Archive for category: Consciousness/Thriving

Love: The Fourth Law of Spirit

“God is love.
This means that even
the greatest source of negativity is love.

Ultimately, you must come face-to-face with that
and recognize that whatever negativity presents itself
is still of the true nature of God,
which is love.”

— John Morton

As the previous articles in this Laws of Spirit series attest, this sequence of spiritual wisdom steps can be enormously useful in extricating ourselves from the challenges we face each and every day. It is practical spirituality at its best. In order to get to the loving, we have to first work our way through our “issues.” This means doing what is necessary to achieve acceptance, cooperation, and understanding about whatever person, situation, or circumstance we are grappling with. Then, we are simply left with the loving that joins us together as one.

Spiritual love is characterized by deep peace, freedom, and an absence of resistance or “againstness.” When we love in this way, we unite and embrace the other. When love is unconditional, there is no withholding of our self in any way, nor is there any judgment of our self or others. There is no hidden agenda of how we want the situation or person to change. We may not like the person or situation involved very much, but we recognize that there is more going on in life than our personal preferences.

This love that joins us together as one is different from romantic love. It is not about feeling all warm and fuzzy and affectionate about something or someone. It is not characterized by intense desire and attraction. Rather, it is a sense of connection to an underlying unity of all that exists. It is a choice to be kind and compassionate based on an awareness that on a non-physical level we are so unified that whatever I do will affect you. It is transcendence over a personal agenda to a desire for the highest good of all concerned. Spiritual love says, “I might be distressed by you or your behavior on a personality level, but I know that spiritually, we are all one and I wish us no harm.”

“You are in this world to learn to use the energy of creation wisely
in order to bring about completion.
An important key to remember
is that the energy of Spirit follows the thoughts you hold.
Wherever you direct this spiritual energy in the material world,
things are manifested.

There’s an old saying:
“What you fear comes upon you.”
It means you become a magnet for what you fear,
and you create for yourself the very thing you’re afraid of.
Is there a real source of fear? No.
Is there real fear? Yes.
It is inside of you,
and you are the creator of it.
You give birth to your own fear.

Under the energy of fear is the energy of pure Spirit,
which allows you to create whatever you want.
This is the unconditional loving of Spirit,
allowing you to do whatever you will
with your body, emotions, and mind.

— John-Roger

Loving is love in action. It is about what we create, promote, and allow — our contribution. We don’t need to live our lives engaging in big and little battles each day with other people trying to further our personal agenda while they seek to advance their own. Alternatively, we can know ourselves as powerful creators and meet the situations in our lives from an awareness of oneness and caring about the highest good of all concerned. What would this look like? Consider the last time you and your spouse or a friend had a serious disagreement about something. Did you become curious about how and why they arrived at their point of view or were you too busy trying to get them to see things from your perspective? Regardless of what they were doing, the question is what were you doing in the discord? Were you seeking to restore harmony between you through mutual understanding or were you building a case for how wrong and unacceptable they and/or their behavior were? No matter what the other person did or did not do, when practicing spiritual loving we hold ourselves accountable for how we respond to the situation. We hold the intention of not doing any harm to ourselves or others. We do not fuel the fire of discord, but seek to remain connected at a deeper level in spite of our respective flaws.

I can’t help but wonder what would happen to our divorce rate if spouses were held accountable for their vows to love, honor, and cherish each other in good times and bad. The laws of spirit provide excellent guidance in how to do so. The missing ingredient is practice, practice, practice. The true value of working with the laws of spirit is that you feel better about life and about yourself and you are far more likely to be kind and compassionate to others.

If you would like to know more about me and my work, please explore my website here.

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No Plans for the Holidays? How To Enjoy Them Anyway

It’s very easy to fall into a “poor me, nobody loves me, I’m going to go eat worms” state of mind when you don’t have any invitations for the holidays. Alternatively, you could choose to enjoy your holidays anyway. It’s all in how you see it and who you hold accountable for the situation. Here are some strategies that might help you sort your situation out and maybe, just maybe, have your best holiday season yet.

  1. Avoid the blame game: It is so easy and automatic for most people to look at being alone for the holidays as wrong, unacceptable, and a prescription for unhappiness, but it doesn’t need to be that way. Being alone — whether because of a family feud, no one thinking to invite you, or the death of a loved one with whom you would have shared the holiday — can be a blessing in disguise. So, be open to the possibility that this could be a good thing and nobody’s “fault.” Blaming yourself or others for being alone only makes matters worse and wastes a lot of your precious energy in negative thoughts and feelings. So save the energy you would otherwise have expended on blaming and judging yourself and others and put it to better use. This may be an entirely new experience for you, but that doesn’t mean it has to be unpleasant.
  2. Accept the situation as it is: You don’t have to like the idea of being alone, but accepting it frees you to take action that can lead to a happy holiday. Acceptance might not come easily, but make it a goal to move past any hurt feelings or sadness you have about being alone with the intention of accepting what is so. (For more information and understanding about the power of acceptance, see my post “Acceptance: The First Law of Spirit.”)
  3. If you are grieving a profound loss, be patient and tender with yourself: If you are grieving over the holidays, it may be that taking advantage of the time and emotional space to be with your grief without a pep squad of well-intentioned people trying to make you feel better could be just what you need. My first four Christmases after my mother’s death, I was at very loose ends. My Christmases were full of traditions and expressions of caring that we shared. I always extravagantly decorated the house and tree, baked too many cookies, and overdid it with presents and fabulous wrappings. Without her, all those activities seemed meaningless to me. The fifth year, I was finally ready to turn to myself rather than to others to define what kind of Christmas would make me happy. I invited friends to help decorate my tree, bought and wrapped presents for myself, had my favorite Christmas morning breakfast, giggled as I opened my presents, and cooked myself an entire turkey dinner. I had so much fun I’m going to do most of that again this year.
  4. Decide to create a happy holiday for yourself: Granted, “happy” is a relative term. For some it might simply mean not feeling like an outsider at someone else’s version of the holidays, while others will want to reach out and find new people who would like to share the festivities. Think of it as “my holiday, my way.” If what you have done in the past is not an option, then do some soul-searching and consider what would be most meaningful to you. For some, giving to others serves as a reminder of our interconnectivity and the importance of looking beyond our own situation. Offering acts of service to others who are less fortunate always benefits the giver as well as the recipient.
  5. Count your blessings: Here is a starter list of some of the good news about spending a holiday alone. Please feel free to share your additional ideas in the comment section at the end of this article to inspire others with new ideas.
    • A free day or weekend that you weren’t expecting to have. You can sleep late, be lazy if you wish, clean out a closet, go to the movies, read a great book, or just follow the path of serendipity.
    • Spending less money on gifts and special outfits for the occasion
    • Having more control over how much you eat and drink
    • The opportunity to create your very own holiday feast with your favorites, not someone else’s — and you get to keep all the leftovers
    • The opportunity to create your own holiday gathering, to take a trip, or to get to know yourself a little better

Regardless of what activities you engage in over the holidays, be sure to take the time to
connect in your heart to the spirit of the holidays. For example, on Thanksgiving, whether with a crowd or by yourself, dive into the wellspring of gratitude for all you do have in your life and allow yourself to sense the oneness with others who will be acknowledging their blessings as well. My wish for you is that you treasure yourself and take the very best care of yourself possible… and have some fun!

If you would like to know more about me and my work, please explore my website here.

Also, if you know anyone who might get value from this article please email or retweet it or share it on Facebook.

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Do You Need to Lighten Up Your Life?

Choose to take the Light road, the Light option,
to relate to whatever is going on in a Light way so
you can enjoy yourself and have fun while you go
through it.

You can laugh or you can cry.
You can enjoy yourself or you can suffer.

Happiness is always your choice.

— John Morton

Lightening up your life is about choosing to transform your trials and tribulations into revelations and intentionally engaging in the journey of uplifting your consciousness. Light is not only one of my favorite topics but something we all need to understand better if we want to sit in the driver’s seat of our own lives.

On the physical level of our existence, light exists as a reflection. What we see is the electromagnetic radiation of wavelengths. This illumination or giving off of light is what allows us to see one another and the world around us. In order to be seen or to see in the physical world, we move out of darkness into light.

In the non-physical or spiritual realms, light is a state of being or awareness. Some speak of the “I am” presence — the awareness of one’s true self or identity being spiritual in nature rather than the physical identification of one’s self as a body with a personality. Physically, you reflect light. Spiritually, you are light. Put the two together and you become quite magnificent!

There is a bridge between the light of the physical and spiritual worlds. This bridge is your consciousness — what you think, what you believe, where you focus your attention or awareness and thereupon take action. Unless and until you decide to shed light on this process, your default settings carry on diligently — most often without your awareness. Aristotle uses the metaphor of light to exemplify how an active intellect works — the one who makes choices, takes actions (both physical and non-physical), the one who turns on the light, so to speak.

I had a dream once where my mother and I were in a huge domed room filled with windows of all shapes and sizes — each with its own customized window shade. Some of the shades were fully drawn while others were partially or completely rolled up exposing the light. My mother asked, “What should we do?” to which I replied, “Open as many as we can to get as much light shining in here as possible.”

Years later, life has taught me that each of us has a different tolerance and desire for light — both physically and spiritually. I don’t say that as a judgment, but rather as an observation of our individualized path of personal evolution. Notice how much light you are willing to shed on your life’s journey.

Some people are so busy reciting their woes and experiencing themselves as victims of the circumstances and people in their lives that it never occurs to them that they have the power to change how they perceive their situation. This is another classic example of “Is your cup half empty or half full?” Are you so busy keeping track of every disappointment or irritation in your life that you are missing the opportunity of being grateful for what is going well at the same time? If you are one who sees the potential for more light in your life, consider some of the following wisdom and techniques for gaining more altitude so you can see more clearly what is really going on.

Next time you are in a foul mood, try this simple technique:

  1. Notice that the irritation is alive inside of you.
  2. Choose to believe that you have the power to lighten your load by looking at your situation differently.
  3. Imagine that you are climbing into a hot air balloon and rising above yourself and your situation.
  4. Keep shifting your focus away from your initial point of view and practice noticing the circumstances and experiences of others involved in the situation with you or those of others who are less fortunate.
  5. Keep doing this until you can conjure up some compassion, acceptance or understanding for others or find yourself shifting your focus to what you have to be grateful for in your life.

If that doesn’t improve how you feel, try asking yourself the following questions:

  • What could I do differently so I wouldn’t be so upset?
  • How else might I look at this situation?
  • How much of my discomfort is due to my habitual way of reacting to things I don’t like?

Each of us chooses the quality of our lives through the choices me make and those we avoid. If your life isn’t bringing you happiness, satisfaction, learning and growth then maybe it’s time to take a better look at how you are creating, promoting and allowing what is present in your life. Shine some light on your repetitive thoughts and feelings and you are sure to find some clues of what you could be doing differently to yield better results.

If you would like to know more about me and my work, please explore my website here.

Also, if you know anyone who might get value from this article please email or retweet it or share it on Facebook.

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How Well Do You Face the Trials and Tribulations of Your Life?

Have you noticed that it isn’t so much what happens to you that determines the quality of your life, but rather how well you deal with your life? It’s about what goes on inside of you that matters far more than how you measure up to some external measurement of success. I’ll take inner success any day.

We all have challenges to face — some we will see coming and others will arrive out of left field. It seems odd that we are all left to our own devices to figure out how to cope with our trials and tribulations. Why aren’t we taught some basic life wisdom and coping skills early on to better equip us for our life’s journey?

With 20/20 hindsight, here are five wisdom tidbits and coping skills that have served me best in facing the more challenging parts of my life.

  1. Always look for the embedded life lesson. The question I ask myself here is “what is life trying to teach me?” Have you ever found yourself complaining about your life, claiming that you always … or you never …? These types of beliefs become self-fulfilling prophecies because our beliefs are a filter through which we encounter our lives.Think of it this way — something happens that you don’t like. You process that new experience through your existing beliefs, attitudes, and memories. That in turn generates the same old autopilot thoughts and feelings that you have always had to experiences like this. Then, your behavioral response is a fait accompli reflecting this point of view. It has become your way of experiencing your life. That’s how it works, but how’s that working for you?Remember Anthony Robbins’ quote, “If you do what you have always done, you will get what you have always gotten”? To get out of this endless loop, consider the possibility that all of your life experiences carry wisdom that is just waiting politely for you to invite it into your consciousness. So, do that. Probe deeper into your beliefs, attitudes, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Look for patterns of how you create, promote, and allow your own suffering. Look for alternative responses. When you are open to receive life’s lessons, they don’t have to keep presenting themselves to you again and again.
  2. Trust that what happens is for your highest good. Have you ever lost your job or had a loved one die unexpectedly? Did you think your world had come to an end or were you able to see beyond your fear and grief to where the blessings might be? Having shared a home with my mother for the last nine years of her life, I put much of my life on the shelf to have quality time together and to serve as her caregiver. My loss of income and social isolation were more than made up for by the precious moments and deepened love we shared. I learned things about myself and about life that I can’t imagine having encountered on my previous life trajectory. Catching a curve ball in life can open up new doors that you didn’t have any way of knowing existed. Sometimes, they are the access point to some of life’s most precious treasures.
  3. Focus first on embracing the undesirable truth. Whether receiving a terminal diagnosis, watching your marriage fall apart, or not getting accepted at your first choice college or the job of your dreams — look it straight in the eye and accept it. It’s so easy to fall into immediate reactions of blaming and judging others, getting down on yourself, or simply being in shock or disbelief. I remember when I hit black ice going 60 MPH and totaled my car. Having gone backwards down a hill and having the rear end of the car sliced in half by the tree that finally stopped it, I remember my first thought was, “I’m alive.”It’s good to start with the fundamental facts and go from there with as little drama as possible. Just breathe into the present moment to bring your consciousness present to assess reality. When we start extrapolating with high drama mental and emotional scenarios, we are rocketing off into our imagination rather than being present to deal with reality. Be present in your reality, no matter how scary it is. You might just be amazed at your quick thinking, resilience, and fortitude once you accept the undesirable truth and get busy doing your best to deal with it.
  4. Take care of yourself and do your best. Some of my biggest life challenges have come in the context of people who wished me ill, didn’t like me, or simply held beliefs dramatically different than my own. I have found that when I get into to trouble in these situations it is because I am focusing on trying to change the other person’s point of view or behavior towards me. When I really succeed in dealing with these situations it is because I focus on taking care of myself and loving myself through the situation rather than trying to defend myself or my point of view in an effort to change the other person. It’s taken a number of these unpleasant experiences for me to learn to let other people live their lives their way while I focus on doing my best to love, nurture, and protect myself. Opinions are like noses — everyone has one.
  5. Find good help when you need it. As a life coach, I don’t view my clients as sick or broken for needing my help. I see them as the smart ones who know the value of good resources. After all, how can you be expected to know something until you learn it? Life presents learning opportunities to us all the time and sometimes we need a plumber or doctor or marriage counselor or Hospice care. If we are smart, we seek and embrace good help.

If you would like to know more about me and my work, please explore my website here.

Also, if you know anyone who might get value from this article please email or retweet it or share it on Facebook.

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The Importance of Awakening Your Inner Spiritual Authority

I was raised Catholic by a Catholic mother and a Lutheran father and lived in a community where I had a lot of Jewish friends. That was my world view as far as religion was concerned: Catholic, Protestant and Jewish until my mother gave me a book one Christmas — about the world’s great religions — that opened my mind up to a world beyond my immediate circumstances.

I was taught that one of the motivations for being “good” was that when you died, you would go either to Heaven, Hell or Purgatory. Those who went to Heaven would be with God, those in Hell spend eternity with the Devil and the in-between cases, who needed some more purification before going to Heaven, would go to Purgatory. My mind as a child accepted the logic of that as abstract as it was.

It was Limbo that bothered me because those who were not baptized in a Christian faith were considered to have not had the stain of original sin removed from their souls and would therefore spend eternity in Limbo with no chance of ascending to Heaven. I remember being deeply bothered by this because it meant that none of my Jewish friends or their families could ever, ever be with God. That made me very sad, and while I never told them so, I felt very sorry for them. I imagined Limbo to be somewhere up in the clouds and filled with hammocks that inhabitants occupied for eternity — which certainly seemed better than Hell, but hopeless.

This was the only teaching I ever had on the subject of what happens to us when we die until my 30s when Buddhist teachings about life and death started showing up in bookstores. Instinctively, I resonated with the concept of reincarnation and our essential identity as souls. I began to develop an eclectic spirituality as I awakened a sense of the truth that lived within me. In the process, I stopped practicing Catholicism and found a different path of spiritual nurturance.

I confess to being outraged when I read a tiny news item in 2007 claiming that the Roman Catholic Church eliminated the concept of Limbo because it “reflected an unduly restrictive view of salvation.” What? What about all those souls hanging out in hammocks for all these centuries? What happened to them? Was there a relocation program? Or were they never there in the first place? How do you erase a concept that you have preached as truth to millions of people without so much as an apology for messing with our worldview all these years? Why was this taught in the first place? What other parts of the Catholic Church’s interpretive doctrine or that of other religious organizations should people be careful about blindly accepting? It’s not as with science where a newly discovered fact negates a previous theory about the world we live in.

For me, this raises a critically important issue for all believers of all religious and spiritual traditions. On the one hand, I think that leaders of any religious/spiritual tradition should hold themselves accountable for clearly distinguishing between fact and leaps of faith. There should be a warning label or blanket disclaimer that simply states, “this is what we believe to be true.” I think personal discernment should be encouraged rather than shunned as indicating a lack of faith. On the other hand, I believe that ultimately each of us must wrestle with our own inner awakening of what we believe to be truth — not because someone else told us so, but because we have taken it upon ourselves to find and embrace a deeper sense of meaning regarding matters of God and the meaning of life and death. It’s easy to unconsciously and blindly follow teachings presented by others — especially when we are children and our parents — our Gods — tell us what is true. But eventually, it is our personal responsibility to take over authority for what we choose to follow as truth. In the realms of religion and spirituality, many of us are innocent babes in the wood. We deserve to be guided with the utmost care.

If you would like to know more about me and my work, please explore my website here.

Also, if you know anyone who might get value from this article please email or retweet it or share it on Facebook.

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Do You Know How Powerful Your Thoughts Are?

In the theater of one’s mind is a multi-dimensional consciousness in which our thoughts point our attention in a particular direction. Neuroscientists have discovered that repetitive thoughts form neural pathways as neurons that fire together get wired together. Thus, the more a particular thought or belief is activated and reinforced, the stronger these neural pathways become and the more automatically they become our “go to” pattern of perceiving. Ever feel like you were in a rut or maybe a little insane for doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results? Maybe there is something to be said for it being “all in your mind” — or at least to some significant degree. The power of human thought is also worth considering in terms of the ongoing influence that society and family beliefs have in molding our point of view as individuals — for better and for worse.

Here’s some good news about this. Neuroscientists use the term “neuroplasticity” to refer to the fact that our brains have the ability to change our synaptic wiring, which is reflected in our point of view. Thus, we have the opportunity to intentionally change our thinking by forming new neural pathways that in turn will change our experiences. Indeed, we have the opportunity to be powerful creators of our own consciousness or to be passive heirs to the autopilot programming of our own history and external authorities.

When we are operating unconsciously on autopilot, we are selectively perceiving our experiences by interpreting them in a way that is in alignment with our existing beliefs, fears, hopes, and dreams. Quite literally, it’s almost impossible for a different point of view to get through to us when we are on autopilot.

Our expressions and behaviors are quite literally self-fulfilling prophesies of our mindset. Over time, when we are running on autopilot, new experiences simply serve to validate our existing way of being in the world — our autopilot responses to future experiences. Thus, when we are not consciously encountering our lives, our experiences simply validate and reinforce our existing beliefs and fail to inform us of new possibilities.

When our perceptions of ourselves, others, and the world we live in are based on little or no conscious awareness and intention to create greater health and well-being, our lives are defined by the autopilot recycling of our attitudes, judgments, illusions, delusions, memories and memory patterns, thoughts, feelings, fears, hopes, and dreams. We exist in a veiled state unable to see what is right in front of us.

Autopilot is not all bad. For example, when we establish healthy habits like eating right, exercising, getting enough sleep, and having a healthy sense of self, we can put them on autopilot and not think about them unless and until we have the need to change them. However, autopilot can get us in trouble if we have negative patterns of thoughts or emotions running us and we aren’t even aware of it. The degree to which we allow our negativity to run on autopilot (without conscious awareness) is the degree to which we are powerless over it.

In contrast to autopilot, when we create through conscious intention, we bring our awareness fresh and new to each present moment and allow our beliefs, fears, hopes, and dreams to change based on new input. This updating process allows new and different thoughts and feelings to emerge, which in turn can result in new behaviors and ways of being and experiencing our lives. We have the ability to consciously direct our thoughts and feelings through the power of intention, thus taking a far more active role in creating, promoting, and allowing more of what we want in our lives. The state of our consciousness forms the bedrock upon which the dramas of our lives unfold. Within the privacy of our own consciousness — in the theater of our mind — we create our own sense of reality, which we inhabit as our role in the great drama of life. It is a complex structure, like a skeletal system for our consciousness.

An old Chinese proverb captures the power of our thinking in shaping our lives:

Sow a thought and reap an act;
Sow an act and reap a habit;
Sow a habit and reap a character;
Sow a character and reap a destiny.

This is true for us as individuals as well as for groups and societies at large. Thoughts persisted in become taken for granted and are often misidentified as the truth because of their familiarity. They become the building blocks and assumptions that serve as the foundation for a point of view that, unchallenged, will invisibly run on autopilot and shape our future thinking.

To step into the process of creating our lives through conscious intention, unencumbered by all of this is to simply be — free and authentic, with a sense of personal accountability and responsibility for our own creations. When our consciousness is present in the moment, we live in our authenticity, encountering and integrating our new experiences, open to change and alteration as appropriate. There becomes a fluidity and aliveness to our experiences rather than a rote repetition of the past. Even our deepest, most treasured beliefs no longer define who we are. We let go of our story, as we awaken to the magnificence of living more consciously in each moment. However, the price of admission is to let go of the need to be “right” in a fixed point of view and to move fluidly through life, open to change and evolving one’s point of view.

If you would like to know more about me and my work, please explore my website here.

Also, if you know anyone who might get value from this article please email or retweet it or share it on Facebook.

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