Archive for the ‘Relationship’ Category
Shakti Gawain has a couple of workbooks that I have used in the past and continue to use even now. I bought Living in the Light Workbook (which is actually a supplement to her Living in the Light: A Guide to Personal and Planetary Transformation
In Living in the Light Workbook: Guide to Personal and Planetary Transformation
The Creative Visualization Workbook: Second Edition (Gawain, Shakti)
If you are searching for answers in your life, these are some great workbooks to use.
Five Ways to Prevent Worry
Posted by: Ann
July 27th, 2010 >> Energy, God, Guides, Life, Relationship, Spirituality
OK worry is bad for you. This is the general worry that freezes your mind and sends you in a panic. Some worry is helpful. Helpful worry like helpful fear is that which spurs you to action; such as a child falls in the pool and can’t swim, the fear and worry causes you to dive in after them.
No the worry I am talking about is that which limits your view; you can’t see a positive future in fact you may not see any future at all. This is the worry that stifles and prevents action. This type of worry often feeds off of itself; one worry leads to another, snowballing to the point that you give up.
How do you drag yourself out of such a place without spending a fortune on therapy? I have some suggestions.
1. Start every day by reading something positive. You can even read the same book or chapter or poem everyday. The prime requirement is that it is uplifting. No downers. Some suggested reading material is listed at the end of this article. If you are not into reading, there are many audio tapes out there with uplifting material.
2. Reaffirm you faith and belief. If you affiliate yourself with a spiritual belief, remember it. When I was going through a rough time of worry I realized I was not practicing my faith. If I truly believed what I said I believed then I had to exercise that faith. The belief that I exercised was that all things work toward good and that God would take care of me. I also believed that God wants to give you good things. When ever I start to feel down or start to worry about bills or finances I turn back to that belief and feeling that I will be taken care of, and guess what, I have been taken care of. Have hope in the future.
3. Go for a walk. The exercise will do you good, but don’t just walk, look around you. Look at the trees, the clouds, the animals and feel gratitude for each of them. In sending the gratitude you are reinitiating the energy flow that worry has choked off. Keep the energy flowing through out the day by looking up and being grateful for what ever your eyes see. Try and really feel the gratitude.
4. Talk to your spirit guides. We all have them and they really want to help but they cannot help if you don’t give them permission. Just talk to them like you would a friend you are telling your troubles to, or you could just think the conversation. Ask for their help in what is troubling you or ask for them to help you be more positive. Just having some one else to talk to can help (even if you can’t see them). You can talk to a trustworthy friend but you run the risk of that becoming a pity party or one-up-manship competition on who has the worst life. This is not the kind of thing you want to dwell on and your spirit guides will not join in your pity.
5. Be open to solutions. As soon as you start letting go of the worry and replacing it with gratitude and hope for a better future, solutions will start to come to you. You may still be in a slightly negative bent and may be tempted to automatically negate any solution that pops up but try to realize what you are doing when that happens. Pay attention to the solution and give it a legitimate look. A true solution may seem weird but as you think about it, doors will start to open to allow it to happen.
There is a way to a better, worry-free life. You can do it!
Suggested reading material:
The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles down load for free from www.thesecret.tv
The Power of Positive Thinking
Moments of Grace 
Chicken Soup for the Soul
The Spirit Creates Our Lives
Posted by: Ann
July 10th, 2010 >> Change, Energy, Life, Manifesting, Physical/Material, Relationship, Spirituality
I feel I need constant reassurance that God is there and cares about what is going on down here on the material plane. Sometimes I think God is only concerned with the Spiritual.
But no, the spiritual and the material are both tied together. The spiritual is important because it continues after the material is gone, after the physical is gone, after the relationships are gone. All these; physical (health), relationships, and material (wealth), are reflections of the spiritual or the ongoing soul.
Are they different aspects of the soul?
It is like a bud that cannot contain itself any longer and it burst out into a flower; that is what the spirit is doing. It bursts out into something you can sense better, something physical be it a relationship, wealth or health. Sometimes the spirit is troubled or not on the right path. I hate using the word ‘right’ as there is no true wrong or right path, it is more of not being true to whom you are (a child of God) and things we don’t like crop up in our lives. This is a form of manifesting.
The spirit is an energetic force, a vibration. This force creates feelings and emotions. These feelings can have a direct impact on our health. Many illnesses have been linked to negative emotions.
Our relationships are definitely linked to our emotions. Try to have a close relationship without any emotions! It won’t happen. You may have positive or negative emotions but you will have emotions.
For the physical, the new rage is the law of attraction and that involves feelings. You attract more of what you are feeling into your life. If you are feeling hopeful and optimistic more comes to you to give you hope and optimism. If you are feeling worried and scared more comes to you to emphasize those feeling.
We are constantly evolving personally and as a species. It can’t be helped. We are all generating things on this earth, that is why nothing ever stays the same but all is constantly changing.
Our church youth group went on a mission trip recently and I was intrigued about one of the stories that they came back with. The group that our pastor was in was to do roofing. Now remember most of the participants are Jr. High and High School age kids with two adults per work site. Our pastor admits to not possessing carpentry skills and was rather lost about how to shingle a roof let alone teach a bunch of kid how. There was a person who came to the sites for basic instruction but he had a lot of sites to cover so each team was basically on their own.
Luckily (…but there is no luck or coincidences) next door lived a professional roofer who had been out of work for almost two years. With the economy, no one was building. When he saw what was going on, he came over to help out (much to our pastor’s relief). This man had seen that his neighbor needed a new roof but he did not have the money to buy shingles for this person. The neighbor was glad for the opportunity to help, putting his skills to work.
The team had all week to work and several days into the roofing job, the neighbor had a call which contained a job offer that would start the next week! No job for 2 years then he steps outside of himself and it comes to him.
We are often confronted with such idiosyncrasies. We worry and worry about something and that holds it back. Law of Attraction again, we worry so it brings more worry to us. Then we start to do something constructive and it feels good and things start to turn around to provide more of what feels good.
Yesterday was Paul and my wedding anniversary. Twenty years seems so long but then again not long at all. I think about all that has happened in the last 20 years. We moved 4 times, had a child (who is now 16), raised angora goats, raised cows, created a subdivision and built and lived in a house I designed. There were also many personal accomplishments and experiences that have been overcome such as depression, panic attacks, and asthma.
This makes me wonder about the next 20 years.
Paul gave me a card that said “The Adventure Continues”. That is so appropriate. Life itself is a journey, not a destination, and our journey has been an adventure.
I remember a line in a play where a woman exclaimed that she did not want to have been dead before she died. I also remember a different show where the characters were headed to a funeral and one remarked that the deceased had died years ago. What this is saying is don’t give up the adventure of life until you have to because you are physically dead. Keep learning, experiencing and serving others. Make the best use of this life as you can. Keep your ears and eyes open and who knows what will open up before you; you may be living on the other side of the world this time next year, you never know!
A Relationship Book in the Children Section
Posted by: Ann
July 4th, 2010 >> Books, Relationship, Uncategorized
Shel Silverstein is noted for his children’s books. You don’t usually think of a great relationship book coming from a children’s author.
The Missing Piece Meets the Big O
This is actually the second in a series. The first book is The Missing Piece.
If you have been dating for a while, you will relate to some of the tactics the missing piece uses and may even be able to put names to the various someone’s the missing piece meets.
I don’t want to give the whole book away, it is a fast read with large, simple pictures like a children’s book should have. If you don’t want to buy it, at least check it out from your local library. I bet they have it — in the Children’s section.
Keys to the Kingdom
I loaned this book to a friend who has been through several unsuccessful relationships. She called all excited after reading it saying that she now understood what she had been doing wrong all these years.
Keys to the Kingdom specifically tells about the stages a man goes through; Knight want-to-be or Page, Knight, Prince, King and Elder. There are also some good tips and information that applies to any stage such as ‘Do Not Interrupt.’
Alison suggest that you count to 10 after your man finishes what he is saying as a man thinks differently than a woman and when you interrupt it derails him and he loses focus. You have changed the topic for him and he has to get his train going on a new track. A man likes to go deep and focused with laser-like thought whereas a woman tends to touch lightly on a lot of different areas. Also if your man keeps being cut off or interrupted he will stop talking altogether and you will never hear the best part.
I purchased this book after hearing Alison Armstrong in an interview. I was very impressed with what she knew about relationships and look forward to reading her other books.
What do you remember about current celebrities? Is it their good traits or their failures? Unfortunately, when you are in the limelight it is the faults that are remembered.
Let’s get back to you, the average Joe. What are you going to be remembered for? Will it be that you were steadfast, that you kept your word or that you were a good provider?
Those who know you well may remember the good traits you have. But even they will fall back on the ‘stories’ about you and your quirks and failures. (This is a good reason to always have a sense of humor about yourself). How much more will those who are just acquaintances of you only know the bad stories, the problems you created, the ‘colorful’ side of you because those are the stories that get gossiped about as they are more ‘interesting’ that the standard everyday goodness a person has.
Why are we remembered for our mistakes instead of our regular everyday deeds? For one thing it is sad that many people try and make themselves feel better by putting others down. If they can find something about someone as being below what they would do then they think they are better. This is a hollow ‘victory’ as it does not have to do with the person’s own good merits but the failure of another.
What can we do about this? Not much. People will be people. All we can do is live our life to the best of our ability and don’t take our little failures to heart. Every one has them, even those throwing shadows at you. On the positive side, we can try and not do the same to others. This is a good time to practice the Golden Rule.
So your method of dealing with anger is not working too well. Maybe you have one of the anger related ailments listed in yesterday’s post but don’t really believe you have an anger issue.
When I was going through depression, I talked to someone who had experienced depression. He told me that his therapist told him his depression was caused from suppressed anger. At the time I thought, “that’s not me, I don’t feel any anger.” But isn’t that what suppressed means? You don’t know about it! I was working through a lot of self help books, trying to get better. One workbook said to write a letter to someone you are mad at. I thought, I’m not mad at anyone, but I decided to do the exercise anyway and started writing a letter to the first person who popped into my head. Let me tell you, there are no coincidences; there is a reason a memory, a person, an event, pops into your head. As I wrote the tears came and the emotion came out. Boy was I surprised! But the biggest surprise was how I felt afterwards. The depression was gone! That was 17 years ago and the depression has not returned.
But what if you know you have an anger issue and just acknowledging it doesn’t help. Let me assure you there are methods that can help. A great method is EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) or one of the other meridian tapping techniques. This can produce very fast and lasting results. My husband once had a difficult event that left him with much anger. He asked for my help. I did several rounds of EFT with him for the anger and it dissolved. He said afterwards it felt like there was a hole where the anger had been. He could feel where the anger had been but there wasn’t anything there now. That anger never came back and over time was replaced with compassion.
Your anger may be from a single incident like my husband’s or from a multitude of events. It doesn’t matter, EFT can handle it all. Give it a try for yourself. Check out www.naturallyresilient.com and learn the technique yourself or better yet sign up for a session and get some personal attention. This kind of work can be done over the phone!
Losing control a couple of times can play havoc with your social life. Not only will people not want to be around you but you may find it hard to hold down a job. This can lead to more anger. Often others don’t understand, they think it is a lack of control on your part. Yes some people with a host of pent up anger do well at controlling the beast, but it is still there. It is always right under the surface.
Did you know there are a host of diseases that are anger related? We all know that anger based hypertension can lead to heart attacks. But did you know there are many other medical problems that have a basis in anger?
Dementia can be rooted in unresolved anger. You get so entrenched in a wrong from the past that you no longer live in the present. Problems with the gallbladder can be from feelings of anger. Think about the indignation and anger behind the saying “what gall!”
Often the anger is repressed and has to make itself known through disease. Many cancers get their start from anger, often repressed anger. The anger that is unacknowledged has to go somewhere so it comes out in a tumor.
From my own past I have experienced depression that was due to unacknowledged anger. As soon as I found the anger, the depression lifted. Before discovering the anger, I would have sworn that I wasn’t mad at anyone!
How about being fat? Often when someone can not seem to lose weight it is because it is not safe to lose the weight. The layer of fat is protection and with that need for protection there is often hidden anger. Find the anger and resolve it and the weight will melt away. This can often be emotionally draining work and will eventually require true forgiveness but it can be done.
And then there is anger at yourself which can be an underlying cause of Addison’s disease. Even Anemia can have a basis in being angry at yourself for not being able to control things.
So I ask again, how do you deal with anger?
How is that working for you?
If it is not working for you, read tomorrow’s post.