

To help you on your way to a happy mind and a healthy body, we’re offering Healing Rhythms’ 15-Step Biofeedback Training Program with FREE SHIPPING now through December 31, 2008. Give the gift of wellness to you or someone you love this holiday season.

Forgiveness – What Is Forgiving?

Many of us, from our earliest childhood, are told that a good person forgives others. What we don’t learn, though, is what true forgiveness means, and when we see forgiveness in practice, it often looks like this: “You’re wrong, but I will tolerate you, because I’m right.”

Come free of the net of right and wrong. Into the Twilight. ~ W. B. Yeats

The net of right and wrong often entangles me. Sometimes I recognize this. I think of someone with whom I’m having difficulty, and I warm myself in the fire of self-righteousness. I am so right; the other person is so wrong.

When I’m comfortable in my protective net, I don’t have to be afraid. I don’t have to investigate other ways to look at the condition of a relationship. I don’t have to take risks. I don’t have to be uncertain. I don’t have to worry about making mistakes. I don’t have to change.

Right and wrong can also be a game, one I call the ping-pong game from hell. You will often see it being played in relationships, especially those which aren’t in the best possible shape. Here’s an example.

X: You always blame me for the smallest things. So what if I forgot to take out one bag of garbage? Does that mean I don’t love you?

Y: It means you don’t care about the things that are important to me.

X: Because the things that are important to you are stupid.

Y: Oh, really? And what’s important to you? Who even knows? You only bother to speak to me when you get angry.

These two are skilled players. They can bounce the ball of right and wrong back and forth indefinitely.

Sometimes, though, one player wins. This can lead to a new game called forgiveness, in which one person is perpetually right, the other eternally wrong.

Being Right About Being Forgiving

Fred and Simon are business partners. Their company has lost money because of an unfortunate business decision Fred made. Simon, furious, threatens to dissolve the partnership.

Fred, who already feels like crawling beneath the nearest log and turning into mold, says he has learned from the mistake and will never make it again. In the future, he won’t make that level of decision again without consulting with Simon.

This satisfies Simon, not so much because of Fred’s promise, but because Fred has admitted he was wrong. This makes Simon feel even more right. He says he forgives Fred, but from time to time, whenever Fred contemplates a risky decision, Simon reminds him of his grave error in the past.

Ron and Sylvia are married. Ron, who was an active alcoholic for many years, has joined Alcoholics Anonymous and has been sober for six months. Sylvia has said she forgives him for the nights he didn’t come home or came home drunk and broke and for his mental and sometimes physical abuse of her.

Secretly, though, she holds herself as a very good person to forgive someone who doesn’t deserve it. Maybe she can forgive, but she can’t forget how much she suffered. Ron was wrong, and she’ll make sure he never forgets it, either.

The Forgiveness Trap

Too often, our practice of forgiveness masks an attitude of judgment. We only forgive those whose behavior we’ve already judged to be wrong. That judgment establishes us as being better. In most cases the forgiven person is feeling somehow condemned and the forgiver feels superior.

Often people believe they escape judgment by finding reasons for “forgiving” the other person. They may say, “Well, he had such an unhappy childhood,” or “she’s not spiritually evolved” (unlike guess-who?). This is a disguised way to say, “They will always be wrong.”

The Judgment Boomerang

Judgment disguised as forgiveness clearly hurts those who are its recipients. It also hurts those who bestow it.

When we become caught in the net of right and wrong, we see the world in those terms. We see every situation and relationship in terms of who’s right and who’s wrong. With such a perspective, there is little room for appreciation and love.

In addition, when we don’t see others clearly, we are equally unable to see ourselves clearly. The real judgment boomerang is that the characteristics or behavior we judge in others are those we resist in ourselves, sometimes to the point that we don’t consciously realize we may have the attributes for which we judge and appear to forgive others.

Simon has made his own mistakes regarding the business. By focusing on Fred’s error, he avoids taking responsibility for his own.

Judgment veiled as forgiveness may also hide our unwillingness for the other person to change. During Ron’s alcoholic years, Sylvia played the role of long-suffering martyr. Not only did she get to be right; people felt sorry for her, and she felt no need to see how she may have enabled Ron to continue his habit –or do any other form of self-examination.

No One’s Perfect

When we hold on to the injuries which others have caused us, we may wisely suspect that there are deeper injuries which we’ve caused to ourselves for others or which we do not forgive ourselves. Our inability to truly forgive another may stem from our own feelings of being unforgiven. In that knowledge lies the potential for true understanding and true release.

Thus, I choose to keep the word forgiveness in my vocabulary, but I redefine it as release. My commitment is that when I forgive someone, it’s over. Forgiveness means means there is no lingering resentment or anger, and no attempt to re-ignite guilt in the other person. It means the release of whatever energetic blockage was preventing the expression of unconditional love.

It means I recognize I have my own shortcomings and limitations, and in releasing my judgment of another, I have the opportunity to release self-judgment and to forgive myself.

St. Francis of Assisi put it this way in this line from his well-known prayer:

“It is in giving that we receive/It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.”

A genuine act of forgiveness is an act of generosity, an act of giving, both towards another person and to ourselves. When we free ourselves from the net of right and wrong, we discover the possibility of unconditional love.

Crystals for Forgiveness

To be able to forgive, you will probably need to take the first step of calming your anger. Some excellent stones for this are green calcite, celestite, and sugilite. Hold the stone of your choice and breathe in and out deeply. Ask yourself which is more important: the relationship or the anger.

How to Make the Season Bright

We’re coming into a time of the year when certain conditions of the human consciousness glare. This time of the year is intended to be the happiest time of the year according to popular culture, but for most it’s not only not the happiest time of the year, it’s often the most conflicted time of the year. All of the unattended-to things relative to family and friends — all of the shortcomings that one has lived out for eleven months — suddenly pop up to the forefront when it’s time to make amends, buy gifts, have family meals, and enjoy the happy tidings. If you’re going to become a different kind of human being, gradually you will need to see what I’m going to speak of.

There are all kinds of movements. This room — as relatively still as it is — is filled with movements, but they’re invisible movements. There is the movement of the person sitting next to you, however subtle that may be; there is the movement of the air around us caused by breathing, caused by the fireplace; there is the movement of thoughts and feelings, and the movement of invisible energies that these thoughts and feelings produce that emanate, radiate from the body; and there is the interaction of those radiations of two different people sitting next to each other and having the experience of whatever it is that energy brings out. But all of these movements, by and large, are almost completely ignored. They’re ignored, not because we choose to ignore them, but because we live from a nature that is isolated, cut off from any awareness of these movements. Not only are we not aware of these movements, we’re not aware of the movements inside of ourselves.

If I was to ask how many of you have been aware three times in the last ten minutes of the movement of your own thoughts and feelings, I can virtually guarantee that a small number of you might raise your hands, and amongst those, maybe one or two actually saw the movement of something. Being identified with something is not seeing the movement of something.

There are levels and scale of movement in this room, even as I’m talking with you, even as my words may move you one way or the other. There is the movement of the world, and there is the movement of spirit. They are two different things. One precludes the possibility of a human being ever understanding anything about compassion, about love, and the latter (the movement of spirit) is itself the embodiment of things that are compassionate, true, good, and loving.

The world that you are in now — when you’re not aware of the movement of virtually anything — is the world in which you are part and parcel, fully a part of the movement of the world. The movement of this world is completely governed by the movement of desires that have nothing that oversees them except for whatever dominates the particular individual in whom that desire manifests itself in the moment.

Therefore, a person is virtually blind, deaf, and dumb relative to the degree to which he or she is identified with these movements inside of themselves, and cannot see at large the movement of themselves in the world because they are the world that is moving. Now, maybe that doesn’t mean much to you, but I’ll tell you something about it — something that I saw recently.

My husband and I had gone to Costco [a giant warehouse store] in order to pick up some supplies for the Office. Costco is a perfect microcosm of the human brain. It is loaded with more things than one needs, set out in attractive aisles for the purpose of catching one’s eye (just as thoughts, desires, and feelings are), and it’s filled with individuals — not one of whom even knows they’re in the store, who knows the movement of their own thoughts and feelings.

Relative to that picture, imagine all of these thoughts and feelings running around the mind (just like in Costco), trying to get their hands on what they want to get their hands on — lots of discounted deals, lots of bright things for the future to make one happier — with thoughts bumping into each other, carts running each other over. Someone sees something and you see it at the same time, and you want the pasta before they get it. Have you ever run into your own thought?

Here are a thousand people in a giant store, and the purpose of that store (of desire) is to bring one to the desired object. If the store wants something to stand out, someone must actually make it stand out, so (particularly at this time of year) there are always a half a dozen or so people standing in front of little carts with microwaves and skillets, preparing tasty morsels for human beings to sample.

The human beings standing there, waiting to get their tasty morsel, are irritated by the fact that they have to wait in line to get it, or that the woman preparing it is too slow – because they’re part of a movement that can’t see anything except for the desire in front of their own eyes. They can’t see that 75-year-old woman, skin like tissue, thin and worn, hands old, eyes bleached (from the same kind of life that we’ve lived, I might add, that we’ve all been a part of). Hardly anyone says “thank you.” Not one person there thinks to themselves, “How is it that I’m in relationship with this poor old woman, irritating me because she’s not giving me my pleasure fast enough?”

There is a monster at large. It is in our body. There is a monster at large that doesn’t care about anything other than what it needs in order to feel about itself what it has named as being primary for that moment. That’s all.

There is in me — just as there is in all human beings — a nature who has a vested interest in keeping out any impression whatsoever that makes me see that the world I am walking through is how it is because of what that nature is. No one wants to suffer the fact that the world they see is what it is because of the way they are. Why? Because then I’m going to have to meet this thing that doesn’t see but just wants. I have to meet this thing that doesn’t consider anything outside of itself other than what is necessary to support whatever it is feeling about itself in the moment.

Here is all of this movement, and part of that body of human beings is all moving towards a poor old woman who is moving to satisfy that movement, and not one part of any of that movement has consciousness of any other part. That’s what it means to be dead and blind.

Until a person begins to separate from this incessant movement in themselves, there’s no chance for them to ever know a life that isn’t part of the denigration of the spirit because of that incessant movement. It’s impossible.

But what a suffering is involved. I have to stop feeding myself. I have to stop having enemies. I have to stop thinking about people. And most important, I have to stop putting myself at the center of the universe because all the things I think about, even those I think I care about, still put me at the center of the universe.

All of this movement that I’m talking about, which we absolutely don’t see because we’re swept away in it, precludes us from seeing anything else that’s in that movement.

To be blinded means to be out of relationship with what’s around you. And the point of spirit, as opposed to the movement of the world, is that spirit (what is true) is always in relationship with what is around it. It’s never not conscious of its relationship to life because gradually a human being begins to recognize that it’s mandatory to become still. Without stillness there is no hope for transformation.

You have to examine yourself and see how stimulated you are by movement that you come up with that has to do with the plans by which your spiritual works are going to change you. All your plans and knowledge, your gabbing and convincing one another of what you have and how things ought to be, doesn’t change anything – it just makes you part of the “Costco consciousness” of spiritual beings.

True spirituality has its root in a very, very dear payment that begins with an individual becoming conscious of himself, in the world, as he is, and as the word is. Then because of that, by the very consciousness that he has of the condition inside of himself and its relationship to the world that condition has produced as a result of his unconsciousness of it, then change becomes necessary. It’s not a question anymore that a person wants to change. They’re staggered by the fact of what they are. You’re not staggered at all by what you are. You’re quite pleased with what you are because presently what you are is filled with your plans to become something different. All plans to become something different are garbage. If you have a spiritual future, you have nothing but the repetition of what you have been.

Be different this year by being different now. Try to see past the movement of your own mind. The only way to see past the movement that is generated by desire and the mind is for there to be something still in you. If there is nothing still in you, then you are part of all of that movement.

You go out to the supermarket, the shopping centers, the mall. By and large you waste your money, trying to find a way to feel good about what you’ve been and done over the year by making it up to someone at this time. You want to know how to make it up to someone? Don’t hurt them. Don’t take from them. Don’t stand in front of them and wait for them to give you what you want so that your appetite can be satisfied. Give them something. Give them your attention. Find out where you can be a little bit of light instead of a stone around somebody’s neck.

I know that it doesn’t sound like much, but I can assure you that one person standing in a crowd of five, ten, or fifteen people, recognizing the fact and the actuality of the condition they’re in, coming wide awake and bearing some of the pain that’s inherent wherever human beings are gathered for the purpose of satisfying themselves, that such a tiny act not only changes that moment but changes the whole of the world that you and I have been a part of.

This is what the holidays are about, as far as I’m concerned: Where is it possible for me to step out of the worldly movement and into the stillness of spirit that can be a part of the world but is not in it in the way that I am when I am part of that blind movement to satisfy myself?

When the shoe fits, change the foot… it’s not easy to change one’s foot, meaning to change one’s psychology, but I can assure you, if you don’t do that work, you will be part of a blind force that is consumed by a blind force, and that ends in a blind force.

On the other hand, this time of the year, you do what you can, wherever you can, and suffer what you must consciously. Cease to be a part of what is destroying this earth and the soul inside of you, and you become part of the creation of a new world that begins within you and is finally expressed in a Light that dawns and is born upon the earth.

Wal-Mart Trampling Death

RELATED STORY: Police seek Wal-Mart shoppers who killed NY work

All right, bye-bye. Looks like everything has been fixed. The economy is just fine, and how do we know? Because people are trampling each other to get a Playstation or a Wii. You know, when we can become a culture where we trample each other for a game for our kids, you know, a game where we can teach our kids how to be more callous and not really care about, you know, people’s lives?

I’ve got to trample somebody just to be able to get Grand Theft Auto. If I could just, if I could kill someone to get the game that can desensitize my kids to killing people, it would be the — it’s the circle of life, I’ll tell you that right now. Doesn’t get any better than that.

Did anybody else watch the news this weekend and think to themselves, what are we turning into? You know, I’m going to let everybody else give you the what, the where, the when and the how because that’s all I hear on, I hear on the news, I turn on Fox, I turn on CNN, I turn on the networks and all I keep hearing is all of the details. One guy killed, pregnant woman taken to the hospital. He was trying — the guy who was killed was trying to protect the pregnant woman.

First they said she had a miscarriage, then they said no, baby’s okay. I said we’re on the road, we’re in St. Louis today for the third show, the third performance of the Christmas Sweater and I got up this morning and I said to Joe the researcher, I said, “Joe, you let me know when they start blaming it on Wal-Mart or on the pregnant lady.” And he just laughed and he handed me a piece of paper and he said, oh, it’s already begun. Here they are, just some of the highlights of what people are saying now: This incident was avoidable. Where were the safety barriers? Where was security? How did store management not see
dangerous numbers of customers barreling down on the store in such an unsafe manner? This isn’t tragic. This rises to the level of blatant irresponsibility by Wal-Mart.

Who could have said that? Oh, Bruce Both, the President of United Food and Commercial Workers union, New York’s largest grocery store union. So the unions are blaming it on the evil Wal-Mart. Consumer advocates have said over the weekend, “The intent is to artificially create fervor for a product as well as media buzz about it. Most consumers blame retailers not only for causing such disasters but also contributing via lax concern to making those circumstances worse each year.” Then here’s my favorite, quote, this is a mom out at Wal-Mart: What was she doing in that environment in the first place? What would possess a mother to be like that to endanger not only herself but her baby? What’s the matter with responsible parenting today?

What’s the matter, you going shopping? Yeah, I know. Going shopping, you know, that’s the same as going to the food market there in downtown Baghdad. Where is anyone that will say who the hell have we turned into? Where is anyone that will recognize that the only people responsible are the people that were standing there in line.

You know there’s a phrase that Ronald Reagan said that has been bouncing around in my head for weeks now and I know I’ve shared it with you. The Ronald Reagan said if we lose liberty, at some point our children and grandchildren are going to come to us and say what was it that you valued over your freedom, Grandpa. Well, I’d like to ask you the same question: What is it we value over life. What is it that was so important that we had to push each other out of the way.

And you know what? It’s time to stop pointing the finger to other people. It’s time to stop pointing the finger and saying, “Those people, I wasn’t in that line. Those people.” We’re part of the culture. E Pluribus Unum. It works for good and for bad. E pluribus unum: From many, one. We’re in this together, gang. What have we turned into? Who are we? While everybody else will tell you the what, the where, the why, the how, the when, I just want to concentrate today on who and a different kind of why. I mean, when we look at our life and we look at that Wii or that Playstation, why do we want it? Why? Why do we think we need it? Why do we think we need it so badly that we’ve got to go rush out of the store? Why do we allow ourselves in these corporations to not stand up and say, “You know what, guys, let’s make a few more.” “Well, that’s not good for business.”

The first Christmas show that we did in Pittsburgh, I won’t give you the full story, but the people who were there, they will know the first story. The first Christmas show that we did in Pittsburgh, I stopped it at the very end. I stopped it and I stopped the orchestra and I had a frank one-on-one conversation with them. Well, I got backstage and the director came at me and said, “What were you thinking. What are you doing?

You never do that. What are you doing? Don’t ever, ever do that again.” And then he looked at me and he realized I was the executive producer of the program and he said, “In my opinion.” And he’s a good guy. I love him. But he walked out the door and my daughter looked at me and said, “Dad, you do that every time.
You follow your gut. That’s why people respect you.” Sometimes in business you’ve got to do the right thing. Not the popular thing, not the cheap thing, not the thing that — you know what? Don’t you just want to be treated with respect?

Don’t you — and maybe this is another thing on who have we allowed ourselves to become. Wouldn’t you rather do business with a company, wouldn’t you rather — for a company to come out and do an advertising slogan and say, “Look, you’re not going to hear about the big long lines for the Wii, you are not going to hear about the big long lines for our cell phone because we’re not going to artificially deflate them.

We’re going to make enough. We’re going to have enough. We’re not going to try to hype you. We’re not going to try to get you to trample people. We’re not going to try to — we’re not going to use people and take their day and have them stand in line, to create a line to create more hype. What we’re going to do is respect you as a customer. We’re going to say to you as a customer I respect you, I respect your time, I respect your money, I respect your loyalty. And you know whether or not?

Not only do we make the best phone or the best game box or the best whatever, not only do we do that but we know how long you work, we know how hard you work, we know how stressful it is for you to go out and do your shopping anyway. We know that you and your wife or you and your husband lay in bed at night trying to make a list for the kids, trying to make a list and trying to get it all done before Christmas. Christmas has become so overcommercialized, Christmas has become so tough to do in the first place, we as a company are going to try to help you as a parent. We’re not going to do this. We’re going to make it the easiest it can be to buy our product.”

Now, wouldn’t you rather do business with a company like that? You win in the end. I told you a few weeks ago about Wal-Mart. Here’s Wal-Mart standing up against the unions, standing up against everybody else, standing up and just doing the right thing, doing business the right way. Not getting flashy, not getting inflated. Treating their people right but not crazy, not like — you know, not like the big three automakers where they just give away everything so in the end they destroy themselves and then nobody has a job. They try to do the right thing.

And who is surviving? Who is it that is surviving in this economy? Wal-Mart. In the end you win. Going to be a lot of people that say no. You saying to your kids, “You know what, gang, Christmas ain’t about the Xbox. Christmas isn’t about Playstation or Wii,” at least not spelled Wii. It’s about we the family, and we don’t need that. I don’t want to hear about Wal-Mart. I don’t want to hear about anything. I want to hear from the people who were standing in that line, what is it that was so important. Who have you allowed yourself to become?

Who in this country of ours even has the moral authority anymore? She said to me yesterday, they said, Glenn, you know, you go to these church events. If your church didn’t hand out and they just — I said, you know what, the leader of my church, if somebody trampled themselves to get into a church event, the leader of my church would have raised his cane and said, “Who have you people become?” And he would have the moral authority so we would all stand there and look at each other in shame and say, “Oh, my gosh.” But who can say that in this society anymore.

We have chased shame out of the public square. There is no one that has the moral authority anymore to say to us as individuals, as people, as Americans, and say who have you allowed yourself to become. Shame on you. Who has that moral authority to say that? Gang, we need to find that moral authority because our founding fathers were right. If we don’t police ourselves, somebody else has to do it.

by Glenn Beck: http://www.glennbeck.com/

The Ability to LET GO of Struggle

Because the belief in struggle is so strong in our world, I wanted to share with you a dream I had which helped me to realize struggle was a choice. At the time I had this dream, I was in a great deal of emotional pain. I, like most people, believed I needed to suffer in order to grow.

The dream did not change my outside circumstances, but it helped me see my life in a new way.

In my dream, I was in a room with many other people. In the process of moving across the room, we had to crawl through a tunnel filled with bees. It was impossible to accomplish our journey without being stung several times. After I had completed a pass through the first tunnel, I came to a resting place. The people here were recovering from their bites while preparing to enter a second tunnel.

Although I wanted to complete my journey, I was not eager to go through the same painful experience again. I looked around the room and I noticed a man standing by a door. I approached him, asking if there was another way to travel without all the suffering. He smiled at me and said, “Yes, you can go through here.” He opened the door into a beautiful garden. I completed my journey by following the path through the garden, enjoying the sun light and beauty all around me.

As I reviewed this dream, I realized most of us go through life experiencing the pain and struggle of life, never looking for any alternatives. The people in my dream assumed there was only one way to accomplish the task before them. When I got tired of being bitten, I decided to look for another route. The man at the door was not blocking the way nor hiding its presence. He was there to assist anyone who asked for help. When I decided to let go of the struggle, my journey became one of joy and beauty.

Over the years, I have shared this dream with many people. Most people are shocked at the idea that struggle is a choice. It is not a concept they have ever entertained. Their experience of life has taught them to expect to struggle. For some, it is a pleasant relief to release this old concept. Others are not ready to make such a drastic change in perspective.

Struggle is a choice. It is your right and responsibility to choose. As shown in my dream, whenever you decide to look for another path, there is always someone there to show you the way.

Letting go of struggle does not mean I will never again run into obstacles in my life. Challenges still present themselves to me. It is my perspective that has changed. I see these events as opportunities to watch as the power of God is demonstrated in my life.

Consider these ideas about “letting be” and “letting go”:

*Feelings naturally are felt and integrate when we allow them to be there or let them be.

*Feeling will intensify and endure if we try to get rid of them, resist having them or try to move them in anyway.

*Words have different emotional connotations. The phrase to “let go” may have different meanings to folks. Consider these typical meanings of the word “go” In the Random House College Dictionary:

(1) To move or to proceed to or from something.
(2) To leave a place, to depart.
(3) To keep in motion or to be in motion.

With such typical meanings, the word “go” can easily be experienced as moving something or putting something in motion. Viewed in this way “letting go” becomes anywhere from subtle to very pure resistance. Couple this “letting go” with the image of letting an object drop and you are neither allowing or permitting which are the heart of integration, you are trying to move something or put it in motion. Here letting go is resistance.

If “letting go” is understood in the Buddhist mindfulness sense as allowing or permitting it to be there, to “let it be” then there is no resistance. “Letting be” leads to feeling and to integration.

Unless someone understands “letting go” as “letting be” then they are doomed to be resist their feelings in a subtle and often not so subtle way. Any methods that try to move something is teaching resistance. Someone may indeed let go of some surface tension, but that’s hardly the heart of a feeling. The emotional coloring’s projection or the emotional charge remains.

The stuff of the intuitive message remains to be reprojected. Naturally this will reform and before long the surface tension starts to make its way back. In a day or two, a week. When the relaxation is no longer there, then the issue begins it’s return.

By all means let your feeling “be”, allow it to be there, or welcome and permit it’s presence. Your feelings and emotions are valuable bio-messengers, not something to be shunted away because they may feel distinctly uncomfortable at times. Every problem contains its own solution. I may not know how things will be resolved, but I am sure a solution will appear.

I can now flow with the circumstances in my life, trusting that the answer will soon be revealed. This perspective creates a feeling of peace and joyous anticipation. Without trust, I resist those difficult situations, creating a feeling of struggle. The feelings and thoughts of fear create more chaos and pain. I may not be able to choose every event that appears in my life, but I can always choose how I will view those situations.

An Affirmation for Letting Go

I am willing to trust. I know that to the degree I am willing to give up my search for a healthy love relationship, I can have it. I know I can have whatever I am ready and willing to receive. Individual receptivity is everything. Without it, nothing changes. With it, all things are possible. I no longer insist upon my choice.

I know that the only thing I lose when I let go of something I am afraid to live without is the fear itself. I am stronger than anything that frightens me!

I let go of the past, and I am free to think clearly and positively in the present. I am not my past.

Letting go is the natural release which always follows the realization that holding on is an energy drain and it hurts. Letting go happens effortlessly when there is no other choice. Letting go does not mean giving up.

** Love Note. . . A life without love in it is like a heap of ashes upon a deserted hearth — with the fire dead, the laughter stilled, and the light extinguished. – Frank P. Tebbetts

Letting go is a journey that never ends. Never. It only begins — over and over again — each time I can glimpse something higher than my own painful certainty over who I think I am. There is always something higher; a life beyond the limits of my present sight.

To see what is farther I must be willing to lift my eyes from their present point of focus. Release always follows revelation and real revelation is always a glimpse of something that was only just out of sight.

I know that stress in my love relationship exists because I insist! What I resist, persists. I am tied to whatever I avoid.

**Love Note. . . The heart loves, but moods have no loyalty. Moods should be heard but never danced to. – Hugh Prather

It is a mistaken belief that I must push my love relationship in the direction I choose that keeps me in a strained and unhappy relationship with it. Reality has its own effortless course, and I can either embrace its way or struggle endlessly with mine.

I do not need power to flow.

I let go of that part of myself that is certain it is better to suffer and feel like someone than it is to just let go and quietly be no one. I give birth to a new me that never has to hold on to anything because it is already everything.

I dare to walk away from all of the familiar but useless mental and emotional relationships that give me a temporary but unsatisfactory sense of self. My true identity is calling me and to hear it I must be willing to endure, for as long as necessary, the fear of self-uncertainty.

This form of seeming self-abandonment eventually turns into my greatest pleasure as it becomes increasingly evident that the only thing certain about fear is that it will always compromise me. When it comes to who I really am, there is no compromise.

Let go of the past. The past is yesterday. It is irretrievable. When you relate to the past, you relate to no one or any thing. You are literally talking to yourself. No one else is listening. You have already heard all you have to say about that, so, let go.

A Course in Miracles says, “You cannot really not let go what has already gone. It must be, therefore, that you are maintaining the illusion that it has not gone because you think it serves some purpose that you want fulfilled.”

It is certifiable insanity to conjure up your own reality based on the past and relate to it, rather than to relate to the present which is the only reality.

**Love Note. . . Relationships are part of a vast plan for our enlightenment, the Holy Spirit’s blueprint by which each individual soul is led to greater awareness and expanded love. Relationships are the Holy Spirit’s laboratories in which he brings together people who have the maximal opportunity for mutual growth. – Marianne Williamson

I say goodbye to the past and hello to the present.

I am enthusiastic about who I am becoming! I know that no one sincerely asks for a new life until they are thoroughly dissatisfied with the old one. I am and I let go. When I allow myself to let go of what is old, I stay true to what is new.

I believe that as with all insight, higher understanding itself contains not only the instructions I must follow, but the strength I will need to carry them out.

Starting life over again is the key to a new me. I see the beauty and significance of starting over – over and over and over. Every present moment is always new and new is always right now! The new dies to the ever-new in an endless celebration of Life.

This is it!

I live in the present. I never let the past dictate the direction of the present moment. I give my best to my endeavors.

What lies ahead for me can only be good.

True peace and harmony are a part of who I am.

I have come to the realization that what is possible for me to become only truly changes when I am willing to see what is impossible for me to continue being.

My true nature is already fully independent and flying freely. I have found my wings.

I let go and let God. And so it is.