Category Archives: Uncategorized

An Introduction To A Course In Miracles – With Advanced Understanding!

Posted on by
Reply

This week the  Mindshifters group watched the first half of the lecture by Dr. Michael Ryce titled An Introduction to A Course In Miracles with Advanced Understanding.  Some of the statements made during the lecture which caught my attention were: 

“The world of separateness is an optical delusion.”, and
  
“To experience the world we must begin to suspect that what we “know” is limited or false.”, and
“Our distorted perceptions produce a dense cover over actuality.”, and 
“By perception we have lost sight of the real world.”, and 
“You don’t have to seek for Love, but merely seek to find within yourself all the barriers you have built against it.”
The power of these statements shook me in ways I did not feel in the several previous times I have watched this lecture.  The idea that we try to relate to the world as though nothing exists unless we can perceive it, is ludicrous.  I say this because scientists tell us that we can only hear a small range of the auditory spectrum and we can only see a very limited range of the spectrum of energy we call light.   Yet those same scientists will argue that nothing is real unless they can measure it with their tools and technology.  This just does not make sense!
As I watched the lecture I kept thinking about how so much actually happens around me, and how I am only able to be consciously aware of a tiny fraction of what actually exists.  I am only able to be aware of a tiny fraction of all that exists around me because I am limited by what my senses can perceive, and I am limited because I choose to screen out many things that my senses are able to perceive!  I am limited by everything I believe because when I believe something, I am certain I know the answer.  Whenever I am certain I know that answer to something, I am not questioning it.  If I am not questioning something, I am not open to new information.  If I am not open to new information, I am screening it out.  If I am screening out new information I am not learning.  If I am not learning, I am not growing and I will simply get more of what I already have.
The tools we use in the Mindshifters group are designed to help us become aware of the unconscious beliefs we hold, which limit and distort our perception and keep us locked into repeating the same unproductive patterns which we and our ancestors have repeated for centuries.  These tools are made available for free at www.whyagain.com  Dr. Ryce has also launched a new website for people who use his tools and  do this work, to be able to connect with others who are working this process – www.iforgive.net
We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love.  Everything else is false.

The Emotional Freedom Technique – An Added Benefit!

Posted on by
Reply

The Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) – created by Gary Craig

http://www.emofree.com

 

 “It’s In Here!”

Some Thoughts About An Important Aspect of EFT

In America, for decades, we have been conditioned to think that other people are responsible for how we feel.  The literature, the television shows, the movies, all tell us stories about how one person offends another, hurts another, makes another angry, sad or frustrated.  Our song lyrics, even the “good ones” say things like, “You light up my life.”, and “You make me so very happy!”, and “You broke my heart when you walked away.”

There are many people who work in the field of psychology and philosophy who study the actual process of thoughts and their relationship to emotions, who have for many decades known that this is not the way the system works.  In reality each of us creates our individual, internal reality.  Each of us makes choices, on a regular basis, about what to focus on, and how we will interpret what we see, hear and feel. 

In actuality thoughts lead to feelings and feelings are the shadows of thought.  If you are to feel an emotion of sadness, you need to focus on thoughts that you interpret as sad, or thoughts about a time in the past when you experienced sadness.  If you wish to feel joy you need to think about things that have happened which you interpret as being good and joyful.  There is nothing inherent about the thing you think of, which makes it a joyful thought.  It is how you think about it and interpret it that makes it joyful for you. 

For example, when asked to let themselves feel joy, some people focus on the first time the held a baby kitten.  For others the thought of holding a baby kitten brings up thoughts of responsibility, expense, and cleaning the carpets and furniture which will be soiled by the kitten. 

One of my favorite quotes from the book The Mirror Theory by Betsy Otter-Thompson is; “The moment you think that someone else has to change for you to be happy, the key to happiness is lost.”.  This is just one of many wonderful quotes which highlight the actuality that, “I cause my own pain, joy, sadness, contentment, frustration, elation, anger, guilt, and shame and joy.”.  I do this by choosing to focus on something and then interpreting it in a way which leads to one of those emotions.  Dr. Michael Ryce writes “If I am in pain, I am in error!” and he has created self-help worksheets which step people through the process of identifying exactly which thoughts are connected to which emotions and how that is causing pain and discomfort in their lives. www.whyagain.com 

Each time I say to someone, “You make me so angry.”  I am choosing to focus on them and their behavior as the cause of my anger and discomfort.  In doing this I prevent my self from seeing the true cause of my anger, which is always inside of me.  It is my thoughts which cause my emotions, not the actions or reactions of anyone else.  Each time I tell someone that they have offended me, I block myself from seeing the actual process of how I have chosen to take offense and then feel offended by what they have said or done.

Gary Craig, in his EFT DVD’s, repeatedly talks about how the source of all the discomfort a person feels is “a disruption in the body’s energy system.”  He teaches people the process of The Emotional Freedom Technique, (EFT), to help them remove the disruption in their body’s energy system.  This is a powerful process which I describe as; “Giving yourself an acupressure treatment for any physical, mental, or emotional discomfort”.

I have discovered an added benefit of the EFT process.  When you are tapping or rubbing on the acupressure points on your body, and repeating an affirmation which pairs the  problem with acceptance, love and forgiveness of self, you are physically pointing to the source of your discomfort!  You are continually tapping on YOUR body. You are not tapping on the body of the person who did something you chose to get angry about.  You are tapping on your body, as if to say, “It’s In Here!”, “The source, and therefore the solution to my pain, Is In Here!”

I have found that adding, “It’s In Here!” to my affirmations has helped reinforce the knowledge that I am creating, and therefore can eliminate, most of my pain and discomfort, whether it is physical, mental or emotional.  I alternate using this affirmation in addition to, and instead of, the standard affirmation format recommended in the EFT manual.  When I focus on the anger I am feeling, about something someone said or did, I begin tapping and say The Setup Phrase, “Even though I am angry about what they said, I deeply and completely love, accept and forgive myself, and I know, “It’s In Here!”  Then my reminder phrase is something like, “This anger, that’s In Here”.

Remember that whenever you are using the Emotional Freedom Technique, you are physically pointing to the source of your pain and discomfort.  It may help to verbally remind yourself that, “It’s In Here!”

Thanks for reading, and Happy Tapping!

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love.  Everything else is false.

Healing Through Relationships Part II

Posted on by
2
I want to dedicate this entry to the wonderful people who give up their Tuesday nights to come to the Mindshifters group, and roll up their proverbial sleeves to work on the difficult, scary, and painful issues that most people run and hide from.  It is an honor to be able to work with you all!

Last night our Mindshifters group watched the second half of the Michael Ryce lecture titled: Healing Through Relationships.  Dr. Ryce talks about how he used to call the lecture: Healing Your Relationships,  but changed the title when he realized that relationships are not sick or broken.  He describes how the process of conflict in relationship is actually a vital process which brings our awareness to negative energy and emotions which we have hidden from ourselves, until such time as our partner in a relationship triggers that negative energy.  He focuses on how this is a blessing because we are not able to dismantle or heal that negative energy unless we become aware of it.

Dr. Ryce details the two things that are necessary for healing.  1) A negative, false reality must come into conscious awareness.  2) Conscious, active Love must be brought to awareness at the same time.  The presence of Love is the mechanism which transmutes all other energy, thereby healing the negative energy, negative emotion, and pain connected with the negative, false reality.  This is critical because it is the negative energy which we store in our bodies and energy systems which end up disintegrating our energy system and creating the physical pain, and illness which eventually leads to aging and death.
In light of this Dr. Ryce makes the statement that “A lack of communication is the  major cause of death”.  He explains that every time we refuse to acknowledge and dismantle a negative thought, emotion, or “reality”, we refuse to communicate about it and work it out.  When we do this we store the negative energy in our system and it stays hidden there until it begins to disintegrate our energy systems and eventually our physical bodies.
Another point in the lecture talks about “The Commitment”, which is the tool they have created for navigating through relationships, in both good times and bad.  The commitment is a tool which helps people interact from the space of Love in a relationship.  Before beginning to use the tool of The Commitment, it is important to decide to have a new purpose for being in a relationship.  For most people raised in this culture, the purpose for being in a relationship is usually two-fold, 1) Deciding who is in charge, 2) Determining how much stuff we can get.  
The suggested new purpose for being in a relationship is:
 “We want to heal!“
Summary:
1) We are creating our realities!
2) Any emotion we feel is  something that comes from inside of us, not from outside events or the actions of other people!
3) The fact that we did not feel this emotion until the other person “did what they did”,  means that this negative energy was hidden from us!
4) The fact that the energy was hidden from us means that it was hurting us without our knowledge and would eventually lead to further breakdown in our energy systems and physical bodies.
5) The fact that we are now upset means that we can see the negative energy/ false reality, and do something to correct it and heal from it.
6) The fact that someone “did what they did” that resulted in us getting upset, is a real blessing,  and the only way for us to heal those hidden and repressed parts of our energy system. 
7) The more we work to find and eliminate the negative energy, negative emotions, and painful realities we have hidden from ourselves, the more easily we can see that;
We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love.  Everything else is false.

Gregg Braden’s Idea of the Biggest Dogma

Posted on by
Reply

A few weeks ago the Mindshifters group watched the Mayan Calendar lecture by Ian Lungold in which Ian stated that the biggest unquestioned belief on this planet is the answer to the question,”What Day Is It?”.   In Gregg Braden’s book, The Spontaneous Healing of Belief, Mr. Braden proposes that there is another, even more insidious, unquestioned belief which may be the root cause of most human suffering.  That belief would be the answer to the question I will paraphrase as, “Is there such a thing as Good versus Evil, outside of the human mind?”

Gregg Braden provides reports on research and scientific theory which supports the idea that human mind energy, the power of our thoughts and beliefs,  may be the greatest force on the planet.  The power of the human mind to create realities for each  of us and to effect our physical bodies and our environment, is being understood more completely than ever before, in recent history.  So if it is true that human thought can effect the energy which makes up our bodies and  our world, and that we create the reality we experience, then it would be critically important to understand how that process works.  
One of the Bottom Line Observations I wrote about in an earlier post is, “The events that happen to me and around me in my life, are not nearly as important as how I interpret and respond to those events.”  So if I create my own internal reality and chose to believe that there are good and evil forces in the world battling for control and supremacy, then I will be convinced that I live in a “war zone”.  If I am convinced that I live in a “war zone” I will be constantly on guard and in a state of tension which will negatively effect my physical health and emotions.  If I buy into the idea that there are evil spirits, or a “devil” battling a “god” for possession of my soul, I am creating a reality of ultra high stakes danger and fear within which I then live.
What if everything in the world  I experience comes from the same source and is connected by energies I can’t yet see or understand?  What if there is no good or evil except as human interpretation makes it so?  What if everything that happens on the physical plane is just exchange of energy at different levels?  What if my job is to learn how to monitor, and how to raise the vibration of my energy to the level it originally came from?  What if my only real job in this world is to learn to stay in the higher vibrational energy that some have called God, and some have called Love.  What if I am creating all the stress, anger, and pain in my life by wanting things to be different than they are?
More and more sources are coming to light which point to the ancient knowledge that the world is all connected and from one source, and that the energy we “see”, and “feel”, and “hear” is the tiniest fraction of what truly exists.  
What if I am creating all the stress, anger, and pain in my life by wanting things to be different than they are?
What if my only real job in this world is to learn to stay in the higher vibrational energy that some have called God, and some have called Love. 
We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love.  Everything else is false.

Mindshifters Group 4-21-2009

Posted on by
Reply

This week’s group meeting began with discussing reactions to last week’s video and the introduction to the book by Gregg Braden, The Spontaneous Healing of Belief. I just began reading this book and I have enjoyed and greatly benefited from several of Gregg Braden’s books prior to this one.

The book has an opening page which sounds as though it could be taken directly from Dr. Michael Ryce’s lecture titled Empowered to Heal. Dr. Ryce talks in that lecture about how the content of our brain’s cells resonates with an energy dependent upon the content of our stored realities. If I have anger stored in my mind it will resonate and send out vibrations which will interact with the world and I will see the world as angry, or as something be angry about. If I have fear in my mind it will resonate and send out vibrations which will interact with the world and I will see the world as fearful or as something to fear. If I have love in my mind it will resonate and interact with the world and I will see the world as loving and lovable.

Gregg Braden has clearly been studying some of the same works as Dr. Michael Ryce, as witnessed by the following paragraphs from the preface to his new book.

“In the instant of our first breath, we are infused with the single greatest force in the universe–the power to translate the possibilities of our minds into the reality of our world. To fully awaken our power, however, requires a subtle change in the way we think of ourselves in life, a shift in belief.

Just the way sound creates visible waves as it travels through a droplet of water, our ‘belief waves’ ripple through the quantum fabric of the universe to become our bodies and the healing, abundance, and peace — or disease, lack, and suffering– that we experience in life. And just the way we can tune a sound to change its patterns, we can tune our beliefs to preserve or destroy all that we cherish, including life itself.

In a malleable world where everything from atoms to cells is changing to match our beliefs, we’re limited only by the way we think of ourselves in that world.

This book is dedicated to our acceptance of such an awesome power and our knowing that we are never more than a belief away from our greatest love, deepest healing, and most profound miracles.”

So far the book is shaping up to be a real eye opener and a blessing.

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false.

Mindshifters and Mayan Calendar Lecture

Posted on by
Reply

Last night the Mindshifters group watched the first part of a lecture by Ian Lungold, explaining the nature of the Mayan Calendars, (www.mayanmajix.com).  The biggest thing I took from the first part of the lecture is the validation from a wide variety of cultures that as human beings we are more than just our physical bodies.  The talk begins by explaining how the calendar is the exact dead center of any culture.  This is because the calendar is the culture’s agreement about what day and time it is, and how and  when business, rest, and recreation should be conducted.  Ian discusses how our current culture is built around a calendar which was introduced in 1582 by Pope Gregory and is therefore called the Gregorian Calendar.  He explains that this particular calendar tracks the physical movement of our planet around our sun, and nothing else.  Therefore the use of this calendar forces our entire culture to focus on nothing other than the physical aspect of our existence.  Ian points out that many previous cultures had multiple calendars and most of them had calendars with 360 day cycles.  When ‘modern’ scientists discovered these calendars they assumed that the culture was primitive and that the calendar was inaccurate and only a rough approximation of the time it takes our earth to travel around the sun, (365.25 days).  

The reality is that most of those cultures knew about the time it took our planet to travel around the sun, and some of them had separate calendars for that purpose, but many of them also had 360 day calendars.  It is just that those cultures had determined that there were other realities which were just as important, or even more important than the physical aspect of their existence.  Ian raises the question about what those other calendars were measuring and tracking for those cultures.  He proposes that those other calendars were tracking different cycles of energy and motion, other than the purely physical and very specific movement of our planet around our sun.  He points out that every planet spins, or turns 360 degrees, and that every circle has 360 degrees, and that since so many cultures had calendars with 360 day cycles, it is worth investigating what those calendars had in common and what they may have been tracking.
Ian also points out that once the Gregorian calendar was adopted by the Catholics, the Spanish and the Catholics went out to “save” and convert different cultures which they conquered.  They had to kill many people in those cultures before they were able to force the culture to give up their existing calendars and adopt the Gregorian calendar.  He points out that much of the spiritual and energetic knowledge from each of those cultures was lost as they were forced to accept a calendar that focused exclusively on the physical motion of our earth around our sun.   Ian goes on to discuss two of the three calendars which were used by the Mayan culture for more than five thousand years before they were “discovered” by “modern” scientists in the jungles of South America. 
Two of the Mayan calendars were related to larger, spiritual, energetic forces, other than the physical energy of our bodies and our planet.  The Mayans believed that souls chose what day they were going to be born, and therefore the first name of every Mayan was the name of the day they were born.  This served as a constant reminder to the person about what they wanted to accomplish in their life.  This means that within the Mayan culture there were constant reminders of the energetic and spiritual aspects of existence.   This got me to thinking about how different life would be if there were as many daily reminders on television, radio and in the movies about compassion, gratitude, service to others, energetic connection to all things, and Love, as there are daily reminders about material wealth, accumulation, competition, ‘physical beauty’, greed, one-up-manship, and sex.  As I let myself think about this possibility I got very emotional and felt chills running through my body.  I realized that I have no idea what a world like this would look like.  I can only say that it would be radically different from the world I was raised in and the world I am living in today.
I have often heard the quote from Gandhi which says, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world”.  And it seems like an overwhelming task when I realize how much the culture invests in sending out messages about the physical world and the material possessions and the instant gratification from external sources.  I started to long for a culture which would honor all things equally, both the energetic/spiritual and the material aspects of our world.  Then I realized that it was up to me to work on my own focus and continuously strive to achieve that balance within my own consciousness, and the focus of my conscious thought and intention.
I felt a bit overwhelmed at first.  Then I thought about the people who attend the Mindshifters group and people like Dr. Michael Ryce, Bruce Lipton, Gregg Braden, and countless others who are working, writing, blogging, lecturing and working on themselves to help change the focus of those who are willing.  I am grateful to be living in the age when the Internet and media, which is spewing so much of the message of materialism, greed, and instant physical gratification, is also available to spread the message of balance, energetic and spiritual awareness, and Love.
We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love.  Everything else is false.

Empowered To Heal Part II

Posted on by
Reply

In this week’s meeting of the Mindshifters group we watched the second half of the lecture by Dr. Michael Ryce titled, Empowered To Heal.     The first part of the talk focused on the difference between the physical body and the “mind” that accompanies the physical body, and the soul, and the “mind” which accompanies the soul.  The idea was presented of the physical mind being survival oriented and unable to do anything other than react to circumstances in a programmed way, much as the robin that builds the same kind of nest each year, or the salmon which returns to the place of its spawning to lay eggs and die.  The point was made that we have both the physical, “carbon based” memory which is reaction based, and the spiritual, energetically based mind, which allows us to choose our own actions.  The soul and the energetic mind are seen to be the seat of real intelligence and the freedom of choice, or free will, which we have come to view as one of the things which separates us from the rest of the natural world.

One of the most powerful lines in the lecture for me was related to the fact that, “If I don’t know how the world works, and how my mind energy influences the world, it is easy for me to see myself as a victim.”.  As one of the lines in the Reality Management Worksheet states, “With blame, I hide my power.”  If I am blaming others for what I feel and what happens in my life, I am not able to see how I influence the events in my life and how I create all of my emotions and reactions.  

I create my own reality, (my internal experience), and my interpretation and reaction to the events in my life is infinitely more important than the events themselves.  As I mentioned in the last post, the research evidence is clear, we choose to be happy or sad, regardless of the events in our lives.  This is seen clearly in comparing the happiness ratings for people who have won the lottery and those who have become paraplegic, and finding that one year after each event the happiness ratings are nearly identical for those two groups of people.  How could it be that those who became paraplegic a year ago, are just as happy as those who won the lottery a year ago?What could possibly explain this finding?  This is as powerful an example as I can imagine, to demonstrate that we choose to be happy or choose  to be sad, and that the external events in our lives are not nearly as important as how we interpret and respond to those external events.

There is substantial research which demonstrates that we create our own happiness and some of it is reviewed in the book Happy For No Reason, by Marci Shimoff.  In this book, Marci gives examples of people who have every external reason to be sad, angry or depressed, and yet they choose to be happy.  Marci gives a list of exercises which anyone can use to develop the habit of being happy and maintain a positive outlook through the ups and downs of life.   
The last 90 minutes of the Mindshifters group was spent working on Reality Management worksheets.  This is the tool for canceling and dismantling a false reality in our minds. The tool is available for free from www.whyagain.com.  This is a powerful tool for improving one’s quality of life by relieving negative emotions and the energy that goes with them.  I did my worksheet on the anger that I felt when a file cabinet was delivered late, and turned out to be the wrong cabinet.  This left me 90 minutes to completely re-arrange and re-organize my office and clean up the resulting mess, before I had to start seeing clients again.  Near the end of this clean up routine and just before my next client was scheduled to arrive, I got angry when I tried to open a garbage bag to put something in it and found it was tied closed with a knot.
My anger at inanimate objects proved once again to be a difficult challenge for  me to overcome.  I realized as I completed the worksheet that I have been trying to hide my anger from others and that this was contributing to my difficulty in resolving the problem.  It is our secrets which keep us sick, and I became aware that my desire to hide my anger was feeding my conclusion that I was unlovable because I had anger.  The real good news is that now I can actively work to end the secret and resolve the problem of my anger response to inanimate objects.  I feel a noticeable relief at recognizing the pattern of trying to keep  my anger a secret and realizing that I no longer need to hide the fact that I get angry when things don’t work the way I think they should.
We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love.  Everything else is false.

Empowered To Heal Part II

Posted on by
Reply

Last night the Mindshifters group watched the second part of the lecture by Dr. Michael Ryce titled, Empowered To Heal.  One of the most powerful lines in the lecture for me was related to the fact that, “If I don’t know how the world works, and how my mind energy influences the world, it is easy for me to see myself as a victim.”.  As one of the lines in the Reality Management Worksheet states, “With blame, I hide my power.”  If I am blaming others for what I feel and what happens in my life, I am not able to see how I influence the events in my life and how I create all of my emotions and reactions.  

I create my own reality, (my internal experience), and my interpretation and reaction to the events in my life is infinitely more important than the events themselves.  As I mentioned in the last post, the research evidence is clear, we choose to be happy or sad, regardless of the events in our lives.  This is seen clearly in comparing the happiness ratings for people who have won the lottery and those who have become parapalegic, and finding that one year after each event the happiness ratings are nearly identical for those two groups of people.  How could it be that those who became parapalegic a year ago, are just as happy as those who won the lottery a year ago?What could possibly explain this finding?  This is as powerful an example as I can imagine, to demonstrate that we choose to be happy or choose  to be sad, and that the external events in our lives are not nearly as important as how we interpret and respond to those external events.

There is substantial research which demonstrates that we create our own happiness and some of it is reviewed in the book Happy For No Reason, by Marci Shimoff.  In this book, Marci gives examples of people who have every external reason to be sad, angry or depressed, and yet they choose to be happy.  Marci gives a list of exercises which anyone can use to develop the habit of being happy and maintain a positive outlook through the ups and downs of life.   

Mindshifters Group 3-31-09

Posted on by
Reply

The Mindshifters group on Tuesday night watched the first half of the Michael Ryce lecture titled, “Empowered to Heal”.  The first part of the talk focused on the difference between the physical body and the “mind” that accompanies the physical body, and the soul, and the “mind” which accompanies the soul.  The idea of the physical mind being survival oriented and unable to do anything other than react to circumstances in a programmed way, much as the robin that builds the same kind of nest each year, or the salmon which returns to the place of its spawning to lay eggs and die.  The point was made that we have both the physical, “carbon based” memory, and the spiritual, energetically based mind, which allows us to choose our own actions.