Assumptions
June 16, 2010 by Rose-Anne Turunen
Filed under Insights
“The harder you fight to hold on to specific assumptions, the more likely there’s gold in letting go of them.”
— John Seely Brown
It is so easy to assume things. These seemingly innocent, simple thoughts can actually hold you back so much. We can assume that we know what somebody is thinking or feeling, or what their intentions are, and really they are all simply based on our own feelings (fears usually) or observations. And they may not be all that accurate in the end.
I know I feel very frustrated when people assume things about me. One big challenge for my friends or family and myself is to not assume we know exactly what the other person is thinking or feeling. We usually do know each other very well, but we are still individuals. I have assumed I knew what the other person was feeling during a discussion, for example, only to be completely wrong because I was basing it all on my fears or beliefs, not on reality.
Maybe it’s because we want things to fit neatly into the tidy place that we have created in our minds that we tend to fall into these assumptions. But people and situations are not always like puzzle pieces that click into place to reveal the true picture. Sometimes it is just easier and better for all concerned to ask questions like “How do you feel about this?” or “What is the real situation we are facing?” You may be surprised how far off we can be in our assumptions. And when we let them go, that’s usually when we find the gold… such as peace, love, and happiness, AND truth.
The difference between healing and curing – clearing the myth.
June 9, 2010 by Joylina Goodlings
Filed under Insights, • Feature
Introduction
Many people ask, “what is healing? how can healing help? Doctors heal, what is the difference?”. This article will try to answer some of these questions. We will be looking at the difference between healing and curing, and how the whole body is connected. I believe we as humans are made up of more than just our body. We are spiritual, emotional, mental and physical beings. These levels need to be in balance for a full and healthy life.
What is healing?
Healing is very different from curing.
Doctors diagnose problems and diseases in the physical body and then treat those diseases in various ways so the body is cured. But why do we get those diseases? – our body is obviously not well – why is it trying to tell us something more? Are there other in-balances of which we are not initially aware?
We are connected to the earth through our feet and the universe through our head. The earth has its own energy and so does the universe. We as humans can connect to both and this is the energy healers connect to and channel to others.
There are many different types of healing, too many to mention individually. This article is concentrating on what is known as energy healing and the subtle energy system of the body known as Chakras.
The Chakras
The word itself is Sanskrit and means “wheel”. Chakras are more like spinning energy vortices, which are funnel-shaped. The wider, spinning end interacts with our auric field whilst the stem appears to be embedded in our spine. (The aura is an energy field that radiates through and around all living things. Humans, animals and even plants have an aura which surrounds us and is visible with the aid of aura imagining cameras). The vortices go in both directions through the front and back of the body with the centre of the funnel joining the centre channel, which runs through the centre of our body.
Chakras act as step-down transformers, converting subtle energy – known in India as Prana, in China as Chi, and in Japan as Reiki, (universal cosmic energy). This energy is used by the hormonal, nervous and cellular systems of our physical body. We take in air and food to fuel our molecular building blocks. The aura and chakras take in the subtle energy, which is also fundamental for life. As well as being linked to the physical functioning of our bodies each chakra holds a key to understanding our relationships, our strengths and weaknesses and our sense of who and what we are in the world.
It is important for all the chakras to be energised and functioning efficiently for the all round well being of the individual. Blockages in any of the chakras can cause problems on any or all levels, physical, emotional, mental, spiritual. (For more information on Chakras please see my website http://www.joylina.com/content/view/62/62/).
Different types of healing.
You will hear about many different types of energy healing systems. All with different names such as, Spiritual Healing, Vortex Healing, Reconnective Healing, Reiki, (with all its subsets of Tera Mai, Seichem, Karuna, Angel RayKey, Sufi Reiki, Colour Reiki, Crystal Reiki) to name but a few. Each method will have its own ways of connecting to the energy and performing a healing. But they are fundamentally the same. Whether you connect through the power of prayer to God as in Spiritual Healing or through asking the angels, your God/Goddess, spirit guides, universal energy, the energy of unconditional love, Buddah, Jesus, Mohamed, or whatever, you are connecting to the same source or universal energy. Most systems breathe in the energy through their crown chakra (at the fontenella on the top of their heads) and let it flow out of their hands. Some systems have the hands touching people’s bodies; some just float them over the client in their aura. It works just the same. I personally prefer to work in the aura as I have found it more powerful and more productive but some clients prefer to feel the healers hands on them. The energy will be used for the highest good of the client anyway, however it is delivered.
How Healing works!
The objective of a healing is to bring all the auric bodies into balance. The spiritual body, the mental body, the emotional body and the physical body. I believe that if there is an in-balance in any one of the bodies, i.e. either the spiritual, mental, or emotional body is dis-at-ease for any reason then it will appear as a disease in an appropriate part of the body. The doctors then try to cure this problem. But I believe if the in balances in the other parts of the system, spiritual, mental, emotional, are not dealt with as well, then the disease will recur
Healers assist the client in bringing balance back into the entire system by connecting to the universal energy of unconditional love and acting as a channel. This allows the client to draw whatever energy they need to heal themselves. In my experience the less ego a healer has, i.e. the less they try to do anything specific for the client, the more they let go and allow the energy to flow, the more it works on whatever level it is needed to restore balance to the client. When the person is balanced then the body heals itself.
A healer therefore is channelling healing to a client for the client to do with whatever they wish for their highest good. The energy is passed to their soul, spirit, higher self, (call it what you will). The client’s soul then uses the energy in whichever way is best for the client from an overall perspective. We as people may think we know what we want but we may not be totally consciously aware of the whole picture of our life from a spiritual perspective. If I chose to experience death by cancer in this lifetime that is what I will do and no amount of healing or doctors’ interventions are going to stop it. But the healing will most probably make it easier, allow me to express my emotions and fears to my family, become a lot closer and have want many people call a good death. Also my family may then have done most of the grieving process with me and be able to move on into their lives more easily. I may of course, have agreed to experience a number of emotions in my life, such as grief and loss. If I have not dealt with them, if I have buried them, perhaps they start to eat away at me, in the form of disease such as cancer. If I am m able to let go of these stuck emotions, I overcome cancer as well. When the dis-at-ease on the emotional level is healed then the physical level can heal as well.
There has been much written on the connection between the physical well being of an individual and the psychological well being of that individual. This goes back to the 1800’s. An English doctor named Gendron, in a treatise published in 1701 wrote that “… cancer was caused by a misfortune occasioning much worry and travail”. H. Snow in his book 1893 “Cancer and the Cancer Process” says that after examining 250 out patients and inpatients with breast or uterine cancer. He concluded that of those patients over 200 had reported experiencing emotional problems, suffering and confusion before their disease”. (p 165 Summary of the New Medicine – by Dr. med. Ryke Geerd Hamer.) There is nothing to suppose the spiritual and mental balance of an individual would not be reflected in the body as well. I believe the whole system will try and tell you where the problem lies and what is holding you back. Dr. Christine Page in her book Frontiers of Health 1992 page 182 writes “Cancer is also known to appear up to two years after the loss of an identity linked with the death of a partner, loss of job….”
Let me tell you a story to illustrate. Once upon a time there was a woman who drove a mini cab. She did not enjoy her job, in fact it made her very unhappy. She had once been very successful in the City. She had been married, had a good job, children, and was happy. But, then everything went wrong, no fault of her own, and she was now having trouble supporting herself. She was bitter and angry about her past and she was constantly irritated with the behaviour of the general public. Picking up drunks from pubs and taking them home was not her idea of fun. She positively hated her job but could not think of anything else she could do. She had tried and tried to get other jobs but was always told she had too much experience, or she was too old.
After a while she began to suffer from gout, very unusual for a woman. She saw her doctor and was given medication. The gout came and went. She noticed that it was always worse after a particularly bad day. After a while it got so bad, there were days when she could not drive so she could not work. She was worried about her income but she just could not drive, her feet were so bad. After this going on for about 6 months she decided to try a healing. She was worried about her income, if she could not drive, she could not earn, how was she going to live? After all if someone was just passing healing energy into her aura, without even touching her it could not hurt her and it might make a difference, who knows, she had nothing to lose. She found a healer who would come to her home and she made an appointment. She found the experience very relaxing, warming, and comforting. She had felt a lot of energy in her hips funnily enough, not her feet, although her feet did feel a bit better. She also found she had been remembering her past. She had felt very tearful during the healing but had been able to control that. She did not want to cry in front of a stranger.
Whilst at home, resting with her feet up over the next few days she found herself remembering her past in different ways, feeling emotions of sadness, anger, grief at her loss. She did not feel sorry for herself, it was as if she was reaching some resolution to her past but she was not sure how. She just felt different.
One day a friend came to see her. She wanted to have her bedroom remodelled but did not know what to do or what she wanted, she had always admired her friends’ home. Our cab driver immediately came up with lots of ideas and sketched these for her friend. She was a very creative person and enjoyed drawing, painting and design. Because she had done her own home she knew where to get all the materials at a reasonable price and how to do it herself. She offered to help her friend when she was better. The following weekend when her feet were better she went round to help her friend get it started. She was on her feet all day, up and down ladders, to no ill effect. So Monday she went back to work. By the end of the week she was in severe pain and felt she could not drive over the weekend so went to see her friend. She helped out with the decorating again and was surprised that she had been on her feet all the time but was in no pain.
Back to work she went on Monday but by Wednesday had to take time off again. She was getting seriously worried about what she could do. By this time her friend had finished the remodelling of her bedroom and was really pleased. It had not cost anything like as much as she had anticipated and it was different. All her friends she had showed it to were really impressed and asked where she had got her advice. She was really please and came round to see our cab driver, to thank her and to tell her of all the interest and so an idea for another way of earning a living was born. Our cab driver did go back to work but for gradually less and less hours, for now she was advising people with their interior design needs and decorating. Word spread quickly and she soon gave up cabbing altogether. She was still on her feet all day, up and down ladders, just like depressing a clutch all day, but she was happy doing something she loved and she was no longer getting any re-occurrences of Gout. Her spiritual, mental, emotional and physical bodies were back in balance.
How the healing worked!
How I believe the healing worked was, she was unhappy on a spiritual level. She was not using her own creative skills. She was bitter about what she had lost in her past, and she had not let go of her bitterness on an emotional level. Her ideas held within her mental level were blocked she could not find a solution to getting a job she enjoyed. Her feet began to play her up. Feet often signify how we feel about where we are going. For instance if there is fear, of what lies ahead, we may not want to walk that particular path. If we have sore feet we cannot walk, we cannot go forward.
She saw her doctor and took the medication he prescribed which did alleviate her physical symptom but the rest of her being was out of balance. When she was ready she approached the healer. She received the healing. The energy was then used by her higher self, (soul, spirit, call it whatever you like). Firstly she let go of the old emotions, the bitterness from her past, then she reconnected to her spiritual creative self, then the mental plane came back into balance as new ideas started to flow. As she started doing things she enjoyed, that felt right for her, her body did not react badly, even though she was physically using her feet in much the same way. Thus when her spiritual, mental, emotional bodies were balanced her physical body healed and she no longer had occurrences of gout and no longer needed her medication from the doctor. She was no longer fearful of moving forwards in her life. She was healed.
Conclusion:
There are many healing stories like the one above, some very remarkable, some less so, where healers have helped people without them even necessarily being aware of it. Our lady cab driver may never have related the change in her life over the following weeks to her healing. But that is what healing does. It allows people to move on in their lives freely. It is not difficult, it is not something special. It is something everyone can do, and as we have said there are many methods being taught to do it. I believe it works on the power of unconditional love and if we connect to that energy and pass it to others freely, we help people change their lives in a positive way. It is up to each individual soul how they use the energy they are given, whether to bring balance into their entire spiritual being or to reject it. It is not for us as healers to question. Just to pass on the energy where possible.
For further reading I recommend,
Frontiers of Health – Dr. Christine R Page 1992
Your body speaks your mind – Debbie Shapiro 1996.
© Copyright – Joylina Goodings 2005
CAUTION! SLOW MOVING PEDESTRIAN!
May 20, 2010 by Milana Vinokur
Filed under Insights, Pets, • Feature
Around the same time last year I was driving home from work. It was a beautiful day. The sun was bright and the day was clear and warm.
Just as I was approaching a stop sign at the intersection leading to my street, I noticed a big gray rock in the middle of the road. I slowed down. I remember feeling somewhat annoyed. My first thought was that someone had nothing better to do than throw a big rock in the middle of intersection. Just than I realized that the “rock” moved!!!
I quickly pulled over to the curb and got out of my car to take a closer look. As I approached the mystery object on the road I realized it was a snapping turtle… the biggest one I have seen so far! Including the tail t was at least 3.5 feet in length and approximately 2 feet in width. She was covered from head to tail in mud and had long, green, hair-like algae growing all over her body.
I was not about to leave her in the middle of the road to get squashed. I knew that someone else would not be as attentive to a “rock” in the middle of their path. The poor turtle looked really lost and out of place.
I often carry a cardboard box in case I run into an injured animal and will need something to put it in. However today I had none. Thankfully I had an empty plastic recycling container in the back of my car. I brought it over to the turtle and tried to pick her up. It was than that I realized how truly strong and heavy she was. It was quite a challenge lifting her without dropping her, getting scratched by her long nails, or hit by her powerful tail, or bitten by her strong open mouth. However, after a few minutes of struggling and trying to get a good grip, I was able to lift her and placed her in her “temporary shelter”.
I live not too far from the Zoo. My first thought was that she might have escaped from there and got lost. I decided to drive my “passenger” to the Zoo and see if they would recognize her. Unfortunately for my friend, there were no turtles missing from the Zoo that day. All the ones that were suppose to be there were accounted for. All girls from the office came out to take a look at my strange passenger and expressed that they have not seen such a big wild snapping turtle before.
I was not sure what to do next. I could not keep her and did not know where she came from. One of the girls volunteered to called a gentleman in charge of conservation areas and let me speak to him.
During that conversation I learned that around May of every year they start hearing many stories about turtles being found on the road and coming into people-populated areas. This is the time of the year when turtle get ready to lay their eggs. The banks of their natural ponds are often muddy and too soft to create a safe nest. Turtles prefer rocky surface, so they set out in a search for a perfect nesting ground.
People often put gravel on, near or around their driveways for better traction. This “rocky” terrain looks very appealing to a searching “mother-to-be” turtle, so she crosses long distances to get to the spot she feels would be safe for her unborn babies. Regretfully, she does not realize that in the process she puts her safety and the safety of her future babies at risk.
It was suggested that I take my friend to a pond in my area and release her back into the wild. I drove my pregnant turtle to a small ravine close to my house that had a natural wild pond. I carried her close to the edge and released her from the box. She stood there for few minutes with her head up in the air just looking at me, as if to say “I understand you helped me. Thank you”. Than she slowly turned and started making he way to the pond.
I remained standing there to ensure that she will make her journey safely. It took her half an hour, and several rest stops in-between, to finally get to the pond which was about 15 feet away from where I set her down. She than stood for a few minutes at the edge, not moving, just looking back at me. After about 5 minutes she started to slowly emerge herself head first into the water. It looked as if her body was disappearing in slow emotion, gradually, barely noticeable… The last thing to go was her tail, as it gently hit the water on it’s way in, as if she waved “good-by”.
Today I am very careful to watch out for any “rocks” that I may encounter while driving, especially around this time of the year. I wish to ask those who will read this story to do the same. If you live in residential areas please remember, it is gravel that attracts them to us.
Please be cautious and watch out for a SLOW MOVING PEDESTRIAN!
Enjoying Life
May 5, 2010 by Rose-Anne Turunen
Filed under Insights
“One day at a time — this is enough. Do not look back and grieve over the past for it is gone; and do not be troubled about the future, for it has not yet come. Live in the present, and make it so beautiful it will be worth remembering.”
— Unknown
Life’s most pleasurable moments often come from the simplest things. It is a natural rhythm that we can tune into. It is like a flow that we follow and allow to take us from one moment to the next.
When we allow this natural direction and rhythm, it is easy and it is enjoyable. Even the occasional twist or wave can be seen as an adventure or temporary challenge on the course of life.
It is only when we try to swim against the current into the past, or try to swim faster than the flow into the future that we manage to tire ourselves out. Enjoy life one day at a time and make it worth remembering.
You are what you love
April 22, 2010 by Rose-Anne Turunen
Filed under Insights
“To the degree to which you love yourself and love what you are doing, you will set high, challenging, and worthwhile goals and ideals to strive toward. Self-love and self-acceptance make it easier for you to gain greater self-knowledge and self-understanding.”
— Brian Tracy, Maximum Achievement
I’m sure you have heard it said, that in order to be truly happy and successful in life you should follow your passions, follow your heart. Brian Tracy reports in his book, Maximum Achievement, that “virtually all self-made millionaires are doing what they love to do.”
When you love yourself and you love what you are doing you will actually set goals that are high, challenging, and worthwhile to achieve. Because you love yourself and accept who you are, you will actually make it easier for yourself to be successful and accomplish what you set out to do.
This self-love and self-acceptance actually spreads to all parts of your life and you will find yourself having loving relationships, good health, and allowing yourself to accept others unconditionally.
So use your love as a guide. With this love you will achieve lasting fulfillment and greater self-understanding.
VividLife.me Contributor
Rose-Anne is cofounder and International Editor-in-Chief of VividLife and host of the Real Life Changes Show on VividLife Radio. She is a passionate documentary filmmaker, putting a voice to causes and social issues, and runs her own businesses and web sites related to food & health, and women’s issues.
“I love inspiring people. I have been fortunate enough to have had the time and guidance in my life to help me find some of those answers, and it’s important to me to be able to share what I have learned on my own journey.”
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