Yesterday I wrote on the benefits of suffering. I talked briefly about the superficial benefits of suffering; the attention, the pampering, the excuse for not doing something you don’t want to do. I wanted to expand on this some.
Some people experience suffering in all its glory (it may feel more like gory at the time) and they are molded and changed by the experience. Others only seem to experience the superficial benefits of suffering and may even become bitter from the experience. Why the two different reactions?
I have head it said that there are two types of clay. One type of clay when left in the sun gets soft and moldable; the other clay will get hard and brittle. You see, hardship and suffering may not necessarily build character but it sure reveals it. An amusing example of this is to consider two golfers. How does each react on the course? One may get angry with each poor shot, blaming the course, blaming the designer, blaming the water trap, blaming his clubs. The other golfer sees the challenge the course lays out and takes the opportunity to improve his game. The second golfer may make the same poor shots the first one did but he will handle it differently. One sees it as the world is against him, the other sees it as an opportunity to experiment and learn.
Which type are you? Are you flexible and open, willing to learn? Or are you hard and brittle and stuck in your ways, seeing everything and everyone as being against you. You may not realize it, but you have a choice.
Did you know that suffering has benefits? I am not talking about the surface ‘benefits’ that are not true benefits. You know what I mean; benefits such as attention, being catered to, having an excuse. These can actually prevent you from obtaining the true benefit of suffering.
Are you confused yet? Suffering that comes from hardships and illness can have a major positive impact on a person’s life. Yes of the impact is judged as bad but a lot of it is actually desirable. This suffering builds character; it creates a means for growth. True spirituality and insights can come to the person who goes through such a trial.
Our society tries real hard to eliminate the benefit of suffering. We pity the person. We try to make the person more comfortable sometimes to the point of knocking them out with drugs. We don’t even want to mention or acknowledge the problems a person is suffering through – to their face. Oh we talk to everyone else about it but if we come face to face with this person we tend to talk about superficial things like the weather.
The sufferer has much insight to give us on what is truly important but we have to be willing to listen.
When the sufferer finally comes through to the other side of their suffering you will often hear comments from them such as “I could not pay me a million dollars to do that again but nor would I take a million dollars to give up that experience.”
As a society, we need to honor our suffering and look for the benefits we can obtain in it. If you are in the midst of a suffering cycle right now, know that there are benefits. You may not be able to see them now. But when you are finally able to distance yourself from the current pain and it is all in the past, you will be able to look back and find the diamonds the experience left you with.
Tuesday I wrote about fear and how prevalent and insidious it can be for so many.
I have a strong passion about bringing this to everyone’s awareness because I have been there. I have lived most of my life in fear. I have never really had anything to logically be afraid of but this fear has always been with me. It got so bad that 13 years ago I developed panic attacks. After several years of suffering, I did overcome the panic attacks with the use of EFT. If you are interested in how I did that go to www.naturallyresilient.com/Bio.html
I was thrilled that the panic was gone but the underlying fear was still there.
You may not have panic attacks but if you are still reading this, I am assuming you are dealing with some form of fear in your life. Today I wanted to tell you how you can overcome that fear for yourself by telling you what I have done.
EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) or some other form of Meridian Tapping is a great place to start.
Get a notebook and start writing all the incidents in your life that have been uncomfortable for you. Anything that caused you pain or problems or anyone that caused any form of emotional turmoil. You are not just looking for things or events that caused fear in your life, but anything you wish had not happened. Our emotions are often so tangled together that the first emotion to surface may be anger but often anger is just a cover for an underlying fear.
You should come up with at least 50 items on your list. Now pick one of the items and start to apply EFT or Meridian Tapping to any emotion that arises. When you clear one emotion another may take its place. When you can finally replay the event or think of the person with no negative emotion, move to a new item and do it again. It may take 30 minutes or more to clear one event, but it will be worth it. After you have cleared a number of issues, your life will start to feel calmer and more in control.
If you still wake in the middle of the night in a panic, take the next step, release the fear. I know this is easier said than done, but you can do it. One night I was lying in bed with my fear as company and I started thinking about how I have had this fear all my life. It was a revelation to me that this fear was not anything new. I realized the fear had just displayed itself in different ways throughout my life and even in my past lives I knew about! I decided that enough was enough! At that point a calm came over me. The next morning I still felt calm but I realized I had to fill that place where the fear had been so it could not come back. What can replace fear? I chose faith; Faith that God was for me, Faith that the universe could provide good things in abundance to me, Faith that I would be taken care of and everything would work out.
That has been about two months ago and I am still feeling calm and I am still relying on faith.
Have you ever seen a cat with a cold? I did not even know that a cat could get a cold but the first year I had Barney, my large black and white cat, he had 3 colds! He sounded and looked like a toddler with a bad cold; sneezing, runny nose, sniffling, the whole bit. I wanted to hold a tissue to his nose and tell him to blow. What was worse was that he would get the cold first then my other cat Callie would catch it then I would get it! Don’t tell me that germs can’t pass between species.
A cat with a cold seemed so strange to me that I called the vet and asked if a cat could get a cold and he said yes. Luckily, Barney outgrew his propensity for colds, however I haven’t. But I have never noticed any of the cats catching my cold, strange.
Do dogs get colds? That question naturally leads to the next, do wild animals get colds?
Let me know if you have any information to add.
This Memorial Day Weekend one of the cable channels had a Harry Potter marathon. This got me thinking about Dementors. Harry Potter’s dementors were dangerous because they first sucked the joy and hope from a person, then they sucked the soul out of them.
Do you realize we have present day, real life dementors? There is something a lot of us fall pray to that sucks the hope and joy from us and I believe it is totally capable of sucking the very soul from us. What is this horrible thing and why have we let it loose on the planet? This horrible thing is FEAR and yes we have let it loose on this planet. I believe we welcomed fear as soon as we left Eden. We were afraid of wild animals, we were afraid that the rains would not come, that the herd animals would not migrate, that the gods would be angry. I could write ten pages just listing all the things we as humanity have been afraid of through the ages and this would not even touch our personal private fears!
Why do we allow this fear to persist? OK, some fear is good, it keeps us safe. But what about the fear that wakes us up in the middle of the night in a panic about current relationship troubles or the pile of bills that we can’t pay. This is the fear I am talking about; this silent invader that does not contribute a solution but keeps our mind in a panic so we can not think logically. This is not a good thing. This fear sucks the joy right out of life. This is the fear that caused people to jump out of multi-story buildings during the great stock crash that preceded the ‘Great Depression’. This is the fear that smothers hope.
What can we do about it? Check back on Thursday when I will tell you how to overcome this fear, in the meantime, eat chocolate.
Today is my birthday. No I am not giving my age.
What do I want for my birthday? I have most everything I want; a loving family, a roof over my head, and food on the table. Yes these are wants but these are also needs. What about some true wants? Something I don’t have to have but would like? This is a hard one as it is asking me to negate years of conditioning and upbringing where I was taught to suppress my wants and desires. I think many of us are like that. We have learned to ignore ourselves. But what good is that? In ignoring ourselves, we end up requiring others to pay attention to us and our needs. We run ourselves into the ground so that someone else has to come along and take care of us.
I had a co-worker once who thought he had strep-throat but did not want to go to the doctor. Here he was at work, possibly infecting the rest of us. I overheard a conversation between him and one of the other workers. John said we use to not go to the doctor for every little thing. Jim rebutted, “yes, but we also only lived to about 40.” Jim went on to explain how strep can get down to the heart and weaken that vital muscle. John decided to go to the doctor.
Another co-worker had a brother who was in his late twenties. This brother suddenly died. He had gotten so sick with pneumonia that he could barely stagger into the emergency room where he collapsed and died. Why had this happened? He had ignored a need. Maybe he had labeled a need with a want, a want to feel better not a need to feel better. Sometimes it takes some one else to look at our situation and label it correctly as a want or a need.
These may be cases of ignoring our needs not our wants. But isn’t ignoring our wants, just one step away from ignoring our needs? I don’t want to end up like either of the two people mentioned above. So what do I want? Those Mini Convertibles sure are cute.
The Reconnection
The book is not just a good fun read but also very informative. It takes into consideration those people who want to heal themselves and those who want to help others heal. Eric dislikes using the word ‘healer’ when referring to himself because he says “I do not heal anybody”. He explains that the healer’s role is to listen and open yourself to receive the energy that allows you to be the catalyst for the healing to take place. So true, for a healer it is essential to learn to get yourself out of the way so real healing can take place.
Eric has a different point of view than most light workers about healing. He doesn’t believe that any ritual or objects or even any physical effort such as tapping is required to evoke healing. He says we need to let go of all this baggage. He doesn’t say it in so many words but he indicates that light workers need to lighten their bag and get rid of a lot of unnecessary items.
This isn’t just a come-on book to lead you to spend on his seminars. He gives very practical information about activating and feeling the healing energy with your own hands. Eric also gives some good advice to others wishing to set up shop as a light healer. I have several pages in this book dog-eared for reference.
Dr. Eric Pearl is one of the few energy workers that I really want to learn more about and one of the things I have on my list of things to do is to attend one of his workshops.
The Benefits of Being Positive
Posted by: Ann
May 29th, 2010 >> Energy, Life, Manifesting, Physical/Material
I have a neighbor who is always dwelling on how bad things are and how she just can’t get ahead with her finances. I really don’t care to listen to all these complaints as I am trying very hard to live a positive life. I have found that this person does not come around as much as she use to. I think it may be because I am sending out more positive energy waves which repell her negative one.
Last year I did an experiment where I noted when my emotional state changed and then noted what manifested in my physical life. I can tell you the emotional change occurred BEFORE the physical manifestation. When I started feeling down and woe-is-me the lack soon started coming into my life. When I decided to give myself a talking to and be more positive, things started picking up and money started to flow again.
This year I am doing another experiment. I have decided to be as positive as I can as much as I can. I have found that new information and help keeps coming my way to keep me on track. Some of the things that have come my way include: a friend starting a group called “Mindful Happiness” which is a support group for us trying to live a more positive life, I have also rediscovered some books that have helped me, each one coming when I needed to go a little deeper or concentrate on a different area.
What am I experiencing on a more tangible level? For one thing, the monthly bills are being paid even-though no major invoices have gone out since March!
I will keep you informed of any major changes. Let’s stay positive!
My husband and I head up a program for our church members who are college students going to school away from home. We wanted to do an end of year reception for all the participants and the best day was May 23 right after church. The students would be through with the spring semester and Summer school would not have started yet.
After we put it on the church calendar, I realized I was scheduled to count money after the service that Sunday. We could not move the reception to an earlier week (not enough time) and the best attendance would occur on a Sunday right after church. The next Sunday would be memorial weekend, a bad choice and then we would be into June and Summer school. So we stuck with May 23. I just did not have time to try and find a replacement for my counting duty that Sunday so I threw it out to God or the Universe that if I was going to be able to attend this event that I was planning ‘you’ are going to have to get me a replacement. I then let it go.
Sunday May 16th I received an e-mail that the finance committee had a meeting Monday. I did not have this meeting on my calendar! I went and at the end of the meeting I told my dilemma and had a person volunteer to change days with me. Problem solved.
So did God or the Universe or I on another level cause this meeting to take place so I could get a replacement so I could attend the reception? I have heard about a technique of listing all your to-do items and then deciding what you really want to do and what you are going to leave up to God or the Universe to do. I have done this before with a problem concerning an incorrect income reported to the Social Security Administration and nothing has happened. Maybe it will be a moot point when it actually is needed so that is why nothing has happened!
For all of you non subscribers, you are missing out! I am running a special right now for my monthly tapping subscribers.
I feel there are people hurting out there who need some help but are having a hard time justifying paying for this much needed help due to the dragging economy. I have heard the call and I have drastically reduced the cost of private and surrogate sessions for a limited time. Take advantage of these reduced rates while they are available. Prices will go back to normal at the end of August 2010.
Sign up at www.naturallyresilient.com and receive the discount codes in my next mailing.