Our Role in Healing

Yoga as a way we can choose to heal.

Our role in healing can include invoking our own healing energies through dreamwork and visual meditation as well a practicing healthy exercise like yoga.

Whenever we speak of healing, we usually experience it as something that comes to us as a gift given.  For some it may be a gift of nature, of the universe, or a gift of God.  It is seen as something we don’t entirely have complete control over.  Be that as it may, beyond the obvious rules of eating right and getting exercise, there are certain things we can do on a spiritual and psychological level that promote healing.

We do have a part to play in making it all happen and there are varying points of view.  At one extreme we have people who assume healing is beyond them, especially on matters that medicine can’t adequately treat and will take a fatalistic stance such as “Well, I will either get well or I will die of this disease.”

And at the other end of the spectrum we have those who take on too much responsibility, thinking that if they don’t do this and do that, they will not be healed—acting like it is entirely up to them and not the doctors, God or the healing energy from elsewhere such as the universe, another a healing person or their own healing energies!.

Acknowledging Our Blocks to Health & Following through on Good Intentions

I think there is a happy ground in the middle which takes into account that we do have responsibility for our health yet knowing there is only so much we can do.  First, we can, as a minimum, try to acknowledge when we abuse our bodies by eating junk food, over eating or not getting enough exercise.  And secondly, we can also make the intention to do what we can to improve our health such as seeing a doctor, eating right and exercising.  If we are religious, this includes praying for health or asking for prayers.  It seems like such an easy thing to say but the truth is that prayer works in many amazing ways.

Tapping into Our Own Healing Energy

Also, another important way to promote healing is by tapping into our own healing energies, especially by doing dreamwork and/or visual meditation.  After many years of working with dreams to create better health, I have learned there is something like an inner healer which is constantly at work to let us know when we are healthy and when we are need of healing, be it psychological, physical or spiritual.  This inner healer may appear in dreams as a physician, a care giver or a nurse.  Once we’ve seen this inner healer in a dream, we can ask for dreams that will include this inner healer to show us the way to healing.  This archetype can become a guide for us, acting on our behalf.  It can empower us to heal ourselves and others as we become a conduit for the energy it represents.

Through visual meditation, such as by imagining sick cells being removed and healthy ones taking their place, we can also promote energy healing at the cellular level.

Working so proactively for our health at the dream level reaches far beyond the physical to the energy level, affecting and caring for cells and the ways they communicate with each.  What a profound role we can play in our own healing!

Treating the Symptoms of Kundalini Clearing Energy

Essential oils and herbs can help with kundalini clearing symptoms.

Image via Pinterest.

Many people are fascinated by kundalini for its many health and spiritual benefits.  It is known that the energy improves health, promotes longevity and gives paranormal gifts like ESP, the ability to see auras and angels, etc.

For those who actually experience a kundalini awakening, they often do receive these benefits ; however, what they are most often faced with is the profound clearing of negative energy that can take place over a long period of time—energy that often is released with uncomfortable physical accompaniments of “clearing” through bodily processes such as loose bowel movements, nose and chest congestion, headaches, and a host of other discomforts that may last a brief or a significantly long amount of time.

While you are undergoing such a clearing, you may think you have come down with the flu or have caught a cold.  One way to tell this isn’t so is that you actually don’t look sick!  Quite the contrary, you may have a glowing look of health as the body actually rids itself of the negative energy that has been held in memory in the body’s cells.  While you feel off, a good thing is actually happening in your body.

In my experience, at times like this, one should not take the usual stomach, cold or flu medications for these events—this will only add to the substances the body will need to discharge.  It is important to drink plenty of healthy fluids such as water to help with the clearing and try to take it easy by not adding any unnecessary physical activities.  I have found that essential oils and herbs may help ease the symptoms a bit.

What are some other ways to know you are experiencing a clearing and not a cold?

Because so few people in the medical profession understand kundalini, most people with kundalini clearing symptoms will be diagnosed with a cold or the flu, and the usual medications will be prescribed.  Here, the person with the symptoms has to make the final call as to what is actually happening to him or her and decide how to use the medication and if it really helps.  Sometimes, I have found that the medication doesn’t actually work because a cold isn’t what is causing the problem.  While not wanting to challenge the authority of the medical profession, fortunately, there are other ways to get accurate information on a phenomenon not usually recognized by the health professions.  Dreams and insights obtained from intuitive meditation can give you the correct diagnosis, especially if you have learned to trust these avenues of information.  For example, if you have dreams of needing to use the restroom, this is a clear sign you have negative energy that needs to be released.  Also, asking for a dream to give a specific diagnosis to your ailment is possible.  Just make the prayer or intention to have such a dream before you go to bed.  Or before you enter meditation, ask for inspiration that will provide the answers you need.  You may be surprised how helpful your dreams and insights can be!

Dead Men Do Tell Tales: An intuitive teen dream detective mystery novel using dreamwork methods to solve a case. See http://tinyurl.com/MyBook4U

The Traveling Sketchbook: An American Kid Discovers Japan, a coming of age story set in Japan.  See http://tinyurl.com/readJapan

Meditation Classes: Heart Centering, Relaxation and Visualization for Health

Spiritual Life Program at St. Mary's, Honolulu

Grow Spiritual Seeds

Starting Classes on Meditation!

Many thanks to your generosity, we are starting our first class on Thursday, Aug. 31, 6:30 pm at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, 2062 S. King St., Honolulu, HI  96826. Topic: Heart Centering & Relaxation Meditations. The second will be the following Thursday, same time and place. Topic: Visualization Meditations for Better Health. BOTH CLASSES ARE FREE! So please come and tell others.

If you want to support more classes like these to grow spiritual seeds please visit https://www.gofundme.com/StMary-SpiritualLife or make a check to St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, send to same at 2062 S. King St., Honolulu, HI 96826 and put “Spiritual Life Program/Ministries” on the memo line. A BIG MAHALO!

Help Me Grow A Spiritual Life Program at St. Mary of Mo’ili’ili

Spiritual Life Program at St. Mary's, Honolulu

Grow Spiritual Seeds

If you like the blogs I have posted giving concrete and practical information on how dreams and intuition can be used to improve health and grow spiritually, please help me grow a Spiritual Life Program at St. Mary of Mo’ili’ili in Honolulu, Hawaii.  We are just now launching a fundraising campaign to support classes on spirituality, dreamwork, meditation and mindful exercise as well as to offer a guest speaker program and other activities-all of which serve to honor the body, mind and spirit, holistically.  Under the supervision of St. Mary’s rector, the Rev. Greg Johnson, I will manage the program and teach many of the classes as money becomes available. Perhaps there will be something of interest to you. Certainly your financial help will help us grow seeds planted by the late Rev. Nancy Conley at St. Mary’s.

To go to our GoFundMe page and find out more, please click on the link below:

https://www.gofundme.com/StMary-SpiritualLife

You may also fund the conventional way by making out a check to St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, for Spiritual Life Program/Ministries on the memo line.  Checks can be mailed to St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, 2062 South King St., Honolulu, HI  96826.

Part II, Intention, Gratitude and Faith: Recipe Ingredients for Transformation

Recipe for Transformation

Image via Pinterest.

In my previous blog, I stated that the road to spiritual transformation is essentially an inward journey that intimately connects us with our body, minds and spirits.  Intention, gratitude and faith are the ingredients that invite miraculous changes on this transformative path, changes that cannot be achieved by just following the rules or doing some other conventional practice.  Why is this so?

The reason is that these traits prepare one for the emptying of self, the total letting go, the kenosis that is ultimately required for transformation.  The emptying of self can be made in countless little decisions or in one major gesture whereby there is a willing and loving pouring out of one’s self, the using of all one’s resources and the expending of all one’s energies to undergo a transformation.  It calls to mind one of St. Paul’s statement in 2 Timothy 4:6, “I am being poured out like a libation; and my time of departure has come.” (NOAB, NRSV)  Jesus’ own life was said to be one long emptying of self for the sake of others.

Intention

Intention sets the choice of the individual and indicates in what direction all energies will be utilized and expended, if necessary.  Usually navigating the spiritual path asks a great deal of clear-sightedness, resolve and determination from the seeker.  Setting a firm intention will martial these qualities to serve the journey.

Gratitude

Gratitude has a way of opening and expanding the heart, tuning one to the frequency of higher consciousness energy.  It also has a way of making the person buoyant in the face of adversity.  It raises one up rather than pulling one down.  Gratitude can therefore raise a person above the fray, allowing for peace and well-being.  It is absolutely essential in allowing the person to “let go” with peace of mind.

Faith

Faith is the “assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”  (Hebrews 11:1, NOAB, NRSV)  It is a type of visionary knowing that instills confidence.  Without faith, one can do nothing involving risk and change.

Applying Intention, Gratitude and Faith to Our Spiritual Practices

Because intention, gratitude and faith are so important, it is very helpful when they are consciously brought into our spiritual life such as in prayers, dreamwork and meditation.  Intention sets one on the particular path.  It is very useful to intend dreams that ask for a specific piece of information or guidance.  It is good training to ask for things needed in prayer.  Faith is thereby deepened when we get answers to prayers and dream requests.  We find we have a give-and-take relationship with divinity.  Gratitude opens us to positive energies on the path because a grateful heart enriches meditation and life by connecting us to higher energies.  And believing all our requests and intentions will be heard and our gratitude appreciated opens the visionary pathway for the change that is to come.

Intention, Gratitude and Faith: Recipe Ingredients for Transformation

Recipe for Transformation

Image via Pinterest.

Many try to live a good life by following the rules and expectations of a religion, family or society.  This practice may indeed bring a “good life” in more ways than one but it is not the primarily what is called for by Jesus and other great religious leaders.  It’s not what they wanted for us.  They wanted what in Christianity was called a metanoia, a change of heart that leads to complete transformation of mind, body and soul—or as some writers call it, the Great Death.  This is not the death of the body, but the death of our former ways of looking at the world which created the negative habits and practices we previously lived by.  It entails a change of identity, a death and rebirth while alive in this body that precludes turning back.  It is transformation at the highest order which entails a great deal more than obeying rules.

Setting Oneself on the Road to Transformation

Assuming, however, that one makes the choice to move beyond following the rules to undergo the transformation, how does one do it?

A very good way to set oneself on the road to transformation is to develop a profound relationship with one’s own mind, body and spirit.  The Kingdom of Heaven is within, as they say.  Therefore, it stands to reason to look here for transformative blessings.  For many people, the Kingdom within is the last place one would look for healing and growth because of the anxiety, depression, confusion, etc. that many people feel on a daily basis.  Yet, this place of often questionable turmoil and striving is the very field of play.

Progress on this inward field can be made by working with dreams, which Freud called the the Royal Road to the Unconscious, along with regular meditation and prayer.  It helps greatly when these practices are done with:

  • great intention to heal and subsequently manifest my true self at its deepest level,
  • gratitude for the many gifts that have been given
  • a profound faith that this transformation and any attendant healing will take place

My next blog will further discussion on why intention, gratitude and faith invite miraculous changes on the transformative path, changes that cannot be achieved by just following the rules. Please click here to see Part II of this blog.

Projecting feelings on to others

Working with Dream Figures: Taking Back Our Projections on Other People

Projecting feelings on to others

Quote by Carl Jung. Image via Pinterest.

It is very common to dream about friends, family members and any other type of person we come into contact in the waking world.  Sometimes, these people can greatly affect us either in negative or positive ways such as generating within us feelings of extreme loathing, fear, passionate longing or intense admiration.

It is important to know that how these people affect us in waking life and what they mean to us are often projections of what those people mean to us in dream time—often an phenomenon that may or may not be true, and may not all reflect who those people really are.

Dreamwork Can Make Us Aware of Projections

One of the great advantages of working with dreams is to help make us conscious of the projections we place on other people.  If we are aware that what we think or how we view a person may be a projection that should be investigated, we are removing one more blind spot in our field of awareness and allowing another person’s true self to speak to us.

A Useful Dreamwork Method:  Viewing Everything in the Dream as Part of Myself

The dreamwork method of first viewing everything in the dream as part of me allows to me reflect on what each person in the dream means to me.  Seeing each person as representing a type of energy within myself allows me to ask questions why this person generates strong negative and positive feelings, especially when I see how this dream person interacts with other parts of myself in the dream.  I can begin to see a very lively drama that may have very little to do with what is going on outside and has a lot to say what is happening within me.  I then may be able to view the person outside in a different light, and with more objectivity.

Unfortunately, for those who do not do dreamwork or even remember their dreams, they can be subject to being driven by unrecognized energies operating in dream time.  In other words, it is like they are being programmed and don’t even know it.

Methods for Getting Unstuck

Getting unstuck can be a challenge met by dreams and meditation.

Image via Pinterest

For anyone trying to move along in a creative project such as writing a book, getting in shape or developing one’s spiritual life, there are times when we get stuck and it seems like we are going nowhere.  Beyond just stepping back from the situation for a moment (and sometimes that is all it takes,) we encounter times when the obstacles and inertia seem to take over, and one feels like a boat drifting nowhere in the middle of the ocean.  At this point, dreams and meditation help a great deal.

Using Meditation to Get Unstuck

There are various types of meditation which can release a sense of feeling stuck.  One is the Inspired Heart Meditation developed by Henry Reed, Ph.D. based on many years of research.  Like many meditations, one is calmed and more detached in a process of observing the breath.  In this meditation, however, the person is asked to experience gratitude for the breath coming like a gift. Gratitude, like hope, has a tendency to raise the person above the concerns being experienced and opens one to what is new and to come.   This gratitude not only opens the heart to receive positive energy, it also opens one to receive intuitive insight, especially if one has asked or prayed for it just prior to starting the meditation.  One emerges not only rested and re-energized but also inspired, helping one to get unstuck because getting unstuck often means getting new insights on which way to go, resolving a problem and being rejuvenated!

Using Dreams to Get Unstuck

Asking or praying for a dream to help get unstuck is another approach which can often bring profound insights on many levels, as dreams often do.  While the answer may come in seemingly unrelated symbols, events and people, this oddness might be a way of just getting us out of a box and see the world in a different way!  Working with the dream in a manner that sees every object in the dream as symbolizing some energy within myself helps unravel the oddness and often brings home amazing results.  For example, with the holidays over, I am going back to work and wanted a dream to inspire and motivate me because I have been feeling lethargic from all the down time and good food.

Dream:  Many New Workers

I am in an Information Technology office with a couple of co-workers.  I look up and am amazed by the number of young men lined up, coming  through the office door to work in my workplace!  One of the workers already in the office looks and me and gives me a reassuring smile.

When I awoke, I was at first thrown off in dismay that the workplace was an Information Technology office like one I used to work at many years ago.  Like many people who try to interpret dreams, I took the dream literally and dreaded that it might mean I would be working in that kind of job again with its fast past and high stress–great for those times but not for now.  The symbolism seemed at odds to what I expected.  Then I reflected on what it is I wanted from the dream, and that was information if I would be up to working–not where I would be working!   I realized the dream was really telling me this:  the “Information Technology” office was the dream space where I was doing the dreamwork to get information!  It could also be the mental space where I would be doing my work. The fact that I had plenty of workers to do the work filled me with amazement and happiness.   They symbolized a lot of work energy available to me, letting me know I would be ready and “able bodied” when it came time to start work.  I knew the vacation mode mindset would be fading soon.

Intuitive HeartBeat Newsletters: Get Your Copies Now

Intuitive HeartBeat Newsletter

Intuitive HeartBeat Newsletter

As editor of the Intuitive HeartBeat newsletters, I invite you to take a look at articles on persons who are using the methods of intuitive training taught at the Edgar Cayce Institute for Intuitive Studies.

These articles are published in the newsletters of the Intuitive Heart Discovery Network and can be found and downloaded for free at: http://edgarcayce-intuitionschool.org/intuitiveheart/newsletters/ Both dreamwork and intuitive meditation methods are discussed in these newsletters.

Dreams and Intuitive Meditation Can Monitor the Ebb and Flow of Kundalini Energy

St. Michael as an expression of healing energy.

St. Michael the Archangel
Image via Pinterest.

In an earlier blog, Dreams Can Forecast a Kundalini Event, I wrote that dreams can foretell the oncoming of a kundalini event. While this is important to prepare the recipient for the significant life changes that will then take place on the spiritual, psychological and physical levels, I think an even greater service dreams can do is to monitor the ebb and flow of kundalini and give clues to how the energy is working in the body and what parts of the body are being affected—especially when the energy is strong and is making dramatic or frightening expressions, such as in repeated migraines, loose bowels or weird jerking actions.

As Patricia Garfield demonstrated in The Healing Power of Dreams, dreams can provide information on the stages of health such as the onset, expression and healing of a disease. After observation many dreams over a number of years, I found this observation can also be applied to the stages of kundalini and its ebbs and flow, allowing me to generally know what to expect from the energy. For example, a common dream that prepares me for a kundalini clearing indicating negative energy will soon be released is a dream of a need to use the bathroom. To illustrate, a short while back I knew I would be taking on additional work and study responsibilities. However, before that could happen, I had a dream that told me I had some kundalini clearing work to do.

Dream

I am sitting at a table backstage with my mother. I am waiting to go on stage in front of an audience. My mother tells me that before I go on stage, I need to go to the bathroom.

Shortly after this dream, I began a long period of strong clearing of negative energy. In addition to the ramp up of energy I felt on a daily basis, I experienced building migraines that released by sending energy and warmth throughout my body. Often these releases would be accompanied by strong but passing emotions of fear, anger or sadness.

Intuitive Meditation Can Also Be Useful for Monitoring Kundalini

I may also do an intuitive meditation if I want an immediate answer to what is causing a weird physical sensation. For example, I felt a curious pain on the left side of my head and decided to do an intuitive meditation to ask what was causing this. After settling in and connecting to my heart center, the vision of St. Michael the Archangel, a protecting and healing angel, appeared looking very much like the image above. It was an amazing shock but it did remind me of a powerful dream I had several years ago of an angel removing pieces of shit from the left side of my head by picking it out through my ear! Realizing what was going on, I then had the feeling I was in good hands and could relax into the process of letting the migraine do its work of releasing negative energy.