Pain and suffering are not synonyms. Suffering is optional.
PAIN IS NOT OPTIONAL.
Pain is a part of life. It may be physical, mental, emotional or spiritual, or any combination. But no matter how we describe it, the bottom line is that there is no avoiding it. Pain comes with the territory.
SUFFERING, on the other hand, is entirely and only a choice. It is a choice to dwell on your complaints, focus on what makes you miserable, and thereby increase your own pain.
But if pain is unavoidable, how can we tell the difference between pain that we are experiencing in the present and suffering that we are experiencing by keeping the past alive and/or projecting past or present pain into the future?
Where is the line between feeling and processing pain, rather than stuffing it away or hiding from it... and then suffering from it?
How do you allow yourself to greive in a healthy way?
Pain becomes suffering when we resist it, make generalizations about it, and attempt to avoid it. You have to experience pain and allow it to come and go in your life.
It is very helpful to notice your mind thinking about pain. The mind wants to figure out why it is happening and how to avoid it happening again in a similar way. The mind also generates positions, opinions, judgments, grievances, grudges, complaints, and strategies of avoidance, defense, manipulation, entitlement, and outlook in response to pain. None of these really helps us deal with pain and release it. Releasing pain is the key to reducing your suffering.
To release pain, you have to forgive, both yourself and others. In addition, you must practice acceptance as well as accountability for what has occurred and your part in it. Then and only then, can you release it. No regrets, no blame, no bitterness. It simply passes.
Pain is not negative but it is unpleasant. It is designed to create avoidance behaviors. “Once burned, twice smart,” the saying goes. But try as we might, and we do try mightily, there is no way to avoid pain.
The good news is that your own pain will not kill you. The bad news is that trying not to feel it will. Avoidance of pain leads to all sorts of problems, up to and including addiction and suicide. But if you have to experience pain, at least do not prolong it by adding a bunch of judgments and such. The pain is bad enough in and of itself. There is no need or purpose served by also suffering. Since all of the suffering is produced in your mind, it’s important to learn how to watch your mind at work. Then when you notice it creating suffering, you can choose to release it instead.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Sunday, September 27, 2009
What Is Healing Anyway?
WHAT IS HEALING?
Healing is restoring and/or repairing ourselves in response to an injury or illness.
The injury or illness may be physical, mental, emotional or spiritual. Generally an injury or illness in one area is reflected in the other areas. And an injury or illness may be multi-dimensional to begin with. Addiction comes to mind immediately. It destroys the person physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, if not all at once, then certainly in a cumulative manner.
Physical injury/illness is characterized by a visible disruption of function in the body, with or without pain. With the exception of fatal injury, and short of regenerating lost body parts, the human body is always healing itself.
Mental illness is observable as an inability to process information in a meaningful, productive or coherent manner, and/or bizarre ideations, dysfunctional communications, all sorts of self-destructiveness, violence, etc.
Emotional illness/injury generally consists of suffering that doesn't have an obvious physical root or cause, and includes all sorts of mental anguish, heartache, remorse, fear, loss and mourning, etc.
Spiritual illness or injury takes the form of lack or loss of hope, purpose, connectedness, meaning and joy. It also generally has an appearance of lack of animation.
Clearly, these categories are arbitrary and they overlap a great deal. Personally, I get the blues when I'm sick. Not only does my body feel bad, but I also become mentally lazy, emotionally self-pitying, impatient and joyless. I tend to communicate less, and when I do communicate it is mainly to complain.
HOW DOES IT HAPPEN?
Healing is something our bodies do automatically, without our conscious volition.
We all see this. We can do things to support our body's healing processes, or we can impede these processes, but our bodies will keep trying to heal in spite of us. This ability to self-repair and renew is less apparent emotionally, mentally and spiritually, but it does occur.
We are all familiar with the expression "time heals" with respect to emotional wounds. Like the body's scars, emotional injuries leave their mark, but the intensity of emotional pain generally diminishes over time.
Mental illness is more perplexing. If you have a mental illness and you are prescribed drugs to treat it, I strongly suggest you take your medication. But we all know that periodically most people with a mental illness will stop taking their meds, just to see if they still need them. I know of people who have healed from mental illnesses.
Spiritual illness seems to involve beliefs about mortality and the meaning of life. Connecting with the higher self, or soul dimension goes a long way toward healing an ailing spirit. Conversion is a form of spiritual healing. But it isn't necessary to believe in a "God" or a higher power to be spiritually healthy. I include 12 step recovery programs in this category. AA/NA are programs of spiritual healing.
Connecting with your higher self or soul self is spiritually healing. Meditation is very good for connecting with ones own higher self. A simple beginning can be made by observing the mind. Make friends with the observer, because that is your higher self. So far as I can ascertain, the higher self doesn't get the blues. It can be a wonderful refuge in difficult times.
It is very helpful spiritually to believe that you have an immortal soul. This takes some of the sting out of the inevitability of physical decline and death.
Taking responsibility for oneself also helps with any spiritual recovery. This includes recognizing your own power as managing director of your life. Claiming values and goals connects you with your creative dimension. Creativity is spiritually healthy. If you don't currently have a reason to live, create one and your life will begin to work in ways you never imagined possible.
Life is short and confusing. Only you can make your life matter (to yourself). Waiting around for anyone else to give you the "answer" to the "meaning of life" is futile and wastes precious time you could be spending enjoying yourself. Create your own meaning.
HEALING HAPPENS
There are a lot of differing perspectives on what healing is and when and why it happens.
But one thing is for sure. Healing does happen. It happens when we try and it happens when we don't try. And sometimes it doesn't happen, no matter how hard we try. We've all heard about spontaneous healing, faith healing, the "placebo effect," the garlic cure, and the list goes on. There is no shortage of "miracle" cures.
Some people will tell you that the ability to heal our bodies is unlimited. I've heard it said that if you want to live forever, contract a serious illness and take care of yourself.
On the other hand, most of us have lost someone to an illness or injury from which their bodies did not heal.
There is this notion that if we just had the right "juju," we would heal ourselves and live forever. And somebody always says that we create our own illnesses and injuries because we need to suffer, or because of our karma from a past life, or because it is teaching us a lesson.
Personally, I think when you incarnate on a rock that is spinning around a ball of fire, you have to expect a certain amount of damage. Things bang around, things break, things get old and wear out. It goes with the territory. Even in a world without war, we would still need hospitals.
And what if you heal on one dimension, but not on another? A friend of mine who has cancer recently said that while he may not survive, he will most assuredly heal. I think what he means is that his body may not survive, but his spirit is doing quite well, maybe even better all the time.
REIKI AND ENERGY HEALING
I'm a Reiki Master and an ordained Spiritual Healer.
I became a Reiki Master initially because I wanted to heal myself. I was suffering. I have post-polio syndrome and it was kicking my butt. My life was more and more about exhaustion and pain, and there was just so much conventional medicine could do for me.
Reiki was a natural fit for me. All my life, I've had the ability to cure a headache or backache just by putting my hands there. And before I learned about Reiki, I would frequently remove the pain from someone else, but end up transferring it into my hands. Sometimes the pain I absorbed would hurt all the way up my arms. And it could take hours to dissipate.
Reiki taught me how to relieve another person's pain without taking it into my own body. Rather than absorbing the other person's energy, the Reiki practitioner channels what I call clean energy from the universe, through their body and their hands, into the other person's energy field.
I don't know why it works, but that clean energy transforms the other person's painful energy back into healthy energy. The energy is literally changed. I can feel the change in my hands.
Reiki focusses on the person's energy by promoting energy flow throughout the body's energetic system. Reiki literally means universal life force. We all have this life force within us. If we didn't have it, we would be dead.
When the energy is blocked, the body's natural ability to heal is impaired. At the very least, it is slowed way down. The challenge is to keep your energy moving freely, like a fresh mountain stream.
You've seen what happens when water gets backed up into a slough and stagnates. Whenever there is an illness or injury, your personal energy flow is blocked, either at the physical location of the injury or at the chakra, or energy center, associated with that type of disturbance. Heartbreak generally shows up in the heart chakra, while a problem with self-expression generally shows up in the throat. Hesitation shows up in the knees. So does arthritis.
When I find a lot of trapped and stagnant energy, or what I call dark energy, I use my hands to move it out of the person's energy field altogether, rather than trying to transform it. Once I've cleared most of it out, I then use Reiki to send clean energy into the area. The combination of removing the dark, blocked energy and adding clean energy seems to work pretty well.
SENDING ENERGY EVERYWHERE
I thoroughly enjoy giving hands-on Reiki treatments. But as a Reiki practitioner, I've also been trained to send energy remotely. Don't ask me how it works, but there is no distance in spirit. I'm able to connect with someone at a distance, sense their energy, and send them energy. I don't get the detailed specific information about the person that I do in a hands-on session, but I get a very strong sense of their overall energy. I can tell who is doing well and who is having a hard time. Sometimes, what I sense is their pain, or their anger and frustration. As I send energy remotely, I can feel the quality of the person's energy changing.
Healing is restoring and/or repairing ourselves in response to an injury or illness.
The injury or illness may be physical, mental, emotional or spiritual. Generally an injury or illness in one area is reflected in the other areas. And an injury or illness may be multi-dimensional to begin with. Addiction comes to mind immediately. It destroys the person physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, if not all at once, then certainly in a cumulative manner.
Physical injury/illness is characterized by a visible disruption of function in the body, with or without pain. With the exception of fatal injury, and short of regenerating lost body parts, the human body is always healing itself.
Mental illness is observable as an inability to process information in a meaningful, productive or coherent manner, and/or bizarre ideations, dysfunctional communications, all sorts of self-destructiveness, violence, etc.
Emotional illness/injury generally consists of suffering that doesn't have an obvious physical root or cause, and includes all sorts of mental anguish, heartache, remorse, fear, loss and mourning, etc.
Spiritual illness or injury takes the form of lack or loss of hope, purpose, connectedness, meaning and joy. It also generally has an appearance of lack of animation.
Clearly, these categories are arbitrary and they overlap a great deal. Personally, I get the blues when I'm sick. Not only does my body feel bad, but I also become mentally lazy, emotionally self-pitying, impatient and joyless. I tend to communicate less, and when I do communicate it is mainly to complain.
HOW DOES IT HAPPEN?
Healing is something our bodies do automatically, without our conscious volition.
We all see this. We can do things to support our body's healing processes, or we can impede these processes, but our bodies will keep trying to heal in spite of us. This ability to self-repair and renew is less apparent emotionally, mentally and spiritually, but it does occur.
We are all familiar with the expression "time heals" with respect to emotional wounds. Like the body's scars, emotional injuries leave their mark, but the intensity of emotional pain generally diminishes over time.
Mental illness is more perplexing. If you have a mental illness and you are prescribed drugs to treat it, I strongly suggest you take your medication. But we all know that periodically most people with a mental illness will stop taking their meds, just to see if they still need them. I know of people who have healed from mental illnesses.
Spiritual illness seems to involve beliefs about mortality and the meaning of life. Connecting with the higher self, or soul dimension goes a long way toward healing an ailing spirit. Conversion is a form of spiritual healing. But it isn't necessary to believe in a "God" or a higher power to be spiritually healthy. I include 12 step recovery programs in this category. AA/NA are programs of spiritual healing.
Connecting with your higher self or soul self is spiritually healing. Meditation is very good for connecting with ones own higher self. A simple beginning can be made by observing the mind. Make friends with the observer, because that is your higher self. So far as I can ascertain, the higher self doesn't get the blues. It can be a wonderful refuge in difficult times.
It is very helpful spiritually to believe that you have an immortal soul. This takes some of the sting out of the inevitability of physical decline and death.
Taking responsibility for oneself also helps with any spiritual recovery. This includes recognizing your own power as managing director of your life. Claiming values and goals connects you with your creative dimension. Creativity is spiritually healthy. If you don't currently have a reason to live, create one and your life will begin to work in ways you never imagined possible.
Life is short and confusing. Only you can make your life matter (to yourself). Waiting around for anyone else to give you the "answer" to the "meaning of life" is futile and wastes precious time you could be spending enjoying yourself. Create your own meaning.
HEALING HAPPENS
There are a lot of differing perspectives on what healing is and when and why it happens.
But one thing is for sure. Healing does happen. It happens when we try and it happens when we don't try. And sometimes it doesn't happen, no matter how hard we try. We've all heard about spontaneous healing, faith healing, the "placebo effect," the garlic cure, and the list goes on. There is no shortage of "miracle" cures.
Some people will tell you that the ability to heal our bodies is unlimited. I've heard it said that if you want to live forever, contract a serious illness and take care of yourself.
On the other hand, most of us have lost someone to an illness or injury from which their bodies did not heal.
There is this notion that if we just had the right "juju," we would heal ourselves and live forever. And somebody always says that we create our own illnesses and injuries because we need to suffer, or because of our karma from a past life, or because it is teaching us a lesson.
Personally, I think when you incarnate on a rock that is spinning around a ball of fire, you have to expect a certain amount of damage. Things bang around, things break, things get old and wear out. It goes with the territory. Even in a world without war, we would still need hospitals.
And what if you heal on one dimension, but not on another? A friend of mine who has cancer recently said that while he may not survive, he will most assuredly heal. I think what he means is that his body may not survive, but his spirit is doing quite well, maybe even better all the time.
REIKI AND ENERGY HEALING
I'm a Reiki Master and an ordained Spiritual Healer.
I became a Reiki Master initially because I wanted to heal myself. I was suffering. I have post-polio syndrome and it was kicking my butt. My life was more and more about exhaustion and pain, and there was just so much conventional medicine could do for me.
Reiki was a natural fit for me. All my life, I've had the ability to cure a headache or backache just by putting my hands there. And before I learned about Reiki, I would frequently remove the pain from someone else, but end up transferring it into my hands. Sometimes the pain I absorbed would hurt all the way up my arms. And it could take hours to dissipate.
Reiki taught me how to relieve another person's pain without taking it into my own body. Rather than absorbing the other person's energy, the Reiki practitioner channels what I call clean energy from the universe, through their body and their hands, into the other person's energy field.
I don't know why it works, but that clean energy transforms the other person's painful energy back into healthy energy. The energy is literally changed. I can feel the change in my hands.
Reiki focusses on the person's energy by promoting energy flow throughout the body's energetic system. Reiki literally means universal life force. We all have this life force within us. If we didn't have it, we would be dead.
When the energy is blocked, the body's natural ability to heal is impaired. At the very least, it is slowed way down. The challenge is to keep your energy moving freely, like a fresh mountain stream.
You've seen what happens when water gets backed up into a slough and stagnates. Whenever there is an illness or injury, your personal energy flow is blocked, either at the physical location of the injury or at the chakra, or energy center, associated with that type of disturbance. Heartbreak generally shows up in the heart chakra, while a problem with self-expression generally shows up in the throat. Hesitation shows up in the knees. So does arthritis.
When I find a lot of trapped and stagnant energy, or what I call dark energy, I use my hands to move it out of the person's energy field altogether, rather than trying to transform it. Once I've cleared most of it out, I then use Reiki to send clean energy into the area. The combination of removing the dark, blocked energy and adding clean energy seems to work pretty well.
SENDING ENERGY EVERYWHERE
I thoroughly enjoy giving hands-on Reiki treatments. But as a Reiki practitioner, I've also been trained to send energy remotely. Don't ask me how it works, but there is no distance in spirit. I'm able to connect with someone at a distance, sense their energy, and send them energy. I don't get the detailed specific information about the person that I do in a hands-on session, but I get a very strong sense of their overall energy. I can tell who is doing well and who is having a hard time. Sometimes, what I sense is their pain, or their anger and frustration. As I send energy remotely, I can feel the quality of the person's energy changing.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
My prayer
To David and Kate, Patricia and Mai, to Chloe and Carla, to Linda and Jonathan, to Shaun and PJ, to Maria and Sara, For Ruben and Lisa, and Cecil and Meghan; To Diane and Zephira, Nisroc and Caglar, to Gary and Dotty and Heidi and Kathleen, for Karen and Mary, to Michael and Alex and to Eric comes energy, clear and simple and full of love. Take it into your field, let it fill up your emptiness, soothe your fears, ease your mind and warm your heart. May it open you to your higher self, and invite higher guidance into your life at this time, when you so need it. And may you heal more fully, more quickly and more joyously into your journey, and know you are never alone.
Distance Healing
At night with my list in the quiet house where everyone else sleeps, I feel you. I feel your stress, your distress, your worry and your pain. Your energy is tight or ragged or weak; it jangles or rumbles of throbs. I stay with you no matter how angry you are feeling, no matter how unfair it seems to you, no matter how medicated and confused you are. I stay with you and send energy into your space. Sometimes it isn't easy to be with you, but almost always, if I just stay with you, it gets easier. Your energy settles down, you relax, you let go, stop fighting, start accepting. The tension eases and the energy starts to flow. And then I let you go.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Thursday, August 20, 2009
From Catherine
Stepping Stones on the Spiritual Path
by Lynn Claridge @ http://www.facebook.com/l/;mysticalempowerment.com
Here are nine steps to help you on your spiritual path.
Self control - Means not depending on sense experiences or the default influence of past habits, one can exert true free-will and experience the inherent happiness of the soul. Whereas the norm is to act based on what one is accustomed to doing, rather than following one’s true wishes. A spiritually committed person throws out bad habits that offer temporary pleasure before ultimately bringing suffering and chooses the lasting satisfaction of the spirit found through self-control.
Humility - Your spiritual path and your spiritual awakening is cultivated by the willingness to learn and show understanding, striving for the well-being of others and contributing to the environment by setting an admirable example without speaking of one’s greatness. Once one realizes that the self is something far beyond the body, and that the soul is a microcosm of the greater Spirit, one acts with the intention of being a vessel for this benevolent force to express itself. Rather than taking credit for good actions, it is possible to present successes as offerings to the divine aspect of the self, holding gratitude rather than pride for the attributes and achievements. When your thoughts become centered on the welfare of others, you have reached true manifests.
Selfless unconditional love - Love is the driving attractive force that gives life and purpose to existence. Spiritual Master Sri Yukteswar said that ordinary love is selfish and based on personal desires and gratification, while divine love is boundless, changeless, and unconditional. Spiritually brings harmony with nature and other people, loving equally all humanity and holding compassion indiscriminately regardless of creed, nationality, deed, or any other boundary. Love entails great freedom, but comes only when the mind is quiet and selfless. Only love, mercy and goodwill developing in each individual can bring peace and stability at both a personal and global scale.
Calmness and concentration - A spiritually developed person has formed great powers of concentration to accomplish their goals. If one compares the true self to the bottom of a lake, it is only visible when the ripples of thoughts have subsided and the water is tranquil. If the water is muddy or disturbed, the bottom cannot be seen. Events, memories, concerns, and desires all try to intrude ceaselessly throughout a person’s day. If your thoughts are strongly attach to your emotions, they are even more difficult to let go. Concentration and meditation techniques train the mind to prevent restless thoughts from clouding and obstructing the experience of one’s true spiritual path.
Non-attachment - Part of spiritual awakening is mental freedom from possessions. By practicing non-attachment, one can enjoy things and perform material duties with a sense of service rather than of personal gain. The ego wants to cling to objects, ideas, youth, and other aspects of worldly experience; by letting go of these things gracefully when they have served their time, inner peace becomes strengthened.
Intuition - Intuition is a resolute, unfailing source of wisdom and guidance to one who is receptive to its subtle advice. When one taps into this resource by surrender and daily meditation, one is able to hear and trust what the right course of action is to fulfill his or her best interests. Everyone has this quality and with increasing awakening and clarity, it becomes a fountain of growing insight and security.
Self-Knowledge - Those committed to a spiritual path constantly examines themselves in order to make progress and implement necessary changes. Spiritual teacher J. Krishnamurti asserts that without knowing who one really is, there is no starting point for right thought so there cannot be transformation. By being aware in each present moment of one’s thoughts, intentions, and desires, one can begin to chisel away unwanted personal qualities and give life to new traits that lead to triumph over oneself.
Happiness - Everyone strives to be happy. One becomes devoted to the spiritual path ultimately to find an unchanging peace and bliss that is elusive in material things.
Freedom - In the end, one is individually responsible for his or her own habits, mistakes, and resolutions. Once your greater self is found in the soul with devotion and faith, one attains freedom and life is truly beautiful. The Bhagavad Gita says, “Unattached to the sensory world, the yogi experiences the ever-new joy of being. His soul engaged in the union with Spirit, he attains indestructible bliss.
--------------------
by Lynn Claridge @ http://www.facebook.com/l/;mysticalempowerment.com
Here are nine steps to help you on your spiritual path.
Self control - Means not depending on sense experiences or the default influence of past habits, one can exert true free-will and experience the inherent happiness of the soul. Whereas the norm is to act based on what one is accustomed to doing, rather than following one’s true wishes. A spiritually committed person throws out bad habits that offer temporary pleasure before ultimately bringing suffering and chooses the lasting satisfaction of the spirit found through self-control.
Humility - Your spiritual path and your spiritual awakening is cultivated by the willingness to learn and show understanding, striving for the well-being of others and contributing to the environment by setting an admirable example without speaking of one’s greatness. Once one realizes that the self is something far beyond the body, and that the soul is a microcosm of the greater Spirit, one acts with the intention of being a vessel for this benevolent force to express itself. Rather than taking credit for good actions, it is possible to present successes as offerings to the divine aspect of the self, holding gratitude rather than pride for the attributes and achievements. When your thoughts become centered on the welfare of others, you have reached true manifests.
Selfless unconditional love - Love is the driving attractive force that gives life and purpose to existence. Spiritual Master Sri Yukteswar said that ordinary love is selfish and based on personal desires and gratification, while divine love is boundless, changeless, and unconditional. Spiritually brings harmony with nature and other people, loving equally all humanity and holding compassion indiscriminately regardless of creed, nationality, deed, or any other boundary. Love entails great freedom, but comes only when the mind is quiet and selfless. Only love, mercy and goodwill developing in each individual can bring peace and stability at both a personal and global scale.
Calmness and concentration - A spiritually developed person has formed great powers of concentration to accomplish their goals. If one compares the true self to the bottom of a lake, it is only visible when the ripples of thoughts have subsided and the water is tranquil. If the water is muddy or disturbed, the bottom cannot be seen. Events, memories, concerns, and desires all try to intrude ceaselessly throughout a person’s day. If your thoughts are strongly attach to your emotions, they are even more difficult to let go. Concentration and meditation techniques train the mind to prevent restless thoughts from clouding and obstructing the experience of one’s true spiritual path.
Non-attachment - Part of spiritual awakening is mental freedom from possessions. By practicing non-attachment, one can enjoy things and perform material duties with a sense of service rather than of personal gain. The ego wants to cling to objects, ideas, youth, and other aspects of worldly experience; by letting go of these things gracefully when they have served their time, inner peace becomes strengthened.
Intuition - Intuition is a resolute, unfailing source of wisdom and guidance to one who is receptive to its subtle advice. When one taps into this resource by surrender and daily meditation, one is able to hear and trust what the right course of action is to fulfill his or her best interests. Everyone has this quality and with increasing awakening and clarity, it becomes a fountain of growing insight and security.
Self-Knowledge - Those committed to a spiritual path constantly examines themselves in order to make progress and implement necessary changes. Spiritual teacher J. Krishnamurti asserts that without knowing who one really is, there is no starting point for right thought so there cannot be transformation. By being aware in each present moment of one’s thoughts, intentions, and desires, one can begin to chisel away unwanted personal qualities and give life to new traits that lead to triumph over oneself.
Happiness - Everyone strives to be happy. One becomes devoted to the spiritual path ultimately to find an unchanging peace and bliss that is elusive in material things.
Freedom - In the end, one is individually responsible for his or her own habits, mistakes, and resolutions. Once your greater self is found in the soul with devotion and faith, one attains freedom and life is truly beautiful. The Bhagavad Gita says, “Unattached to the sensory world, the yogi experiences the ever-new joy of being. His soul engaged in the union with Spirit, he attains indestructible bliss.
--------------------
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Daily Exercise
Bless your enemies.
Everyone who has ever done you harm.
Ignore the resistance that arises.
Do it anyway.
Do it now.
Practice.
You begin to realize that you have no enemies.
This is the state of mental health.
Everyone who has ever done you harm.
Ignore the resistance that arises.
Do it anyway.
Do it now.
Practice.
You begin to realize that you have no enemies.
This is the state of mental health.
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