Einstein goes high-tech to treat patients with eating disorders

The body’s innate relaxation response is an incredibly effective remedy for stress and anxiety. Relaxation methods such as deep breathing, guided meditation, visualization, progressive muscle relaxation, and various forms of yoga can aid individuals in activating this powerful response.

When performed on a regular basis, these various activities can eventually cause a decrease in daily stress or anxiety levels and contribute to a heightened level of happiness and peace. In addition, they instruct individuals in techniques to utilize to stay calm and level-headed when faced with a stressful or unexpected situation.

The Belmont Center for Comprehensive Treatment, part of the Albert Einstein Healthcare Network, has begun employing Healing Rhythms as an aid to a variety of behavioral disorders. Patients recovering from eating disorders may, early on, experience panic attacks and physical discomfort while learning how to eat healthy. This software is used in 50-minute sessions, twice a week, to help patients cope with a wide range of symptoms.

Healing Rhythms, developed by a San Diego company called Wild Divine, is designed to help patients learn to relax and control their heart rate, pulse and skin response through their breathing.

One program shows balloons peacefully rising and falling on the screen. As the participant does deep and focused breathing, the balloons will slowly float in a steady and straight course across the screen. In a different program, balls are juggled in the air. The more relaxed the person becomes through their breathing, the slower the balls move. If the person increases his or her stress levels, the balls are juggled faster and higher.

“The aim is to offer these patients another way to gain control of their psychological and physiologic responses, and, ultimately, their lives,” said Stacey Saleff, an occupational therapist at Belmont.

Original Suorce

http://philadelphia.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/stories/2009/02/02/newscolumn1.html

The Emotional Vampire Survival Guide

To be emotionally free you can’t remain naïve about relationships. Some people are positive and mood elevating. Others can suck optimism and serenity right out of you. Vampires do more than drain your physical energy. The super-malignant ones can make you believe you’re an unworthy, unlovable wretch who doesn’t deserve better. The subtler species inflict damage by making smaller digs which can make you feel bad about yourself—for instance, “Dear, I see you’ve put on a few pounds”  or “You’re overly sensitive!” Suddenly they’ve thrown you emotionally off-center you by prodding areas of shaky self-worth. To protect your sensitivity, it’s important to name and combat these vampires. The concept struck such a collective chord in my book Positive Energy that in Emotional Freedom I illustrate how it applies to protecting your emotions and not absorbing other people’s negativity. In the book I discuss these vampires to watch for and ways to deal with them.

SIGNS THAT YOU’VE ENCOUNTERD AN EMOTIONAL VAMPIRE
(from “Emotional Freedom” by Judith Orloff MD)

•    Your eyelids are heavy—you’re ready for a nap
•    Your mood takes a nosedive
•    You want to binge on carbs or comfort foods
•    You feel anxious, depressed, or negative
•    You feel put down, sniped at, or slimed

TYPES OF EMOTIONAL VAMPIRES

Vampire #1: The Narcissist
Their motto is “Me first.” Everything is all about them. They have a grandiose sense of self-importance and entitlement, hog attention, and crave admiration. They’re dangerous because they lack empathy and have a limited capacity for unconditional love. If you don’t do things their way, they become punishing, withholding, or cold.

How to Protect Your Emotions: Keep your expectations realistic. These are emotionally limited people. Try not to fall in love with one or expect them to be selfless or love without strings attached. Never make your self-worth dependent on them or confide your deepest feelings to someone who won’t cherish them. To successfully communicate, the hard truth is that you must show how something will be to their benefit. Though it’s better not to have to contend with this tedious ego stroking, if the relationship is unavoidable use the above strategies to achieved desired results.

Vampire #2: The Victim
These vampires grate on you with their “poor-me’ attitude and are allergic to taking responsibility for their actions. The world is always against them, the reason for their unhappiness. When you offer a solution to their problems they always say, “Yes, but.” You might end up screening your calls or purposely avoid them. As a friend, you may want to help but their tales of woe overwhelm you.

How to Protect Your Emotions: Set kind but firm limits. Listen briefly and tell a friend or relative, “I love you but I can only listen for a few minutes unless you want to discuss solutions. Then I’d be thrilled to brainstorm with you.” With a coworker, listen briefly, sympathize by saying, “I’ll keep good thought for things to work out. Then say, I hope you understand, but I’m on deadline and must go back to work. Then use “this isn’t a good time” body language such as crossing your arms and breaking eye contact to help set these healthy limits.

Vampire #3: The Controller
These people obsessively try to control you and dictate what you’re supposed to be and feel. They have an opinion about everything. They’ll control you by invalidating your emotions if they don’t fit into their rulebook. They often start sentences with “You know what you need?” and then proceed to tell you. You end up feeling dominated, demeaned, or put down.

How to Protect Your Emotions: The secret to success is never try and control a controller. Be healthily assertive, but don’t tell them what to do. You can say, “I value your advice but really need to work through this myself.” Be confident but don’t play the victim or sweat the small stuff. Focus on high priority issues rather than on putting the cap on the toothpaste.

Vampire #4: The Splitter or Borderline Personality
Splitters see things as either good or bad and have love/hate relationships. One minute they idealize you, the next you’re the enemy if you upset them. They have a sixth sense for knowing how to pit people against each another and will retaliate if they feel you have wronged them. They are people who are fundamentally damaged—inwardly they feel as if they don’t exist and become alive when they get angry. They’ll keep you on an emotional rollercoaster and you may walk on eggshells to avoid their anger.

How to Protect Your Emotions: Stay calm. Don’t react when your buttons get pushed. Splitters feed off of anger. They respond best to structure and limit setting. If one goes into a rage, tell the person, “I’m leaving until you get calmer. Then we can talk.” Refuse to take sides when he or she tries to turn you against someone else. With family members, it’s best to show a united front and not let a splitter’s venomous opinions poison your relationships.

Adapted from Dr. Judith Orloff’s new book “Emotional Freedom: Liberate Yourself From Negative Emotions and Transform Your Life” (Harmony Books, 2009)

About Judith Orloff
Judith Orloff MD, an Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA and intuition expert, is author of the new book Emotional Freedom: Liberate Yourself From Negative Emotions and Transform Your Life (Harmony Books, 2009) Her other bestsellers are Positive Energy, Intuitive Healing, and Second Sight. Dr. Orloff synthesizes the pearls of traditional medicine with cutting edge knowledge of intuition and energy medicine. She passionately believes that the future of medicine involves integrating all this wisdom to achieve emotional freedom and total wellness. www.drjudithorloff.com

FREE MINI VIDEO CLASSES ON YOUTUBE FOR YOU!
Please check out “Dr. Orloff’s Living Room Series” to find out more about the special method Dr. Orloff recommends to remember your dreams and other topics to build the power within. Stop by www.youtube.com/judithorloffmd anytime.

Fear of Terrorism

When a country is at war or when people are threatened with potential terrorism, most individuals lose their connection to soul. This can be seen most clearly in many soldiers who have fought in battle. Many become emotionally disturbed, a result of disconnection from soul. This is especially notable among those individuals who tend to be compassionate and tolerant toward others.

There are two parts of the brain that do not operate together. They are poles apart. There is the prefrontal cortex which is the highest part of the brain. Being consciously soul connected requires one to focus through this part of the brain. In order for this focus to prevail, one must be at peace, non-combative, and not defensive. Being fearful blocks this part of the brain from controlling.

When people are afraid, they do not think creatively, compassionately or independently. This kind of thought requires the use of the higher brain. If we have previously developed this part of the brain, and have a tendency to use it on a regular basis, it will continue to attract our attention to cope with situations.

What results when both the higher brain wants to be active, and the primitive, defensive brain is activated through fear, is a real conflict between the two. This conflict typically produces heightened stress, chronic anxiety, chaos, confusion and depression.

This confused and depressed emotional-mental state unconsciously seeks escape because this is an unnatural state. Drugs (including prozac and the like) can provide temporary escape for some. Violence can erupt as a way of acting out the tension. Inertia may be a defense mechanism used. Creating a scapegoat or enemy to attack may be pursued. Giving up and surrendering to a governmental or military power may also be a way out.

None of these escapes, however, resolve the inner tension. We are still left with the problem that is rooted in fear. Unless we deal effectively with the fear we will not have peace and will remain disconnected from soul.

There are two things we can do that would help resolve this issue of government/authority-induced fear. First, we need to acknowledge that the fear is aroused within us by believing what we are told by those we accept as an authority greater than ourselves. We then need to rationally and intelligently examine what is said to ascertain its validity. In other words, are we being presented with facts, with the truth, or does the ‘authority’ have some hidden agenda for saying what it does?

Second, we need to rely on our own inner authority for what we believe and for the choices we make. We need to trust that we have the inner strength, intelligence and ability to be at peace and make appropriate decisions for our own well-being. By taking the time each day to relax deeply and/or go into a meditative state of mind, we reduce the amount of beta brainwaves that are heightened through fear and stress, and we produce an abundance of alpha brainwaves that make us feel peaceful and facilitate soul connections.

We cannot experience fear while we are producing strong alpha waves. In this relaxed meditative state our mind is receptive to soul impulse – the source of inner strength, love and intelligence. Through regular practice of this inner state of connection, we rely less and less on external authority, and gradually learn to trust the inner authority of soul. The choices we then make are more creative, compassionate and life enhancing for ourselves and others.

Out of the Darkness Suicide Prevention

This year, we will make suicide prevention a national priority. In 2009, the Out of the Darkness Overnight national walk returns to Chicago. We’re planning a beautiful route full of sweeping lakefront views, big city streets and picturesque neighborhoods, supported by the welcoming warmth of the Windy City’s residents.

The Overnight is fund raising walk unlike any other.  Starting at dusk and ending at dawn, we’ll walk up to 18 miles, a moving community of thousands of diverse individuals connected by a common goal.  Please join our community.

This year, we will make suicide prevention a national priority. And we need your help. By joining the Overnight, you’ll send a loud, clear message, heard from your house to the White House, that it’s time to end the stigma surrounding suicide and shed light on the tragic consequences of depression, substance abuse, anxiety and other mood disorders that, left untreated, can lead to suicide.

Register now for the Out of the Darkness Overnight, Chicago June 27-28, 2009

The funds you raise will further the mission of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, the leading not-for-profit organization exclusively dedicated to understanding and preventing suicide through research and education, and to reaching out to people with mood disorders and those impacted by suicide.

Register Now

Request Information

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.

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.

The Healing Power Of Dreams

“We are so captivated by and entangled in our subjective consciousness that we have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions.” – C.G. Jung

Dreams are doorways to the subconscious, pathways to the spirit realm and keys to the future. Dreams serve as a communication line between the invisible and visible worlds. Or, if you prefer, between heaven and earth. A dream is a real-life experience an individual has on another plane. We, in our true nature as Soul, are able to have experiences in a far-reaching panorama of life. Dreams are constantly rehearsing us for challenges and opportunities that lie around the corner in waking life. This is why Dream Work is also important.

There is a healing instinct within you that can manifest in dreams. You’d be surprised at the straightforward health advice they give, either spontaneously or on request. Tips on food, preventive therapies, treatment options constantly come through-but we miss them. Once remembered the essence of many of our dreams is lost because we, or our therapists, misinterpret them.

A patient told me about a recurring broccoli dream. “You can’t be serious,” he said, chuckling. “It’s actually trying to tell me what to eat? A vegetable?” Yes-it was. We often dismiss such practical suggestions as meaningless. But sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Keep it simple. Try something new. If you dream of eating a luscious mango, run out, devour one. Or when, in a dream, you’re soaking in natural hot springs, make a date to go. How do you know if the advice you receive is right? Count on common sense to direct you. Though some intuitive flashes may seem impractical or unexpected, the authentic ones will never suggest anything to jeopardize you or anyone else’s physical welfare.

So, for instance, if you have heart disease and a dream tells you, “It’s okay to smoke cigarettes,” don’t do it. Question all messages that risk your health. Along with this guideline, begin to familiarize yourself with traditional dream interpretation. I suggest Carl Jung’s classic text Man and His Symbols, or take a look at Creative Dreaming by Dr. Patricia Garfield.

In addition, there’s an intuitive level to understanding dreams of which I’d like you to be aware. Reliable intuitive information stands out in very specific ways. Watch for these clues:

Statements that simply convey information

Neutral segments that evoke or convey no emotion

A detached feeling, like you’re a witness watching a scene

A voice or person counseling you-as if you’re taking dictation from an outside source

Conversations with people you never met before who give instructions about your health

I’ve found that my most dead-on intuitions either come across as compassionate or have no emotion at all. Develop a careful eye as you practice separating the content of your dreams from your reactions to it. Soon you’ll be able to tell what is reliable health guidance and what is not.

Be aware that your dreams go by different rules than your waking life. Get ready for a mind shift. Physical laws no longer apply. Gravity changes. In dreams you can fly!

Remember as a child (or adult) when you took off wingless, soared over mountains and valleys below. Health wise, this is a reminder of the vitality and freedom that is in you. Silence is pregnant. A dream’s tone can be as restorative as its content; a revelation about staying well can come through someone’s eyes rather than words.

You are in partnership with your dreams. Initiate an ongoing dialogue with them. It’s like consulting the wisest old-time family doctor you can imagine who knows you inside out. You can ask your dreams anything-even what seems most impossible.

How can I keep my blood pressure down? What about my hip pain or allergies? Are there ways to stop catching so many colds? No question is trivial if it is meaningful to you. Expect answers. Some will be direct. Others may require interpretation.

Dreams can keep you well. Dreams provide answers. But first you must retrieve them. How many nights have you awakened with the most amazing dream you were certain you’d recall? The next morning it was gone.

Our memories deceive. During sleep we experience a kind of amnesia. Dreams are not of the rational mind. Your intuitive memory is what is needed. Here is a method I recommend to remember your dreams. It’s helpful to practice it each day. Soon it will become second nature to you.

Four Strategies To Remember Your Dreams

Keep a journal and pen by your bed.

Write a question on a piece of paper before you go to sleep. Formalize your request. Place it on a table beside your bed or under your pillow.

In the morning do not wake up too fast. Stay under the covers for at least a few minutes remembering your dream. Luxuriate in a peaceful feeling between sleep and waking, what scientists call the hypnagogic state. Those initial moments provide a doorway.

Open your eyes. Write down your dream immediately; otherwise it will evaporate. You may recall a face, object, color, or scenario, feel an emotion. It doesn’t matter if it makes perfect sense-or if you retrieve a single image or many. Record everything you remember.

When you’re finished refocus on the health question you asked the previous night. See how your dream applies. One, two, or more impressions about the who/what/where of your solution may have surfaced.

Get in the habit of recording your dreams regularly. Be assured I’ve never met anyone who can’t be taught how to remember. Keep at it. If your answer doesn’t come the first night, try again. More details will emerge, rounding out the picture.

Then look to your daily life for evidence of what your dream tells you. The woman’s face you glimpsed for that split second could just be that of the healer you’ve been searching for.

I am guided every day by the five intuitive steps I’ve just presented. They have become my eyes. They can be yours too. The intuitions about your health I speak of and live by are ordinarily without boundary and are unseen.

As you go through these steps they highlight, truths about your body, providing a framework in which to recognize them. Ordering allows for a simple, focused understanding. I have a great respect for structure as long as it facilitates our freedom.

Go through the steps with this in mind. With each health question you ask, be prepared to expand or contract in response to whatever fluid motion is called for. Surrender all preconceptions about your healing. This realm I’m attempting to outline ultimately escapes definition. The mastermind of all things intuitive, the brains behind the scene, is of an infinite source.

What if, just once, you let yourself go, accept the gift unconditionally? I dare you. What do you have to lose? And to gain? Breathe fire into what is dormant in you: your intuitions about a healthy body, your sense of spiritual power from which all your intuitions come.

Make these connections count. They will last a lifetime. Open yourself to knowledge of how to heal. Let the mystery touch you. It is everything, everything.

SHARING OUR DREAMS

Everyone wakes up on some mornings and wonders about the dream, or nightmare, they just had. If the dream bothers you, or comes back to you in the daytime and you want to know its meaning, you should be aware of some ways of analyzing or interpreting your dreams.

Analysis, interpretation and looking at the symbols in your dreams give you a good sense of your dreams. You can usually feel better about the bad ones, and feel terrific about the insight you gain from the good ones (there are no “bad” dreams — they can all be used to help you).

5 Reasons To Look At Your Dreams:

Because they give you a startlingly original point of view about your life.

Because some dreams are so fabulous all you should do is learn to recall the feeling.

Because some dreams are awful and you’d just like them to STOP.

Because the dream is telling you something you need to know.

Because the dream always gives you a way of solving the problem that it raises – even for nightmares and recurring dreams.

Benefits from sharing our dreams. When we talk about our dreams with other people, we learn about dreams, ourselves, and the people with whom we are sharing. We learn about dreams. When people tell us their dreams, we gain insight into their personal dreamscape, their symbolism (and their ways of interpreting or dreamwork that symbolism), and their ways of managing dreamland problems and possibilities.

We can use much of this information in our own dream studies. And when we talk about dreams, this attention helps us to recall more of them; this further advances our education.

We learn about ourselves. When we describe our dreams to other people, their feedback gives us different perspectives — perhaps ones which are more honest than our own, because those people don’t have the repressions and biases that distort our interpretations of our own dreams.

They help us to see meanings which we don’t discern because of our limited perspective and possibly because our reluctance to probe into unpleasant parts of our psyche. Also, because dreams have more than one meaning, other people’s interpretations can help us to discover those additional meanings; otherwise, we might have been satisfied with the first interpretation which occurred to us.

We learn about other people. We strengthen relationships when we talk about dreams with people whom we trust and love; the “trust” implies that the information will not be ridiculed or gossiped or used against us later, and the “love” means that we accept the person’s weaknesses and shadowy unpleasantries which might be expressed in the dream. Within the context of dream-sharing, we can talk about our intimate feelings, our fears, our passions, and the ways in which we view our lives and the world.

When we discuss a dream, we have a means of addressing an issue in our relationship without a direct confrontation; the dream itself brought up the issue, and it did so in a manner in which we can comfortably disclaim responsibility (however incorrectly) for the emotions which were expressed, because it was a dream character (and not us) who said something pertaining to the subject.

Remember that a dream in which the other person appears is not necessarily a dream about that person; the character might be representing something else. But sometimes the character does symbolize that person; if so, he or she is likely to have dreamed about us in return.

Everyone dreams!
That’s a remarkable fact.
There are no exceptions.
It’s a rule of life…

Each night we are taken on an experience. We have almost no say in where or with whom. We don’t even have all our wits about us. It is sometimes fun but quite often the experience is very intense or disturbing. Whether we remember our dreams or not, we are always dreaming. And most of us are considering the meaning of the dream.

But how many people talk about their dreams, whether good ones or bad ones? Most people brush them aside as they get out of bed and leave them behind. They miss out on it all. You don’t have to interpret or analyze every dream and — especially at the beginning– you may not feel satisfied with your own interpretations.

You can work with your dreams and you can play with your dreams. You can create your own dream dictionary — the dream symbols that are most meaningful to you.. It makes a big difference to what you know about who you are. I strongly believe that even the simple act of telling someone else your dream can have a great effect on your life.

There are ways of looking at your dreams that are easy to learn, respectful and illuminating. They tend to make nightmares and unpleasant dreams go away and they allow you to look at the mystery and wonder that is always present in a dream.

Does Your Worldview Support Your Ability To receive Inner Guidance?

What is a “Worldview”? A worldview is a person’s set of assumptions about the basic makeup and nature of the world and universe. A fully developed worldview gives basic answers to questions such as:

1) What is ultimately the prime reality? (…such as “God”, or Matter/Energy)
2) What is the basic nature of the universe?
3) What is the basic nature and condition of man?
4) What happens to man at death?
5) What is the reason or basis of ethics and morality?

One of the biggest problems of present society is the effect of overall change and acceleration on human psychology. Neither individual minds nor collective culture seem able to cope with the unpredictable change and growing complexity. Stress, uncertainty and frustration increase, minds are overloaded with information, knowledge fragments, values erode, negative developments are consistently overemphasized, while positive ones are ignored.

The resulting climate is one of nihilism, anxiety and despair. While the wisdom gathered in the past has lost much of its validity, we don’t have a clear vision of the future either. As a result, there does not seem to be anything left to guide our actions.

What we need is a framework that ties everything together, that allows us to understand society, the world, and our place in it, and that could help us to make the critical decisions which will shape our future. It would synthesize the wisdom gathered in the different scientific disciplines, philosophies and religions.

Rather than focusing on small sections of reality, it would provide us with a picture of the whole. In particular, it would help us to understand, and therefore cope with, complexity and change. Such a conceptual framework may be called a “world view”.

There are seven fundamental components of a world view. I will discuss them one by one, attempting to capture the main ideas.

A model of the world

It should allow us to understand how the world functions and how it is structured. “World” here means the totality, everything that exists around us, including the physical universe, the Earth, life, mind, society and culture. We ourselves are an important part of that world. Therefore, a world view should also answer the basic question: “Who are we?”.

Explanation

The second component is supposed to explain the first one. It should answer the questions: “Why is the world the way it is? Where does it all come from? Where do we come from?”. This is perhaps the most important part of a world view. If we can explain how and why a particular phenomenon (say life or mind) has arisen, we will be able to better understand how that phenomenon functions. It will also help us to understand how that phenomenon will continue to evolve.

Futurology

This extrapolation of past evolution into the future defines a third component of a world view: futurology. It should answer the question “Where are we going to?” It should give us a list of possibilities, of more or less probable future developments. But this will confront us with a choice: which of the different alternatives should we promote and which should we avoid?

Values

This is the more fundamental issue of value: “What is good and what is evil?” The theory of values defines the fourth component of a world view. It includes morality or ethics, the system of rules which tells us how we should or should not behave. It also gives us a sense of purpose, a direction or set of goals to guide our actions. Together with the answer to the question “why?”, the answer to the question “what for?”, may help us to understand the real meaning of life.

Action

Knowing what to strive for does not yet mean knowing how to get there, though. The next component must be a theory of action (praxiology). It would answer the question “How should we act?” It would help us to solve practical problems and to implement
plans of action.

Knowledge

Plans are based on knowledge and information, on theories and models describing the phenomena we encounter. Therefore, we need to understand how we can construct reliable models. This is the component of knowledge acquisition. It is equivalent to what in philosophy is called “epistemology” or “the theory of knowledge”. It should allow us to distinguish better theories from worse theories. It should answer the traditional philosophical question “What is true and what is false?”

Building Blocks

The final point on the agenda of a world view builder is not meant to answer any fundamental question. It just reminds us that world views cannot be developed from scratch. You need building blocks to start with. These building blocks can be found in existing theories, models, concepts, guidelines and values, scattered over the different disciplines and ideologies. This defines the seventh component: fragments of world views as a starting point.

After considering the main worldviews held by most all of mankind, how does one go about deciding which one is best, which must be false, and which one, if any, has a high probably of being true? (Truth is that which matches up with reality.)

To begin with, we must assume that something exists. Every full-orbed worldview recognizes this. Next, we must assume that we can actually know something, and that we can think true thoughts. A reasonable starting-point for this might well be that of Descartes’ reasoning: “I think, therefore I am.” This demonstrates that we do exist, and that we know something which is self-evidently true …a reasonable starting point.

Along with assuming that we can know something, come the three laws of logical thought, which are: the law of identity, the law of opposites, and the law of non-contradiction.

The “Law of Identity” states: In a certain specific context (set of facts and circumstances), a proposition (thing or situation) has only one single meaning.

The “Law of Opposites” (or the “excluded middle”) states: That one specific meaning is either true or false, but cannot be both.

“The Law of Non-Contradiction” states: Two such propositions cannot both be true, if one affirms while the other denies the same thing at the same time and in the same respect.

If these laws of thought are denied, then all meaningful thought and communication is destroyed, and our existence proceeds into nonsense and nihilism.

The Three Truth-Tests

Logical thinking allows us to list three distinctive qualities which test the truthfulness of any worldview:

FIRST, an adequate worldview must be consistent within itself, and non-contradictory. Any contradiction is a definite indication that the worldview contains at least some untruth; And if the contradiction involves an essential element of the worldview, then the worldview must be false, having failed the first truth-test.

SECOND, an adequate worldview must fit virtually all the relevant facts and data of reality and human experience. The worldview which accounts for the greatest number of facts, with the fewest difficulties, has the highest probability of being a worldview which is true. A worldview which is inconsistent with human experience and with the empirical facts of history, nature and the universe, fails the second truth-test.

THIRD, an adequate worldview must be subjectively satisfactory and livable on an every-day basis. We must ask: When a man is done philosophizing about the nature of his worldview, can he live it out, and does he actually practice it in his daily life? …If not, then the actions of his life reveal his true inner conviction of the untruth of that worldview …it is not livable, therefore, that worldview fails the third truth-test.

Study any worldview, and evaluate it with these truth-tests in mind.

Developing a world view that supports connecting to your inner guidance is an essential part of being able to develop your intuitive power. In an effort to make sense out of our world, we develop a philosophy of life. For most of us this philosophy is the basis of our core beliefs. As we saw earlier, beliefs have the power to inhibit or empower our development. Our philosophy of life answers existential questions: Who are we? Why are we here? How do we relate to the Creator or the Universal forces?

There are many ways to answer these questions; consequently, a variety of philosophies have developed throughout the world. I do not believe there is any one correct world view. If there is an ultimate truth, I am not qualified to discern what it is. However, I find it helpful to judge philosophies not on the basis of right or wrong, but on their ability to empower or inhibit the expression of my potential. I encourage you to reevaluate your world view judging it on its ability to inhibit or empower you to express yourself fully.

In the following paragraphs, I am sharing my world view with you. It is a philosophy that supports your ability to tap into the divine wisdom and develop your intuitive powers. It is not THE truth, but it is MY truth. Feel free to accept those parts that make sense to you and discard those ideas that do not fit your understanding of life. Your philosophy is ultimately your choice. It may be the most sacred choice you have; therefore, choose wisely.

My philosophy is best defined as Spiritualistic, New Thought Christianity or Metaphysical Christianity. This is not New Age, not Mysticism, not Mind Cure, not Mental Science and definitely not Christian Science. It is however: A total belief in God and the search for Truth, Love and Spiritual Law. It is based on the teachings of God with a metaphysical interpretation.

My most fundamental philosophical belief is the oneness of all life. There is one life (unity) expressing itself through all life forms (diversity), and that life is God, the good omnipotent. God is everywhere present, everywhere intelligent, and everywhere powerful. It is God flowing through me, expressing as me, creating my world. The me I think of as ego or personality is simply an extension of this incredible force that creates the entire universe. I am connected, through the spirit part of me, to All That Is. There is one mind, one spirit, and it is God.

Therefore, when I desire information, wisdom, or knowledge, it is available to me through my spirit self, from the one mind of God. As I allow myself (ego/personality) to connect to the one mind (God), I have easy access to all the information I need in my life. I have the ability to take my conscious awareness through the spirit self into the one mind to connect to anything I wish to know. I can either open my spiritual centers allowing the information to flow into my mind, or I can raise my awareness to the one mind and get the information I need.

In my philosophy, I am only separated from this oneness when I limit myself through fear or a false belief in separation. The connection is always there. It is only my choice as to where I focus my awareness that gives me the feeling of oneness or separation. When I focus my attention on the unity of life, I experience peace, harmony, and fulfillment. When I choose to turn my powerful consciousness towards separation, I experience fear and lack. It is my beliefs, thoughts, words, and imagination that create my experiences in life.

This philosophy empowers me to access Divine wisdom, develop my intuitive power, and live a peaceful, harmonious, abundant life.

What is it about this Spiritual “way of life” that makes me so unique? I try to always act positively, instead of reacting negatively; use words that are kind, helpful and uplifting – not angry or discouraging; practice forgiveness, instead of judgment and condemnation; act with kindness and patience, instead of haste and rudeness; seek and see the good in all situations even those that may at first, seem adverse to them; behold the Christ in all persons, even at those times when it is difficult to do so; do not use force or threats to gain an advantage – but pray and trust God to bring forth the highest good for all; volunteer and give of myself for the sake of expressing good, rather than to be “seen of men.”

The search for truth, love and spiritual fulfillment are of course the very things that allow the more physical laws (those made by men and science) to explain and justify their usually outrageous decisions. These man-made laws cannot change anything – they are merely there to try to explain. With a practical twentieth century approach to classical old philosophies, I believe that religion must, overall, be practical and should apply (and be applied) to both the problems and the joys of everyday life.

To develop your intuitive powers and receive inner guidance … you need to adopt a philosophy that enables you to find answers within yourself. There are many philosophies from which to choose. My philosophy is only one possibility!