balance

Jun 10 2009

Loving Self

Loving Self is the fastest way to create a stronger connection with Spirit. However, most of us are not proficient in doing this. We may think we know all about Loving Self but it is the last area we master, as spiritually developing beings, in body. This can take several lifetimes to fully master. However, we are given all the chances we need to make decisions for ourselves which are loving and in integrity with our spiritual, True Selves.

1. One step to Loving Self is embracing that God and I Are One. We are not separate from God/Spirit. We may feel disconnected but in truth we cannot be separate no mater what we do, feel, don’t do, think or imagine. We are One with All That Is and that’s the Truth. Most of us do not know this however because we give our power to human fears, emotions and thoughts every day. This results in making us feel we are separate from Divine Presence.

Many of us do not gift ourselves with the experience of meditation and authentic prayer,

so we do not have the daily opportunity to learn from Spirit that we and God/Great Spirit are One. Even if we do meditate, we may not be actively releasing our human fears, thoughts and emotions. Therefore, we may be peaceful in Silence and then go right out and have an argument with our co-worker because we are not releasing our fears and concerns proactively, clearing our energy field and making more space for Divine Presence in our lives.

At the very least, affirm out loud and daily,

There is One Power, One Source, One Life Force.
I Am One with All That Is.
I Am an Individualized Expression of God.

This brings Divine Knowing more readily into our energy fields as we affirm these truths regularly.

2. Loving Self has nothing to do with personal indulgence and everything to do with living in integrity. Loving Self is going out with friends and NOT over drinking, over eating, over smoking, over spending, over gambling or over sexing with others. Anything prefaced by “over” is not living in integrity. We usually know when we have “over” done something though frequently, not at the time. Perhaps for a time it feels easier to pretend to ignore this information we have about ourselves. This pretense is costly to us. When we “over do” we are by definition, out of balance. This absolutely affects us mentally, emotionally, spiritual and physically. Living in integrity is Loving of Self and by the way, benefits not only ourselves but all whom we meet.

The energy of being with friends, can be a very self loving experience if we are able to be our authentic selves in their company and receive affirmation for our own True Selves. This looks like being able to say I’m sorry for something we have done which was unkind or unthoughtful and being forgiven. This looks like being able to say, “this was great but now I need to get some rest to function tomorrow”. This looks like being able to set good boundaries for ourselves and have our friends or partners respect this in us.

3. Other acts of integrity include saying “no” to requests of us which are not good for us, helpful for others or respectful of our own inner knowing for ourselves.

Robert (name changed) is a management consultant in his late thirties, in international management. When just setting out, he felt he had to take all work that came his way for financial reasons. He loved the bi-play around negotiating new work, agreeing on the rates, specifying deliverables and getting the contract. However, time and again, he experienced a sense of deflation when it was time to actually do the work.

Robert did notice repeatedly, that if a contract was good for him, it was almost without exception, good for the clients as well. He began to try to determine while negotiating contracts, if he would enjoy the actual work. He made some spectacularly bad choices during this time. His fear of having enough money continued to play heavily into his judgment about clients. After 3 years of working with this rather directly, he turned away a very large contract for 6 months of nearly full salary, because it felt really wrong for him.

After that time, he had appreciably fewer bad contracts show up in his life, because his learning was complete. His soul was at peace with regard to these learnings and therefore he no longer attracted these situations to himself. He had learned to live in integrity with himself and not to “prostitute himself” for the sake of prestige, money, recognition, or safety. In Loving Self enough to only accepting work situations which were good for him, Robert radically transformed his life for the good, in all areas, not just with work.

In facing these situations for yourself ask the following:

Is this a loving choice for me?
Am I being honest with myself, about whether this is good for me ?
What is making me consider working (or staying) in this setting which I know is crummy for me?

4. Loving Self requires proactive attention to our deepest needs. If we are not getting enough exercise, eating well, getting enough sleep, or spending endless hours before a computer or TV, we need to attend to this. It is a loving act to pay attention to these things. If we are deeply lonely, we need to take steps to be with others even if it feels like a big risk. If we are in a bad relationship, we need to ask for Divine Help to come forth within us, release all that is our part of the bad relationship, and bless the other person regardless of the past. If we are bored, we need to name the fear behind this and face it squarely so that we can move on from the languishing energy.

Loving Self is creating more compassion with ourselves in all areas of our lives. Love heals all things, no matter the size or complexity of what we might be facing. Clear the fear you carry connected with the situation, call in Love even though you may not know what next steps to take because such acts create a stronger connection with All That Is, which leads to Inner Peace.

Jan 21 2009

Good Work… if you can get it.

Thoughts and feelings can balance us or unbalance us. Where we place our attention and give our power determines whether we move towards greater balance or greater imbalance. When we are out of balance energetically, it shows up somewhere.

How does imbalance affect us?

taken by aeu04117 — MB Balances Rocks (by aeu04117)

It can show up in disturbing dreams, inability to sleep, imbalances in eating habits, impatience, “down days”, arguments or colds and infections. If we have been out of balance a very long time, the immune system can become compromised. We can begin to show patterns of recurring colds, chronic pain or infections, high blood pressure, depression, anxiety or even osteoporosis, cancer or diabetes and everything in-between. We may have recurring patterns of unsuccessful relationships, jobs, financial investments or failure to generally thrive due to being out of balance.

Our bodies as well as our thoughts, feelings and sense of connectedness to the greater whole are all energy. Further our emotional, mental, spiritual and physical bodies are all related. We are one large, completely connected web of flowing energy. When one area of our life does not flow, we will be given all the chances we need to attend to this. We always have the choice to attend in the present or put it off until later. However, as long as there are imbalances in our energy field, these will show up in our daily lives in one way or another.

Our response to energy may not be the only reason we are manifesting imbalances in our daily life. There may be environmental factors, situational factors or hereditary patterns which make us more susceptible to certain imbalances in our lives. However, if we couple environmental or hereditary factors with also being out of balance emotionally, mentally or spiritually, the results at the physical level will be exacerbated. The more we are out of balance, the greater the chance this will show up in our daily lives in one way or another. This is the most practical reason for attending to our spiritual health that I know of. Thankfully, though, we can change how we think and feel if we can figure out what blocked energy we may be carrying and how it is affecting us.

At the part with my daddy! =) — At the park with my daddy! =) (by Photo ChicK DoraliS)

How can we change our thoughts and feelings?

The way we attend to energy directly affects our health on many levels. Suppose you are having on-going tension with a child. You may have tried “everything” to clear the air with this child and are having no success. Usually when we come to this place with any relationship, it is time to look inside at our own thoughts and feelings about what is actually going on. We can affect our thoughts and feelings if we can understand the “unseen” reasons we have specific thoughts and feelings. However clearly we can see in others what they need to change, we can only bring about such change in ourselves. Each person has the free will to choose conflict or balance, change or status quo, harmonious relationships or contentious ones. When we do decide to release thoughts and feelings which are creating imbalances, it affects everything around us including the specific relationship we are focused on.

Enter into Silence and open a sacred healing space for yourself. Ask yourself, “when I argued with my child, what fears were fueling my thoughts, tone, emotions and words”? It might be the fear; for your child’s safety, of your child’s failure, that (s)he is making poor decisions, that your child does not respect you, that you do not have the relationship you want with your child, or another fear.

What do I do if I am too angry to think straight?

If you can’t get to defining fear because of the anger that is present, list the specific anger you have. Include every type of specific anger you are experiencing. This might include something like, I am angry with Kevin because I ask him to clean up his room, then he doesn’t do it until I get angry and yell at him. List everything you can but keep your work to blocks of no more than 15 minutes. More than that can be overwhelming. Keep returning to this set of tasks in 15 minute blocks until you are finished. When all the specifics of your anger are listed, move on to what is behind the anger that most upsets you.

Anger almost always covers fear or doubt of some sort or another. Ask, “what is behind the anger I am feeling” ? Specific fears and doubts cover probably 98% of the blocked energy manifesting in contentious relationships. This is called diagnosing the situation. If you can’t figure it out yourself, go into Silence, be still and ask Divine Knowing for insight around these issues. Listen to the guidance.

How do I get rid of these thoughts and feelings?

Diagnosis is good. Clearing the blocked energy is better. Take the specific fear or doubt you have identified and take it into sacred healing space. Open the sacred healing space, ask that the fear/doubt be consumed by the Divine Presence. Call for all core or source energy manifesting now as this fear/doubt to be release into Divine Light. Call for the Divine Healing Presence to permeate this relationship and give thanks for this experience. Your taking these steps will be met 100% of the way by Divine Presence/Divine Knowing/Source. This healing energy is first experienced at the unseen level usually in the form of different feelings and thoughts. It takes a little while for shifting energy to show up in our physical lives. Watch for shifts. Give thanks for the shifts both unseen and seen as they come and eventually the energetic context of this relationship under scrutiny will shift.

You may have to work on other aspects of fear or doubt over several weeks or months to completely allow you to be in relationship with this child, free of fear. However, each time you undertake this type of healing with the Divine Presence, you will actually change the energy around you, especially that with your child. Keep it up. “It’s good work… if you can get it. ” (Dave Wilcox. “Good Together”, 2002)

Jan 14 2009

Right Relationship

Coming into Right Relationship with aspects of our lives is another way to think of seeking Peace. Right Relationship refers to the highest form of connection with a person, place or situation for this place and time as defined by Divine Knowing. Right Relationship is a concept which requires us to let go of defining that fully for ourselves and simply seek this increasingly in our daily lives. For example, when I am irritated with a neighbor or colleague, I am out of Right Relationship with that person. I may not fully know what Right Relationship looks like with a specific person, however, when I am out of Right Relationship, I usually know it. I feel anxious, irritated, on edge, confrontative, nervous, when I think of them or when I am around them. This is a good place to begin seeking Peace.

The contrast between balance and non-balance becomes gradually clearer as we are increasingly in Silence. The challenge is what to do about it. If we are out of Right Relationship with a person and we want to re-balance, what can we do?

One main principle in seeking Peace is that others do not make or break our Peace. We make or break it. We choose to get angry, to feel judged, to feel mistreated, to feel betrayed, to feel irritated or insignificant. However, we often talk about this as “so-in-so made me feel sad, mad, glad”. Actually the truth energetically is more like this, “when I think about or I am with so-in-so, I feel mad, sad, or glad”. The choice to feel that way is ours. The choice not to feel that way is also ours. This later realization usually spurs shifts in how we work these issues in our lives.

What does being out of Right Relationship look like?

Years ago I got irritated with one of my colleagues who always had to have everything we worked on perfect to her standards of perfection. I was clearly out of Right Relationship with this person. Let’s call her Sonya. Every meeting I had with Sonya always devolved into her stating what was wrong with the efforts we had made on a joint project. Sometimes the issue was the “clarity of the brochure”, sometimes the issue was the appropriateness of the pictures we had used, or the font, or the unstated messages, and on and on. What I needed to work on was why I got so irritated. After some Silence with this issue, it came to me that I really, really resented feeling controlled. This type of experience is something that I also had in other areas of my life, surprise, surprise. What was this about?? How could I release it?

What can we do about being out of Right Relationship?

Here’s what I did. I sat down and wrote in my journal about all the experiences I had ever had when I felt controlled by another person. I went back to my childhood, I wrote about my marriage, I wrote about other work settings. I wrote until I was finished with all these experiences. I learned that Sonya was not the creator of this experience, I was. I learned that what I really was working with was the fear of not measuring up to other’s opinions of me. When I got this clarity, I asked during one of my meditative sessions, to have all this fear of not measuring up to be lifted from my energy field. It was.

A few weeks later Sonya and I had a meeting. I had asked her to just go ahead and make all the changes she wanted to before our meeting on the brochure we were writing so that it was exactly as she thought it would work. There was no tension, no angst. We negotiated some changes without the irritation I usually had felt. I felt really clean and balanced.

I knew that something really different had happened for me. I had sought Peace and in that seeking, it had been given to me. It was not given without my effort but rather as a result of trying to clear the energy that was taking me out of balance. This spiritual principle has been shown to me hundreds of times since then. When I take steps towards Peace and Balance, all that is needed is provided.