Step Two in the 12&12 of AA says “Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”  This helps us to recognize that we are a power and therefore need a Power Greater than Self to restore us to sanity.  Sanity is described as soundness of mind.  The 5th paragraph in Step Two talks about quitting the ”debating society” and says that all we need is an “open mind.” We invite a Power into our minds to quiet the mind, and open the mind to something other than the Power of Self.  Read the TLC Applications below and then write on the assignment given here.  Post your realizations, findings, in the Comments section below this post.

Every 15 minutes ask a Power-Greater-Than-Any-Human-Power to open your mind, kick Self out, and come to believe in a Power Greater than yourself.  We invite God in and go quiet.

Give credit for the good things to God, the one who provided them.  Acknowledge and affirm with your creator that you can’t wait for the next great thing to happen.

Coming to soundness of mind…

Today’s application is to apply the principle of soundness of mind… This is achieved by having an open mind.  It is important to know what that means in the context of coming to believe in a Power-Greater-Than-Any-Human-Power. The term “power greater than myself” just didn’t seem to resonate as well with me as does a Power-Greater-Than-Any-Human-Power. This term, we know, leads to that word “GOD” that so many of us just cant quite get our heads wrapped around and what it means: GOD…  I found a great way to start to get to know what that word needed to mean to me… That way has been expressed in three words: Omnipresent, Omniscient, and Omnipotent…  These words will be referred to as the Three O’s…

I don’t need to know all the specifics to begin… All I need is to open my mind to something other than me… With the idea that one day I hope to know this Power in a very intimate way.  So, to begin, I had to learn that my mind is always Self-Talking, talking to me in my mind, in a very negative way, or Negative Self-Talking.  Now I want to turn this into Negative Self-Talking into talking to something positive and powerful, greater than me.  So I really am not going to do anything different than I have been doing all my life, which is carrying on a dialogue within me, accept  that now I direct that talk to what I am learning to call “God”… But this God is a God that has no reference to any concept of God I have ever had… I must reinvent my concept of what I think is God… My tools are the three O’s…

As I go through the day, instead of talking to me, I talk to something other than me… Pretty much in the beginning I just invited that Power into my mind as much as I could… Consciously reminding myself to talk to this Power, or God.  I also made the decision to ask this Power into my life when I felt fear… This was my first trigger… I use these types of triggers to keep an active conscious contact with My God, a God I am coming to believe in… Triggers are important.  The more triggers, the more contact and the more soundness of mind… A trigger is something I use to remind me to reach out for God… I had to get creative and find things that happen throughout the day that would remind me to talk to God…  Like when I drive in the car, I put on some quiet music, or maybe none at all, but I use that time to talk to God…  My words to this Power were simple at the beginning and honest… Simple like: “Can you be with me, right now?   Can you show me how to feel you?” I would ask for help from this Power whenever I got tied up during the day… Here is where my greatest realizations began to take place.

Two things happened when I began to talk to this Power-Greater-Than-Any-Human-Power  instead of myself… The first thing I realized is how I was in trouble a lot more then I would have even guessed!  The only way I could know that is to reach out for something other than me when I was in trouble.  It was at this time I realized what the wise meant when they said, “Of myself I am nothing, the Father doeth the works.”  It became apparent quite quickly, even instantly, that when I talk to God I have soundness of mind… My mind goes quiet. The race stops.  The second thing I came to understand is my mind goes in the gutter all the time with Negative Self-Talk… The dialogue in my head became clearer and clearer and then louder and louder…. I, by myself, have a very fault finding mind… I seem to want to find fault automatically with people and places… I am sure this is because I never considered what the price was for these choices and the price is quite clear today: I get miserable… Then out of misery I do it even more…

Don’t panic when your mind goes into the gutter with fault-finding, negativity because you start to see how much your mind not only attacks the world but also attacks you!  That is another price we pay: the way we think of others is the way we think towards ourselves When you start to realize how much trouble is in your mind, it means you’re getting better and you’re just becoming aware of what has been happening for a long time…  And therein lies your freedom.  Awareness is the first step toward true change, and true change comes from connecting to a Power-Greater-Than-Any-Human-Power.

So be happy when you try this and enjoy the freedom and the great gift of coming to believe in a Power-Greater-Than-Any-Human-Power.

K.C.

Spiritual Checklist…

If you’re feeling a little off-track… things have been a little dull lately… nothing seems exciting at all… you find yourself arguing and feeling kind of irritable… everybody’s bothering you…

We should all have a spiritual checklist that we use from all the way when we feel like we’re getting caught up to a scared realization that we have fallen into depression… and we wonder how long this bout of depression is going to last this time… or maybe it seems like in the last few years it’s just been overall a sad state of depression that you’ve been going through… and you can’t even remember the last time you’ve been happy.

Of course, this is an opportunity to look at both spectrums from I’m a little off kilter to I haven’t been happy in years. “I haven’t been happy for years” means you have lost all perspective and is a total lie… and this is what is called absolutely Pride In Reverse… where we can beat ourselves into an extremely unhealthy state of life. As far as losing perspective do not evaluate your life in big brush strokes about how you have been feeling for years when you are in a negative or dark state. This is not the time to do a moral inventory… as a matter of fact this is the time to not do a moral inventory. After all, you’re never going to solve a problem in your worst state that you created.

So, let’s get back to a reasonable perspective… and let’s say you’re a little off track right now. First things first: How is your communication in your mind with your Creator been lately? How often have you been feeling for the presence of your Creator in your mind? How often have you been asking for thoughts from your Creator… what kind of thoughts from your Creator that you should be having in your mind? When was the last moment that you checked your feelings with your Creator… to ask if these are the feelings that your Creator would want you to have right now about this person or that relationship? How has your spiritual reading been… how much spiritual reading have you been doing lately? How much quiet time have you been giving yourself lately to meditate? Who have you been talking to about your emotional state in your life right now… have you been reaching out for help? Have done an asset list lately? Are you recognizing positive things when they happen and maximizing the good feelings out of them? Have you been talking to people about good things going on in your life? Is there anything that you’re passionate about or are you creating anything in your life… like what is your current creative endeavor right now? Have you been expressing love to the people you love in your life lately? Have you been living in regret about something in your past?

Have you done anything nice for anybody lately? If you’ve answered yes when you should’ve said no… and answered no when you’ve should’ve been answering yes…. Then you now know what to do.

First Action First is get back to talking to God right now in your mind. Maintain as much communion as you can on a conscious level for the next few days…make a conscious list of the assets in your life that have come together over the last year. Ten assets a day for seven days is what the doctor is ordering. Start your reading today… read some form of a spiritual book today. After your reading leave yourself equally the same amount of time to contemplate what you just read… for you will learn more in contemplating one principal for a half-hour than the information you could gather from a reading a book full of a thousand principles… the knowledge you gain in the half-hour of contemplation would not even fit into a thousand books of information. Make sure that you make a connection to somebody who knows you and knows what you’re about… and let them know about the commitment you have made to raise your conscious contact and to improve your spiritual growth. Let them know the checklist you’ve created for your life and make a commitment with them to stay updated on this checklist. Make sure you do something nice for somebody else today. Trying to get back on track on your own is next to impossible since you’re the one who got you off-track. We all need outside help… plus when you ask people to join your endeavor to be happy and grow spiritually you help others to want to do the same thing. So, don’t be shy about including other people on this kind of endeavor… you’ll be surprised at how many people have been waiting for you to reach out to them.

We all need a checklist that gets us back to where we want to be… have fun and don’t ever be too hard on yourself. Remember… nobody should love you more than you have learned to love yourself and nobody should be giving you more love than you have learned to also give yourself.

Much love,

K.C.

Sometimes I feel like I need to shut my brain off…

Question from e-mail: Is there any brain “science” yet that explains why we have obsessive thoughts?  Sometimes I feel like I need to shut my brain off from always being focused on subjects of concern that are yesterday’s news! In other words, letting go…why is it so hard?

Answer: As far as what is going on with your head, as in being negative and still wanting to escape, this is a good thing because you are, for the first time, becoming aware of your injured fault-finding mind… Your mind is doing nothing different than it has always done.  You’re  just becoming aware of it for the first time…. You can’t be free from something you can’t see…

The next step is treatment… Going to God with your thoughts and asking them to be redirected to the thoughts that God would want you to have…. Good thoughts, good feelings and good actions can now be put where the bad stuff is by just asking for the God thoughts when you become aware of the bad ones… So don’t panic when you start to become aware – be happy. For the first time you are seeing what has blocked you all your life… Now the thoughts can change, with the help of God, by taking them to God and asking God to give you the thoughts that you should have….

Much love,

K.C.

This material is copyrighted and owned by Thought-Life Connection (TLC) and is not to be reproduced or used without the author’s consent. © 2011, 2012

TLC Assignment for the week of January 19-25, 2012

The description of Emotional Insecurity is found on page 52 of The 12 Steps and 12 Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous. Read pages 22, 1st paragraph, 50-54, and 89-90 and the TLC Applications below. Then write on the assignment given here.  Post your realizations, findings, in the Comments section below this post.

Learn to recognize when

Worry, Anger, Self-Pity and Depression start coming up…

When you find yourself going there, look at instincts gone astray,

look at close personal relationships, and the

freedom that lies in getting instincts restored to normalcy.

“The tyrant erratic emotion wielded a double-edged sword over us: first we were smitten by an insane urge that condemned us to go on, and then by an allergy of the body that insured we would ultimately destroy ourselves in the process.”

When we worry, we don’t just worry a little bit, we worry all of it. So a little bit of worry, we’re allergic to it. A little bit of anger, there’s an allergic reaction. A little bit of self-pity, there’s an allergic reaction. We have sensitivity to it. It is a double-edged sword.

We learned to look for physical indicators that we’re listening to Self, again. To learn to start to see these indicators before we get into that massive hole. Those indicators are that knot in our stomach, anxiety, the lack of sleep at night.

When we worry we’re not just a little bit worried, we’re smitten by worry. When we are in a little bit of self-pity we’re not just in a little, we’re smitten by self-pity. When we get into anger it isn’t just a little bit, we’re smitten by anger. When we’re in a little bit of self-pity, we’re oozing it from every pore. We’re smitten by it.

Smitten means obsessed. It means engulfed – it’s like a spell, it takes over. We are smitten by whatever hits us, and we walk around with that negative energy. Worry, self-pity, anxiety, depression, all these things that come into us. Remorse, guilt, self-loathing- we don’t just get a little bit of guilt, we’re smitten by guilt.

Our sole job is to find the goodness in whatever it is that’s happening.

12 Step Workshop “Causes & Conditions” July 27, 2008

Self-Searching and The Instincts…

Part One

Self searching is a means by which we can learn to explore ourselves, find out what is going on with us, and where our feelings, thoughts and actions are coming from in our current life.  Self-searching is not necessarily only needed when we’re in trouble, but it is a great daily routine to ask ourselves the questions: “How am I feeling today? What’s going on with me?  How has the theme of my thoughts been?  How have my feelings been lately?”  What is it that is going on for us that we can do some internal investigation on?

For instance, the process of doing this is applied when we’re in the state of emotional insecurity.  Learning to recognize emotional insecurity is to know the four main indicators that are worry, anger, self-pity and depression.  When we’re in an emotional state of worrying a lot, then we need to start the process of neutralizing that state.  We need to find out why we’re worried and what worry is going to get us.  And also to look at where worry has taken us before, which is usually irritability, restlessness, and an inability to sleep.  We can’t shut our minds off and our emotions seem to be all over the map.  When we get in this state, to quiet down we need to identify the source of the worry… What is causing the consistency of worry , or anger, or self-pity or depression.

It’s hard to recognize anger as emotional insecurity but that is, in fact, the best label for anger.

When we see angry people or we find ourselves in an angry state, we can recognize that it is emotional insecurity.  A lot of times when we get around angry people we might feel intimidated, cautious or apprehensive, and sometimes overwhelmed.  One of the things that can neutralize this is to acknowledge that anger is indicative of emotional insecurity.  When someone is being a tyrant, yelling and screaming, intimidating, saying mean things, being aggressive, it is important to know that the source of this behavior is stemming from a sense of emotional insecurity.  The person who is trying to overpower us is actually feeling insecure so it doesn’t become so intimidating to us, or we don’t have to react to it.  Looking at ourselves when we’re in a state of anger, irritability and aggressiveness, or erratic emotions, we can recognize now that we have been in a state of emotional insecurity that needs to be arrested.  We need to quiet it down.

The best way to quiet down emotional swings is to probe the three primary instincts of security, sex and society.  In terms of worry, we can look at: how are our finances right now, how are our personal relationships, and how do we feel about who we are in the world.  Emotional insecurity is triggered a lot by financial concerns and pressures.  If we find ourselves with those concerns and pressures the best way to neutralize them is to recognize that we are having a false dependency.  Do we want to be dependent on materialism for our emotional security, or would we rather be dependence on something greater than ourselves, that being our creator,  and the truth about our creator.  Because life is not about making money or having money…

Money is important when it comes to first things first:  food, shelter, and clothing.   If it is a concern of those three, then it is also important to give ourselves room and know that we are under a burden to provide for those.  In those instances we need to look for the solutions and not be driven by those needs.  Taking action toward solutions removes worry, anger, self-pity and depression.  These elements can’t be there when we’re thinking about what actions we can take to organize ourselves to create structure that will allow us to create more income and financial stability in our lives.

Affirming again that our dependency is on our creator and ask our creator, “What can I give to create more income?”

If it is a personal relationship, the same thing applies.  “What can I give to make this relationship healthier, stronger and to make it more connected?”  Sometimes if we are in a relationship that is in trouble, the giving is not asking to be reassured.  The giving is to hold our own emotions and not be needy or overly dependent.  The giving can be expressing loving thoughts to the person in a card.  In the midst of hard times in a relationship, where there is anger and hurt, nothing will break the ice like expressing terms of endearment when it might be least expected, while we’re in conflict.  This neutralizes the anxieties, worries, and self-pity surrounding personal relationships.

Self-searching and looking at the instincts is so important because the instincts operate below the level of consciousness.  Now when we do this self-searching process we are able to bring forth from the level of the subconscious to the conscious these concerns, as opposed to letting them drive us.  The instincts drive us, and once an instinct drives us it produces a concern, or fear.  And there are only two kinds of fears:  the fear that we will not get what we want or the fear that we will lose what we have.   Neutralizing those fears is really not that difficult, as long as we place our dependency on our creator.

To be continued…

Much love,

K.C.

This material is copyrighted and owned by Thought-Life Connection (TLC) and is not to be reproduced or used without the author’s consent. © 2011, 2012

So this is the Way Of Life… Finally facing myself…

The relief comes at finally facing myself.   It’s indescribable what I start to feel like when I’m willing to start addressing myself.  And the answers begin to come about why I do what I do, who I am when I am…   It was intimidating, but at the same token it was relieving.  It’s indescribable like: “That’s it!  That’s what’s been doing me all my life!  I’ve been doing myself!  The whole time!  It’s my mind… Its in me, it’s not you!  I lived in this confusion and now you’ve answered and said, ‘It’s you!’”

And then I go, “Oh, hell.  What the hell am I going to do about that? You’re telling me not to go to me?  How do I not go to me?  I’ve been going to me so long, and you’re telling me I’m the problem”… So now, I switch my problems.  And now I got a real problem:  I can’t go to me but at least it begins embarking on the solution.  I’m starting to realize that there is a solution.

It doesn’t have to be this way.  You don’t have to do this anymore, one day at a time.

Not only do you not have to do it anymore, but as you get on and move on in this life, you’re going to begin to do this because you want to.  You’re going to realize that you don’t have to be bludgeoned and beaten into humility, that it could come from voluntarily reaching for it.  And this will be the great turning point in your life, in your day, in the moment you’re in, when you try to do the right thing cause it feels right rather than doing the right thing because you have to.  And that’s a great turning point.  It happens in a moment, it happens in a day and it happens in this Way Of Life, where I’m starting to do this Way Of Life because what it’s producing is so good I wouldn’t want anything else.

I realize that when I do the right thing, right things happen.  And when I do the wrong thing, wrong things happen.

I’m starting to learn math.  I’m starting to learn what they meant by negative and negative and positive and positive, and what they produce.  It’s pretty simple:  debits/credits, man, it’s really simple.  If you spend more than you make, you’re in debt.  And that’s the same thing with a Way Of Life.  If you try to perform where you’re not at, you’re going to get in a hole.  If you just try to be where you’re at, which is to realize, “I don’t know who I am,” then there are people who can offer you the opportunity to find out who you are and why you do what you do so you can become what you’ve always wanted to be.

You can’t be something else other than what you are until you find out exactly who you are.  That’s exactly what this Way Of Life is about.

Much love,

K.C.

This material is copyrighted and owned by Thought-Life Connection (TLC) and is not to be reproduced or used without the author’s consent. © 2011, 2012

A Way Of Life…

Think about it… What is our greatest asset if it is not our selves? That is a deep thought. It is one that we should all contemplate as making it a truth… How do I make the recognition of the greatest asset in my life being what is inside of me? Not me, but what is inside of me… How do I realize it? By living it… By recognizing, “You know what? No matter where I go, the greatest jewels that I have lie within me.”

Those jewels are a way of life… They are spiritual principles that have guided me, that have been put together by some of the greatest minds in the world, that have been accumulated, and gone further than the people who wrote them, who aren’t even alive any more. Now, can I take these truths and make them even greater? Because isn’t that what they did with their forefathers, and their forefather’s forefathers? Is it not our time to take these truths and make them greater?

The truth being: Live a way of life that is a good life, and don’t assume that you know what that is. You must learn what that is. To learn a way of life, you need a code of conduct, which is something we all should have. It should be something that every person could relay to another person, that being the basic code of conduct that they live by, why they live by it and where they got it. Every human being should have their own code of conduct.

Imagine the world we’d live in if we were truly our greatest asset because of the code of conduct that we’ve adhered to, which has created a life that we never thought was possible but seems to be getting better all the time.

Trusting in that is difficult… Trusting in that process of “I’m okay right where I’m at.” That right now I know for my life that I am happy. Otherwise, we’d all be short-changed. It must be the ability to be happy today while I build a better tomorrow. Better relationships… While I heal myself to recognize what a better relationship is so that is all that fits. Nobody else has to change, see? I’ll change. Because I have a way of life… I recognize that when I change, everyone around me changes. They may not actually change, but the way I look at them changes. For some reason, when you look at somebody differently, they act differently, they talk differently, and they feel differently about you, because you are different. That’s how we approach each situation in life.

Sometimes you need to sit back in life and wonder, “Do I have a code of conduct?” Do you have a way of life that can guide you through thick or thin? Who doesn’t need one? And if you don’t have one, look how successful you’ve been without having a code of conduct, without any order… A code of conduct creates order. It creates discipline. It creates structure. When you lose structure, order and discipline your life becomes so unmanageable and you wonder what it’s all about. Maybe that is why people take their lives, because something is missing. It has always been said that the something that is missing is a message, that everybody can have, that everybody can live by, that is understandable by every single person. The benefits start right now…

That’s what this way of life is about. That is what’s happened… This life has been accrued from the principles of the 12 Steps… It has been said that I have been able to translate these things into modern language. That it was written in a certain era, a certain time, with a different vocabulary back then, a different structure. It’s meaning is not the same. We use different words today. So, in effect, the 12 Steps had to be modernized… But who could do that? It’s got to be done collectively and that’s really how it’s been done. I don’t think I’ve put down anything more than collective information that I’ve gotten from living a way of life. But, I had to take that print of the 12 Steps and break it down and go further. Into the layers and layers and layers of it to find out, “What does it mean? What is it saying?” And that exploration changed it, but then didn’t change it… It just gave it truer meaning. And that is what I’m translating to you. That is what I’ve learned to translate, that message that people say I’m so familiar with… that message that we’re talking about that is a Way Of Life. It’s not that complicated. It has an order form, but it has to be translated. That’s the key. Everybody needs it translated because every human being – think about it – translates it to the best of their ability, not their worst.

If you want a greater life then you have to find greater information and knowledge than what you’ve got. Or you’re not living the best life that you can. Maybe it’s worth reaching out for something that can give you that, and that’s what this message does.

This message and people who carry this message… You recognize them… You can hear them, they speak to you… And that’s what we’re all learning to do. That’s what a way of life should do… It should make it so that you are understandable by everybody. If it’s a good way of life, everybody should understand it. If it’s a good way of life then it shouldn’t be that hard for people to learn. But, it had to be modernized. I’ve just been discovering this… that the modernization is coming through, in a way, through me. Not in an arrogant way, but in a hard working way… I’ve learned to translate this message and turn it into a modern form. There is a way of life for anybody to understand because I’ve relayed it in a way that anyone can understand. Most importantly, it resonates and it is something you can touch right now. This message is organic… So it’s alive… Anybody who touches it becomes the lifeline of it… That’s why it is such an amazing message and therefore, everybody can have it. No one is blocked out. No denomination…

No race, creed, color, social status, economic status – none of it – can block you from this message. Other than your pride and your ego that says, “I don’t need this.” And you don’t even know what it is.

If it is a way of life, I’d be, “Okay, I’ll check that out!” If someone is bold enough to say “It’s a Way of Life,” I’d think that all people would be saying, “Alright, let me check that out!” How many times do you hear that these writings and this message is a Way Of Life that you will listen to or read that will give you a code of conduct that makes you feel good about the world you live in, and anybody and everybody can understand it?

I don’t know… I’d jump at that personally, wouldn’t you?

Much love,

K.C.

This material is copyrighted and owned by Thought-Life Connection (TLC) and is not to be reproduced or used without the author’s consent. © 2012

12-27-2011

Don’t forget how far you’ve come…

When we get on a spiritual path, what does that represent? Where are we headed? We’re trying to head to a place where our lives are all new.

There is no “old.” This represents spirituality, where there is no reference to the past. We no longer reference our past trauma and injuries. The reason we don’t reference them any more is because we’ve moved past them. We’ve dealt with our history. We’ve looked at those things that have happened with our fathers and our mothers… our significant relationships and how they’ve affected us… what affect they’ve had on us and what affect they can have today… They can potentially spark up. We don’t have to live in that anxiety any more because we’re able to be aware of it right away.

This means we’re on the right path. When we have awareness, we have choice. We’ve dealt with our past… it’s time to move on. Yes, if something comes up we look at our past because we’re continuing to make a “searching and fearless inventory.” But there has to come a point in spirituality where we have really, truly departed from that midway point of looking in the past or looking to the future: past-future, past-future… or even past-present, past-present. A point where we’re actually more in the present than we are ever in the past.

As we move on this path, we realize we have no reference for anything that is going on in our lives today that is still coming from our past. We’ve entered that new realm: the 4th dimension. We’re in the realm that we’re designed to be in: We don’t know what to do but we can learn and we have a way of life that guides us in the day that we’re in. But the things that are happening in our life today don’t have any past reference so they become new.

Now our past won’t be our future because we’ve learned to live enough of our life where the present is new and there is no reference to the old. We have truly come to a spiritual way of life and begun to walk that path. It’s a freedom. We’re dealing with emotions when things come up and we’ve crossed that line: now we deal with things for what they are.

We have to consider all facets of life.  In my own life I have faced that I am at the midway point of my life. I don’t want financial prestige any more. I want security. So there are things that come up in insecurity: “I’m getting older. Maybe I’m not as good any more.” They’re all lies… I’m better than I’ve ever been! I know more than I’ve ever known. So how is it that the more experience we get we start to enter these stages where we wonder if we’re going to continue to get paid for what we’re doing. Not only should we being getting paid for what we’ve been doing, but the value that we bring and the experience that we have cannot be replaced with money. Each year you are at that business, company or endeavor, you’re better than you’ve ever been. I have to own that and I have to know that I have to progress. It’s always about progressing. It’s a great point to enter in my life where no longer is my past something that I’m trying to fix or bring forward into today. When I’m going through something today, it may be of concern or a problem but is has no reference to yesterdays.

I have arrived! Now I’m in a world where I choose to live today for today, for what comes in my life today, with nothing else attached but what is there. That’s being able to be in the now, be present and be in a spiritual way of life.

Much love,

K.C.

Material is copyrighted and owned by Thought-Life Connection (TLC) and is not to be reproduced or used without the author’s consent. © 2010, 2011, 2012

This Application will help you navigate thru this Holiday Season … Enjoy.. Live, Love and Laugh!

Tis the season for emotional trauma….

Not reacting:

Well, here we are in the holidays. This is when deep-seated emotional trauma can rear its ugly head… so be aware. If are you are a sober person it is said that there are three reasons why people go out: Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years…

This is because most of our trauma or emotional damage that we received in life is greatly intensified around these times of the year…

For it is the holidays when we naturally would think about spending time with family and close personal relationships. As we do this, we go through the years, one by one, almost automatically thinking about and resurrecting feelings… feelings of past holidays… feelings of past moments… feelings for some people we don’t see anymore because there has been emotional damage.

As we think of our family and the emotional damage we all have felt in our close personal relationships, feelings begin to come up from the subconscious level… There is great importance put on the holidays in the society in which we have grown up. The holidays represent a happy family life or a broken family life… a big family life or none at all. This is why the society we grew up in puts so much importance on how much family one has… how close are you to your family… how healthy are the people in your family… Do you come from a happy family or do you come from a tortured family… so during the holiday season all of our emotions – good and bad – are wound up into a great amount of pressure on these three days. This is why this is an intense time in our lives because we’ve grown up in a world that says if don’t have a good family then you don’t have a good life. Imagine how much pressure we put on ourselves consciously and subconsciously to evaluate our lives predicated on how our family is or was to us and to what we believe the world sees about our family. Thus the questions: How come other kids have things but I don’t? Why does that family seem so happy but my family is not so happy.”

This is truly the area of our lives where we measure our insides by other people’s outsides and get caught up in a boatload of emotions.

As the application suggested, as we think of our family and the emotional damage we all have felt in our close personal relationships feelings begin to come up from the subconscious level… and the telltale sign is that we’re being sensitive everywhere in our lives… we’re snappy, irritable, nitpicky, grumpy… so we end up with feelings that we want to run from sometimes. As we make plans with certain family members or personal relationships we may talk about someone we might be awkward around or someone who might be awkward around us. Our emotions immediately go on the defensive… and then, of course, there can be those family members who don’t agree with our version of the pain that we feel… or say that we’re responsible for administering more pain than we believe we are.

We find ourselves inundated with bitterness, anxiety, remorse or guilt. This is what produces that emotional whirlwind that we will do anything to escape from…

We all have people who trigger our worst trauma… we know who these people are… let’s not wallow in the messy bog and be a victim. Create a list of who is likely to trigger emotional pain or trauma and take each one of them individually to your Creator and ask for the right thought, feeling or action toward them this holiday season. Remember, with certain individuals this might be a mantra that you will have to repeat over and over again… and the mantra would be “God I ask for the right thought, feeling or action toward ______.” Remember at this time of year that the people you may have conflict with also have conflict with others besides you. It is this awareness that will help you know how to handle each individual separately. For instance… someone that you have conflict with may be far more sensitive and less sound than you. If this is the case, this is not the time of year to bury your cross with these kinds of characters. Remember not all family members are going to agree with your version of the past… we have to allow others to have their own perception. They do not have to agree with our concept of the pain we endured… or the pain that we administered. Everybody is having their own experience.

In other instances there will be those characters that we all have who seem to be completely shut off and shut down in regards to the pain that may have gone on between us. Again, do not make this holiday season the time to confront these kind of people.

What all this means and is indicating is that we don’t want to become the victim of our own erratic emotions.

Healing and choosing where we want to go and who we want to spend our holidays with …with no guilt, remorse or pain.

What is the healing… what are the benefits… how this can be a positive time for us now… what joys we can feel around the holidays now? How can we prepare to have a great holiday season instead of one with anxiety?

Make sure you take the holidays and the emotions that come with them slowly. Ask your Creator to help you stay aware all through the season. The importance of this application is that it gives us the ability to do some spiritual forecasting so we’re not emotionally blindsided. Love, Love, Love Yourself is the theme this year. Be good to yourself. Do not feel like you don’t measure up or your family doesn’t measure up. Don’t measure yourself emotionally by what a dysfunctional member of your family has done or is still doing. Give yourself room… take care of yourself. If you know there’s emotional trauma for you around this time of year then look to be around people who are emotionally nurturing and emotionally healing for you. Stay connected to whatever groups you might be affiliated with… go to more meetings if that’s what you do… find workshops that strengthen you emotionally… find sources of strength for you and tap into them.

In fact, it’s a good time to do inventories when we start to feel these feelings… make sure you do it one emotion at a time… don’t wait for them to build up. If you are aware at this time of year that you are susceptible to these kind of emotional booby-traps then make sure that you adhere to the discipline of not wandering around in the past morbidly. As a matter of fact, if you find yourself going to the past and feeling any sense of pain, do not go into your past alone and without purpose. Not going it alone and making sure you include someone in your review allows the other person to pull you back if you start going too far. Purpose would be represented as your desire to learn and grow so that you can move on from past trauma.

This is a great time for creative visualization. Imagine yourself having connective holidays… emotionally fulfilling holidays… look for something special to happen this holiday. See yourself fulfilled this holiday… see it better than any holiday you’ve ever had. There may be times where you won’t have the energy to think about someone or doing something nice for someone… that’s why this is a building a process. This happens as a result of many holidays not being enjoyable… so now to have enjoyable holidays can actually feel a little awkward… to try and be emotionally available during the holidays can be a little awkward… to try and have energy to go out and do holiday shopping can be awkward… or support family members in the holiday cheer can be awkward. As we walk through each awkward moment we begin to enjoy the holidays more and what becomes awkward is not to enjoy the holidays and what becomes natural is to become someone who has learned to enjoy the holidays. Learning year after year to have better holidays is the key to this application. Put effort into making plans in advance.

One of the indicators of emotional trauma around the holidays is when one waits until the last minute to do their holiday planning and shopping.

Shop ahead for those that you care about. If money is tight then think about writing letters, or creative heart expressions. Magical means anything that comes from the heart… these are the magical gifts that we can give to anybody….nice cards with handwritten letters in them… pictures in frames of special moments that you’ve shared with the people that you love. Don’t attach a financial explanation to your gifts like “Sorry I’m really broke this year. Wish I could’ve done more.” Don’t get up caught up using your credit cards and running up debt thinking you’ll catch up later next year. This economy is not right for taking this approach. Usually by the time you catch up it’s the holiday season again. This is how it usually unfolds… we think to ourselves “Oh I’m broke or I’m just going to keep it mellow this year and keep it low-key. I’ll be okay with that.” We even start to say it to people when they ask, “What are you doing for the holidays?” …we respond with “I haven’t really planned anything I’ll probably – key word probably – just stay close to home.” And then we start getting sad and feeling isolated and lonely and maybe it’s a week before the holidays or a couple of days and that’s when we panic and seek mercy invitations and let people know we have no plans at all.

We end up waiting until the last minute and all these emotions come up and we say we ‘have to get at least this person something’ or ‘at least that person something’ and so on and so on until we send ourselves frantically to the mall and up spending way more than we expected and could afford… thinking we can buy holiday cheer. Which means that right after the holidays we are filled with remorse and regret.

Love yourself, love yourself, love yourself. We all have to love ourselves during the holidays. We can’t buy our love… we can’t undo the past… but we can nurture our inner child and heal with our Creator and create new memories, new laughs, new feelings – good ones this year… by the people that we choose to be around and share our love with in our new healthy lives.

So all in all, make this the best holiday ever by making sure that you don’t let anyone take your season cheer from you.

And be good to yourself, be good to yourself, be good yourself. Envision yourself having a fulfilling holiday. Everyday feel the good feelings of connection… of a good holiday.

Wishing everybody a happy and enjoyable Holiday!!! Live, Love, Laugh… and enjoy it!

Much Love.

KC

© 2011 This material is copyrighted and owned by TLC and is not to be reproduced or used without the authors consent.

Click here to access now.

What is a surrender to someone who is not addicted to drugs or alcohol…

The thing about surrenders is that they all have one thing in common: they are relative to each individual… Throughout life we all experience a surrender to one thing or another… Then there are always those monumental emotional imprints that they leave behind… That is how we know we’ve had a surrender…Because we’ve been imprinted for life…

We’ve all had to surrender to a relationship with someone who didn’t care for us much as we cared for them or we end up with people who stalk us or haunt us because we didn’t care for the same way… We call this our first heartbreak/ broken love… Then we discover in life that more than just romantic relationships break our hearts… There’s the heartbreak of losing a job we really wanted to keep…. there’s the heartbreak of losing a family member, a loss of life… These moments are moments that change our lives forever and can create violent emotional twist that discolor our personalities and alter our lives for the worst…

There’s no way to bypass pain or grief because of broken relationships or heartfelt disappointments… But there are good ways and bad ways to handle these life-changing moments…

As we begin to grow in life, part of the maturing process is to accept the reality that life and relationships are constantly changing all the time… That life is fluid and is never stagnant… We can begin to look for ways to deal with these moments that arise that are part of surrender to the way life is… By doing our due diligence in life to be aware of the life-changing moments as they are unfolding rather than after the fact… You might say something to yourself during these times like “I am having a soul-changing experience.” By recognizing that we’re having a soul changing experience we are allowing ourselves to have a peaceful surrender to what is… By allowing it to sequentially unfold in a normal manner… By learning from the experience what our part is in creating that experience… To truly capitalize on the surrender – which is a by product of realization that comes from the pain – we do not use this painful energy to beat ourselves up or to aggravate our mourning… This energy needs to be steered at the cause through realization of the cause… The only time we can ever change or learn from these painful experiences is to find the cause within us that created it, surrendering to that cause and voiding that cause by taking the opposite action of that cause. To create the change within ourselves we must harness the pain and steer it towards the commitment of change… repeatedly over and over we must steer this energy toward our commitment towards spiritual, mental and emotional change.

The specific change that we need to implement will come from the knowledge of what caused the painful experience… This is how we capitalize on a surrender…

The wrong way to go, in these life-changing moments is the path that a lot of us have a tendency to take, which is to run… which means to not deal with it, to look the other way… We refuse to recognize the trauma that’s unfolding in our life… This is where many of us bury our head in the sand until the damage is so severe that we have no choice but to respond to the consequences that have been administered to our life… This is what’s called living in a state of penalty, where the only time that we change or there is any kind of change of direction in our lives is a by-product of a massive amount of penalty and circumstance… If you feel that your personal relationships are a constant repeat performance of the same characters over and over it’s because you need to change and you have not surrendered to the change you need to make… If we blame other people for our troubles, we cannot surrender to the truth… Which is we are the creator of all our own troubles… We must surrender to that which is within us that keeps creating our troubles over and over again… This is where our injury lies… this is where the malady lives… in what we refuse to see about ourselves that keeps creating the same life we don’t want over and over again…

So capitalize on your surrenders by taking them forward… In keeping the surrenders alive you must never compromise with your ego… If you don’t capitalize on the surrenders by taking the right action you cannot keep the ego smashed… If you’re not taking the right action the surrender has lost its momentum… It will not be long before the ego returns to present a fear… One instance would be that you are in a relationship again where the fear arises that the person you are with is not reciprocating the same feelings that you’re giving them… Or the reverse where the person you are with is seeking more than you want to give… When enough of these thoughts enter your consciousness, subtly and elusively, the fear starts to gain true momentum… Each thought is fuel for the fear… Fear is a power because of the emotions that come with it… Just as emotions do not last if naturally allowed to pass, by the same token, if you keep giving them energy they will grow stronger and stronger until they have power over you… This is when we enter the realm of obsession… Obsession by definition terms, means no will to resist its demands… This is what defines dysfunctional relationships: they become obsessions… We can become obsessed with any painful relationship… Even ones from our childhood… We can obsess on the pain of those relationships as an adult and what we are doing is recreating the trauma of that relationship over and over again… After all, how many people have you heard say they married their mother or father?

In recognizing the dysfunctional cause of these relationships, if it does in fact go back to our childhood, which, of course, it usually does, we must expose that injury today by acquiring the tools necessary to learn to self-search… Those tools are the tools that are being given to you in these Daily Apps… and in these truths being relayed to you from my life to yours…

Surrender is the energy that motivates us to embrace the tools that are necessary to expose that which needs to be changed… To heal that injury from the adult man or woman that has been awakened and created and built, which is to say, been elevated to a new consciousness… Which has guided us to spiritual and scientific principles… Spiritual principles guide us to a power that we all need that is greater than any human power… That power that we all must individually come to believe in… Is understood by each individual using the key principles of this power being omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent… Then we learn to run every thought, every emotion and every action by this power greater then any human power… Then there is a new power that comes into our lives and it is called sanity… This is defined in our lives by soundness of mind, emotion and action in the moment that we’re in… As we align ourselves with this power in the moment we’re in… The scientific principles are those of modern psychology which teach us how to self-search… About healthy and unhealthy emotions in our personal and worldly lives…

Once we know the difference between a healthy life and an unhealthy life, all we need is the power to help us make the right choice… It is in surrendering that we are reborn into the universal power from which we all come…

Much love,

K.C.

This material is copyrighted and owned by Thought-Life Connection (TLC) and is not to be reproduced or used without the author’s consent. © 2011

Give the pain to God by feeling and expressing the pain to God.

Sometimes we get into a state where we’re in an immense amount of emotions because of the circumstance of our lives. What we must recognize is that our feelings must be honored but we don’t want to wallow in them. This presents a serious dichotomy (a separation into two divisions that differ widely from, or contradict each other).

The riddle is this: how it is that we allow ourselves to feel feelings that we need to process and express without falling into a hole of depression. First things first, is to remember that emotions are equivalent to throwing a stone onto the surface of a still pond which creates wave troughs. Emotions are like waves… they do not last. They are most intense when they come on in a concentrated way… If you are ever feeling down and in the dumps when you go to bed that night, make a petition with all of your heart to your Creator to be reborn in the morning. For in principle, every night when you lay your body down for its nightly rest, you are completely unaware of your body while you sleep… therefore you are what we refer to as dead. For is not death a termination of your physical form… or the complete unawareness of your physical form… which is the exact process of what happens every night when you lay your body down to rest. When you wake each morning you are, in fact, reborn from nightly death. Therefore, it is your birthright to be reborn mentally, spiritually and emotionally each morning… claim it when you are in need of brand new perspective.

When you awake in the morning fully expect to be refreshed and reborn. Therefore, to fortify the petition your application is to stay away from the concerns that you had the day before, for whatever has happened to get you into the spot where you felt the need to be reborn had to come from your yesterdays… so stay away from pain memory for a while.

By making the claim, know that this is a new day and you wish to experience this day exactly as it is and that you will adhere to each moment… to see each moment… for exactly what it is… no reference to any yesterdays.

One of the principles that you can use to sustain this desire is to be as willing to listen as the dieing can be throughout the day. Say very few words when you need to recharge like this… try to speak as little as possible throughout the day… stay quiet by listening to everything that is happening around you. Even the noises throughout the day can bring you back into the present moment. A horn in the background of your environment… don’t just ignore it, listen to it. A truck making the back-up signal noise – you know, that beep beep beep? – conversations in your environment… just listen… without judgment just listen… hear the unheard of what is beyond what the people are saying around you. See if you can recognize what is going on in their life… in their conversation right now. Listen to their vocabulary… see if you can detect where it is coming from. These little details keep you in the moment you’re in.

Now, how to allow yourself to feel the appropriate feelings in regard to the pain you’re in: This is where you cry on God’s shoulder… you take this opportunity to articulate the pain that you’re feeling to God… like, “God I’m so scared and I know my fear is not normal and I can’t seem to do anything about it. God, I’ve felt so much pain in my life, sometimes I feel like that’s all I’ve every really truly experienced. I am coming to you now, God, to cry and share the pain that I’m in. God, sometimes I feel like I’m a victim. That I’ve gotten a lot of bad deals in life. God, sometimes I feel like nobody loves me. Sometimes I feel like my family broke me. Sometimes my pain gets so strong that I can’t seem to move. So, I am crying now to you, God, to allow this concentrated amount of feelings that are overwhelming me in my life right now to be fully expressed to you as I shed these tears of pain. I take this time with you to allow all of my sadness to be expressed and I ask for your embrace… for your comfort… and for your light to embrace me. And I ask you, God, to make me emotionally reborn as I shed these tears… knowing that I have made my full expression of all of the pain that I just don’t seem to understand… I ask for your help and I offer you my heart and soul. And I ask for you to help me cry in this moment knowing that you are embracing me.”

Much love,

K.C.

This material is copyrighted and owned by Thought-Life Connection (TLC) and is not to be reproduced or used without the author’s consent. © 2011

Photo credit: All rights reserved by Harlequin Rabbit

The awareness of the two voices that resonate within all of us…

The voice of optimism and the voice of pessimism… How they operate and what they sound like…

We have a tendency to run from pain and from problems, like most people, because we don’t understand how to deal with them.  So when that voice of pessimism starts to come on, that voice of oppression that tells us things are not going to go right or things are going to fall apart, or something bad is going to happen or it’s never going to be right again… that kind of voice that puts us in that hole and makes us feel as though life has gotten so small… That voice, we have to learn to recognize it… We have to learn to identify it and not run from it… To become aware of it…

To recognize that there are two voices within us…

There is the voice of harmony, the voice of optimism, the quiet voice. When we get in a good mood, we are resonating with that voice… We’re in a jovial place, we talk with people, we’re nice and we share and we’re laughing… We can’t wait to do things and we’re making lots of plans, we seem to have a lot of energy…

And all of a sudden we realize that something happened and we have less energy… We don’t realize that it is that voice: the voice of oppression, the voice of fear, the voice of pessimism has come back into play and we don’t hear it, we feel it… That’s the thing, so much of the voice is attached to feelings and that’s the part that gets us, sometimes before we hear the voice. But we must learn that it is that voice that has created these feelings and to not run from it… To be aware of it…

It is in the awareness that we have choice: to choose the voice of harmony or the voice of oppression.

You know, it comes into life… We look at two different types of characters: the character that is the power driver and character that is more passive, a quieter type. These are the two types of characteristics that we’re trying to find and discover which one we are… Whether we’re the power driver or the temperamental, softer type, more of a quieter demeanor, the character that is not looking for conflict. And then you have the characters that is looking for conflict… Deciding which one we are so that we can start to treat that characteristic.

It’s the same thing as with that voice that is inside of us. We have a very strong voice that tells us things are going to go wrong, but we equally are building another strong voice that tells us it’s going to be okay and we also have a new Power in our life. It is a voice that is harmonizing with a new voice, the voice of our Creator, which is an inner voice that we are asking to come into our lives, that we now pay attention to… This helps us distinguish between the two voices so that we can choose to stay with the voice of harmony. It is a discipline…

The voice of oppression, the voice of pessimism, it’s built from the life that we lived… We didn’t understand quite how to disengage from that voice… Maybe we suffered some tough times in life and we went through some really hard experiences, and those experiences make that oppression voice really loud. When we have traumatic experiences, we don’t want to have them again, so we become fragile and we become scared of them repeating themselves… That voice of oppression gets really loud that this feeling is going to happen again… We must disengage from it. Instead of running from it, we must run to it. We must become aware of what it sounds like, when is it most likely to present itself. And then at that point we can choose to align ourselves with the voice of harmony and what that sounds like, what that feels like, and what kind of kind of thoughts go in line with harmony.

Distinguishing between the voice of harmony and the voice of oppression is the application, and not running from it but running towards that voice of oppression… Because we don’t have to engage with it… If you can see it then you have the choice to observe it without taking it personal, without letting it grab all those feelings and locking you up in any given moment.  This is the practice… It’s fun and you realize the voice of oppression is not as powerful as you think it is… With your Creator you have choice… Now you can sit and watch it try to present itself within you without having to act in it… Without having to engage with it, while recognizing that it is there… You don’t have to let it have power over you because you’ve learned harmony and you’ve learned what harmonious thoughts are and what good feeling thoughts are…

So have fun with the good feelings and become aware of the oppressive voice so that you can recognize when it is there and disengage from it.

Much love,

K.C.

This material is copyrighted and owned by Thought-Life Connection (TLC) and is not to be reproduced or used without the authors consent. © 2011

Photo credit:  All rights reserved by riviera 2005