This is the first step in graduating from the No Pain, No Gain School of Tortured Progress.  You can not be healed unless you name the tweaked karma that needs to be healed.

Step #2:  Figure out what it is about your problem that is so appealing.  Consider the possiblity that you have it as least in part because it perversely entertains you or keeps you from being bored.

Meditate on the theory that maybe you unconsciously don’t want to give up your dilemma because it prevents you from reaching lofty goals you are too afraid or timid or lazy to strive for.

Contemplate the notion that you are secretly proud of your distress-that it is so interwoven with your identify that you would not feel like yourself if you had to live without it.  Do you ever find yourself bragging to others about the difficulities you have to endure?  Are they esential to the construction of your self-image?

Consider the possibility that you use your nagging agony as an attention getting device, or as a way to gather love.  Isn’t it true that some people are more likely to shower you with sympathy when you are miserable than when you are blandly well adjusted?

Muse on the seductiveness of your hurt, and on all the unacknowledged reasons that maybe you are attracted to it and hesitate to give it up.

Step #3:  Simply feel your suffering.  Do not judge it or repress it.  Do not come up with reasons about how it’s beneath you to feel it or how you should be over it by now or how you cannot believe you still let it have so much power over you.  Let the pain ripple and flow.  Allow it to break your heart apart.  Give it room to wail its truths.  Marvel at the fullness of the emotions it stirs.

Step #4:  Leaving all your preconceptions behind, meditate on what lessons your pain is asking you to master.  How is it inspiring you to grow in directions you have been unable to accomplish by any other means?

Step #5:  Put yourself in a state of mind wherein you can feel gratitude for your pain.  Be thankful for its teachings, for its chewy mystery, for its command  that you build a soul resilient enough to do the work you came to Earth to carry out.

Thank you so very much Rob Brezsny for sharing with me a new thought on pain and gratitude.

Imagine a woman in love with her own body.
 
 A woman who believes her body is enough, just as it is 
 Who celebrates her body and its rhythms and cycles as an exquisite resource 
 Imagine a woman who honors the face of the Goddess in her changing face 
 A woman who celebrates the accumulation of her years and her wisdom
 
 Who refuses to use her precious life energy disguising the changes in her body and life
 Imagine a woman who values the women in her life 
 A woman who sits in circles of women 
 
 Who is reminded of the truth about herself when she forgets

 And dear friends~ Imagine yourself as this woman~ A woman
 who always stands strong in her Powers~
 
 A woman who has courage to speak her truth~ 
 A woman who has strength to face her fears
  ~ A woman who knows her values of life ~

A woman who walks her earth walk~ in the resplendence of her true God Reality~
 
  Imagine this woman as You~
 
 “Our planet is in desperate need of women who love
 themselves. Women who use their time, energy, and resources
 to design life-affirming solutions for the challenges
 confronting humankind. Women who give birth to images of
 inclusion, poems of truth, rituals of healing, experiences
 of transformation, relationships of equality, strategies of
 peace, institutions of justice, and households of
 compassion.”
 

I am the God That I Am
I am the God That I Am
I am the God That I Am

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change
something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
-R. Buckminster Fuller

So please join me in creating a world that celebrates who we truly are

Namaste,

Julie

There’s an old hymn you might know titled How Great Thou Art. I discovered it about a decade ago on a country gospel compilation and have loved it ever since. Through that time and until a few weeks ago as I was walking through a riverside park in suburban Detroit, I gave little thought to the words or their current relevance.

Then as I strolled among the emergent greens of an Eastern spring, something shifted and suddenly I got it.

All those church-goers through the hymn’s century-long history who assumed they were singing to someone else, to the God-on-high that’s outside of themselves, were missing the deeper truth behind the words.

All this time, they and I have been singing to ourselves!

How Great Thou Art is a declaration addressed not to some white-bearded deity, but to the singer. To me and to you: How great thou art.

For you are the God That You Are. And how great thou art!

The God That You Are is mighty. The God That You Are is strong. The God That You Are is fearless. The God That You Are knows only effortless, easy abundance.

The God That You Are is love.

We hear variations of this so often: You are love…God is love…Love is everything…Love is all that is…Love is all there is…

All these are true, even if they have been tritened in the over- and superficial use of those phrases.

But the basic truth is that the energy of love suffuses all. The energy of love fills all. And the energy of love is all there is.

And if that’s so, then you are that energy. You are love.

How can something that is love be less than? How can something that is love be not good enough? How can something that is love be not valuable?

You are all these things. And from that place, it’s time to step into an appreciation, acceptance and embrace of what you are.

For once you recognize, truly and viscerally, that there is nothing but love and that that’s what you are, you can no longer hold yourself down. You can no longer diminish and demean who and what you are.

All you can do is acknowledge how great thou art. How great thou art.

There is a God Presence within and around you that in this moment is expressing itself in human form. It has the eyes the allow you read this. It has the ears that allow you to hear this. More than anything else, it has the heart that allows you to know this.

So stop for a moment. Take a deep breath. Take a deep breath and breathe in the truth. And that truth is the underlying greatness of the love that defines who and what you are.

It’s time to reclaim. It’s time to re-energize it. It’s time to open to the truth of  this statement.

Thank You Mark David for this loving reminder.  May Peace follow you everywhere you go

Julie

Think about the good news this represents.  If our health, our sense of well being, our very reality is affected by our own self created stories, we can begin to using this knowledge to create new stories.  Stories that contain joy, stories of glorious health and well being.

The mind that questions itself looks forward to life, to the wonderful adventure life truly is.

“Seek not outside yourself.  For all your pain comes simply from a futile search for what you want, insisting where it must be found”

Course in Miracles

“Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness”

James Thurber

Here are ten statements that represent Wholistic Healing to Me

1)  Listen with Your Heart

2)  Honor Yourself and All that you are and will become

3)  Create Joy Each and Every Day

4)  Forgive Yourself Immediately

5)  Remember:  There is always a choice and you decide  how to choose

6)  Release Fear as soon as you realize you are standing in it

7)  Spend Some Time Alone

8)  Pay Attention

9)  Live the 3 R’s:  Respect for Self, Respect for Others, Take Responsiblity for Your Actions

10)  Express Gratitude Often

This is a small excerpt of one of the personal development classes I have created.  Please go to my webpage for more information www.wholisticlifeservices.com

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