Forgiveness

When we are unable to experience the world in our own authentic way as children, conflict arises. This conflict results in a non-physical wound and becomes a part of us. A wound can become a strength or a weakness.
Developing our strengths as well as our weaknesses is part of our greater purpose. To find your wounds, look to your deepest and most persistent frustrations and ask yourself honestly what you have done with each of them. For example, does it annoy you when people are late? How do you feel and react? Does it remind of a conflict that arose during childhood? Have your frustrations become your greatest strength or your greatest weakness?
Each feeling, thought, and action holds a particular vibration. To Forgive is to let go of the past to live in the present. To begin the path of forgiveness is to raise your vibration and must start with yourself and then those who have unconsciously wounded you. Confront your past with honesty, openness and willingness to forgive, and grow from the experience.
The next step is change. If you often put off low vibrations such as hate, judgement, fear, shame, guilt and control you can change by simply switching to higher vibrations such as divine connectedness, joy, love, acceptance, truth, compassion and forgiveness. The universal law of attraction states that what goes around comes around or like attracts like. Happy Holidays and may your path be filled with love, light and lots of forgiveness!

Gratitude & Abundance Go Hand In Hand

There have been many periods in my life where the flow of gratitude feels kinked. A gentle reminder of how good it feels to be grateful along with the embarrassment of all the moments I was not usually snaps me back into place. Easy enough when life is good but it takes a lot more courage & strength to remain grateful when life gives you lemons.
I have just returned from the land of manifestation, beauty and abundance...the land of Esalen located in Big Sur, CA. There I spent 28 surrounded by jagged cliffs met by majestic redwoods on sacred Indian grounds. Esalen is the meeting point of three waters: sulfur hot springs, fresh mountain creeks and the cold Northern Pacific ocean water. Everywhere I looked, I was reminded of why it is so awesome to be alive! Being surrounded by all this beauty was the perfect foreground for cultivating an attitude of gratitude.
Upon arriving back home in Southern California, I was able to let out a delicious mmmmmmm...when driving up my street in Rancho Santa Margarita finding the purple Saddleback mountains, multi-colored maple leaves, warm but ever-so present Santa Ana winds and the flock of Canada geese talking up a storm across the street from my house. I reflected back to all those moments of beauty that I had missed and not been grateful for in the past few years. How embarrassing! I invite you to live in gratitude and enjoy the abundance all around you. Make a commitment to yourself to find the drop of nectar in each moment of your life and you will be surprised how appreciation is almost always met with abundance.

Compassion

Compassion is what makes us human and as we become more & more compassionate towards all living things and the relationship between all living things, we also become more evolved. A planet, an ecosystem, a species can become physically evolved but it would be ignorant to ignore that we don’t evolve on a spiritual & conscious level. What you do, think, feel, say and make habit holds power and a certain energy or vibration. Like a trail that get frequently used, our easiest path through life can lead towards things that serve us or that don’t. So how do you decide which way to go? You take the path of compassion in action. Practice compassion towards yourself and all life because you see God in all of life. Forgive and forget to those who show true remorse because holding your past is a heavy burden. Sympathize with the pain and suffering by doing what you can, but don’t let the burden be heavy, use it to inspire to make good on your actions and words instead of discourage you. Be a warrior for peace!

Inward Beauty

"It is simplicity born of abandonment with austerity that brings about the state of creative beauty. You can be creative only when there is abandonment-which means, really, when there is no sense of compulsion, no fear of not being, of not gaining, of not arriving. Then there is austerity, simplicity, and with it there is love. The whole of that is beauty, the state of creativeness." - J. Krishnamurti

A longing for truth

Truth is something that we all search for in one way or another. Some of us find it through religion, spirituality or experience, but all the many paths lead to one truth. The ultimate truth is our relationship in relation to God/Spirit. Kabir, a great Sufi poet, refers to God as the Guest inside you and says; “When the Guest is being searched for, it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that does all the work.” So this longing for truth is everything we need to find it. J. Krishnamurti says; “to truly find out what is truth there must be great love and a deep awareness of man’s relationship to all things - which means that one is not concerned with one’s own progress and achievements.”
The four noble truths, the first teachings of Siddhartha Buddha, deal with suffering. The first noble truth is that suffering is part of being human and the second is that we suffer when we resist change. The third is that suffering ends when you let go of resistance and the fourth is that we can use everything we do, from the moment we are born to our last breath, as a tool to realize our oneness with all living things.
A mantra is a verse, hymn, chant or phrase that holds a special meaning and can elevate ones level of consciousness. SAT NAM (Saht - Nahm) is one of the most widely used mantras for calling upon truth and awakening the soul. As an exercise, sit in a comfortable position with your spine tall and shoulders melted down your back. Breath deeply and consciously repeating this mantra and focus on its meaning for about 10-15 minutes.

Intuitive Force

I was in a class the last night & had to write about my experience because it was very special & unique to me. It was a really great class that seemed to be focused on truth & connecting with intuition as the voice of God interpreted by you. The very last thing we did was connect our index fingers together. The right hand was facing palm out and the left palm in. We were instructed to raise the connected index fingers right in front of our third eye, close our eyes about 95% and see our fingers with our third eye. The breath was two strokes in with the mouth and two out with the nose. We did this for what seemed like 10 minutes but was more accurately 3-4 minutes. After awhile I began to feel a bit dizzy, but kept at it. I then began to feel my whole body. I am talking my whole body all at once. The instructor kept talking and I felt as if God was speaking through him, saying exactly what I needed to hear in each moment. I kept going, I then began to feel every pain but not in a bad way, in a way that made me feel more alive than ever. It was a reminder that I was human and at the same time a reminder that I was more than my body. I felt my shoulder injury, that the middle of my spine was out of alignment, that my left middle rib was suffering from this subluxation, that my right hip flexor was aching, that the front of my left hip was tight due to my sacrum being also out of alignment, I felt my knees aching & the pads of my feet get really hot. At the same time that I felt all of this I knew that I had the capacity to heal myself & I was able to call upon all of my bodily aches and pains all at once and intend healing for myself. It was like I was giving myself permission to let go of the pain and knew that it was my choice to hold on to it for whatever reason. After class I felt completely blissed out, at peace and more powerful than ever. Boy! What an amazing experience.

The Bhakti Path

There are four major types of yoga: Jnana Yoga (yoga of knowledge), Karma Yoga (yoga of action or service), Raja Yoga (yoga of meditation, which is where you will find the asana/pranayama practice) and then lastly Bhakti Yoga (yoga of love or devotion). Bhakti is not the lustful or sexual type that we think of when we think of some of the ways that Tantra Yoga has historically gone. The Bhakti path encompasses an honest introspection toward connection to universal spirit that lies within all of us. This path winds spontaneously in the direction of our karma (our easiest flow). It begins with, is propelled by and ends with love. What is love? "To love is to not ask anything in return, not even to feel that you are giving something. This is the only way to freedom" - J. Krishnamurti.”