Journeys of the Spirit® Newsletter September 2nd, 2015

TAKE ME TO: Events & Workshops | Featured Article
Our Upcoming Trips at a Glance | Post a comment!

WHAT’S NEW? Happy Labor Day!

Every year we celebrate Labor Day in US and rarely think about it’s origins. So I thought I would share what it says on the US Department of Labor’s website.

Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.

People from all over the world immigrated to the US to have a better life and put their mark on this country. They worked hard and and deserve to be honored. May you think of them this coming holiday weekend! 🙂

Blessings and love, Sheri Rosenthal xox

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EVENTS, JOURNEYS + WEBINARS!

Mastering the Tao Nature Within: Wudang Mountain, China
Nov 30–Dec 12, 2015

wudang-china Join Terry Hodgkinson for a very special and unusual journey to China where you will be learning Tai Chi, Qigong and meditation from the Chinese Taoist Masters. Spend your days learning from the most prestigious Chinese Taoists how to attain the perfect balance between yourself and nature, and then put those teachings into practice to feel the most alive you have ever felt.

Wudang is located in Central China’s Hubei Province and this location houses thousands of years of Taoist practice. The atmosphere is ripe with Tao and finding your inner Tao is easily grasped in a place with so much support. The complex was designed to fit the Taoist principle of harmony between man and nature. Magnificent buildings are cited as a museum of ancient Chinese design and thought and are located all over the mountain. There are more than 2,000 Palaces and Temples, making this complex the world’s largest Taoist center.

The trip is all-inclusive, a 13 day adventure to the other side of the world where all accommodations, meals, and inter-Asian travel will be booked for you as you learn from the most prestigious spiritual leaders in the Eastern World. Trip cost: $2197 USD per person double occupancy, Single occupancy: $2697 USD – most meals included.

Details for China on Terry’s website

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OUR FEATURED ARTICLE

“How To Forgive Someone Who Has Hurt You: In 15 Steps”
by Wayne Dyer
Part One this week – part 2 next month..

Forgiving others is essential for spiritual growth. Your experience of someone who has hurt you, while painful, is now nothing more that a thought or feeling that you carry around. These thoughts of resentment, anger, and hatred represent slow, debilitating energies that will dis-empower you if you continue to let these thoughts occupy space in your head. If you could release them, you would know more peace.

Below I share how to forgive someone who has hurt you in 15 steps:

Step 1: Move On to the Next Act

forgive Your past history and all of your hurts are no longer here in your physical reality. Don’t allow them to be here in your mind, muddying your present moments. Your life is like a play with several acts. Some of the characters who enter have short roles to play, others, much larger. Some are villains and others are good guys. But all of them are necessary, otherwise they wouldn’t be in the play.Embrace them all, and move on to the next act.

Step 2: Reconnect to Spirit

Make a new agreement with yourself to always stay connected to Spirit even when it seems to be the most difficult thing to do. If you do this, you will allow whatever degree of perfect harmony that your body was designed for to proliferate. Turn your hurts over to God, and allow Spirit to flow through you.

Your new agreement with reality in which you’ve blended your physical self and your personality with your spiritual God-connected self will begin to radiate a higher energy of love and light. Wherever you go, others will experience the glow of your God consciousness, and disharmony and disorder and all manner of problems simply will not flourish in your presence. Become “an instrument of thy peace,” as St. Francis desires in the first line of his famous prayer.

Step 3: Don’t Go to Sleep Angry

Each night as I drift off to sleep, I adamantly refuse to use this precious time to review anything that I do not want to be reinforced in the hours of being immersed in my subconscious mind. I choose to impress upon my subconscious mind my conception of myself as a Divine creator in alignment with the one mind.

I reiterate my I am’s, which I have placed in my imagination, and I remember that my slumber will be dominated by my last waking concept of myself. I am peaceful, I am content, I am love, and I attract only to myself those who are in alignment with my highest ideals of myself.

This is my nightly ritual, always eschewing any temptation to go over any fear of unpleasantness that my ego might be asking me to review. I assume the feeling in my body of those I am statements already fulfilled, and I know that I’m allowing myself to be programmed while asleep, for the next day I rise knowing that I am a free agent.

Step 4: Switch the Focus from Blaming Others to Understanding Yourself

Forgiveness Whenever you’re upset over the conduct of others, take the focus off those you’re holding responsible for your inner distress. Shift your mental energy to allowing yourself to be with whatever you’re feeling — let the experience be as it may, without blaming others for your feelings. Don’t blame yourself either!

Just allow the experience to unfold and tell yourself that no one has the power to make you uneasy without your consent, and that you’re unwilling to grant that authority to this person right now.

Tell yourself that you are willing to freely experience your emotions without calling them “wrong” or needing to chase them away. In this way, you’ve made a shift to self-mastery. It’s important to bypass blame, and even to bypass your desire to understand the other person; instead, focus on understanding yourself.

By taking responsibility for how you choose to respond to anything or anyone, you’re aligning yourself with the beautiful dance of life. By changing the way you choose to perceive the power that others have over you and you will see a bright new world of unlimited potential for yourself and you will know instantly how to forgive and let go of anything.

Step 5: Avoid Telling People What to Do

Avoid thoughts and activities that involve telling people who are perfectly capable of making their own choices what to do. In your family, remember that you do not own anyone. The poet Kahlil Gibran reminds you:

“Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you . . .”

This is always true. In fact, disregard any inclination to dominate in all of your relationships. Listen rather than expound. Pay attention to yourself when you’re having judgmental opinions and see where self-attention takes you. When you replace an ownership mentality with one of allowing, you’ll begin to see the true unfolding of the Tao in yourself and other people. From that moment on, you’ll be free of frustration with those who don’t behave according to your ego-dominated expectations.

Step 6: Learn to Let Go and Be Like Water

Rather than attempting to dominate with your forcefulness, be like water: flow everywhere there’s an opening. Soften your hard edges by being more tolerant of contrary opinions. Interfere less, and substitute listening for directing and telling. When someone offers you their viewpoint, try responding with: “I’ve never considered that before—thank you. I’ll give it some thought.”

When you give up interfering, and opt instead to stream like water—gently, softly, and unobtrusively— you become forgiveness itself.

Step 7: Take Responsibility for Your Part

forgiveness Removing blame means never assigning responsibility to anyone else for what you’re experiencing. It means that you’re willing to say, “I may not understand why I feel this way, why I have this illness, why I’ve been victimized, or why I had this accident, but I’m willing to say without any guilt or resentment that I own it. I live with, and I am responsible for, having it in my life.”

If you take responsibility for having the experience, then at least you have a chance to also take responsibility for removing it or learning from it. If you’re in some small (perhaps unknown) way responsible for that migraine headache or that depressed feeling, then you can go to work to remove it or discover what its message is for you.

If, on the other hand, someone or something else is responsible in your mind, then of course you’ll have to wait until they change for you to get better. And that is unlikely to occur. So you go home with nothing and are left with nothing when peace is really on the other side of the coin.

Click here to pick up a copy of his newest book “I Can See Clearly Now ” on Amazon.com.

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