Do you Approach Prayer as a Trick or a Treat?

On this Halloween day, it occurred to me that many of us approach prayer as a trick or treat venture.

On the “Trick” side:

What is the trick to successful prayer?

Will God give me what I so desperately need?

Should I pray all the time, begging him to answer my prayer?

Will more faith turn the key to the storehouse of God’s miracles?

On the “treat” side:

I love talking to my Source.

I pray not for more goodies but for more of a connection to my maker.

I view prayer as communion with God.

God is love and I always keep that in mind when I pray to God.

A Mixture Trick-or-Treat

I think most of us approach prayer with a mixture of that trick-or-treat feeling. However, I think it’s important to know that all you really need to do is ask God to help you to have more faith. Ask God to teach you how to effectively pray. Ask God to show you his love.

Remember…everyone that asks, receive.

Doctors Being Mindful

The University of Rochester Medical Center is teaching its doctors to be mindful.

Approximately 40 doctors attended the mindful communication training conference last week at the Chapin Mill Retreat Center.

Being mindful is an ancient practice that is rapidly becoming popular in the 21st Century. When you're mindful, you simply focus on the present moment. But the effects of doing so are far from simple. In fact, mindfulness has shown to reduce stress and improve health.

Two years ago, University of Rochester Medical Center researchers studied the effects of mindfulness on a group of primary care doctors. The results, published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, were promising. Consequently, the university has decided to conducted regular mindfulness cmmunication training of their doctors.

I think this is great progress. Can you have imagined doctors sitting for meditation 20-years ago?

10.28.2011 The Arrival of Unity Consciousness

GUEST BLOGGER

Salini Teri Apodaca

The grand awakening and end of the Mayan Calendar, the long-awaited turning point in world evolution, has finally arrived.  But this end date, Oct. 28^th, 2011, brings with it controversy and misunderstanding of its meaning, date and origins.  Many incorrectly believe that Dec. 21, 2012 is the date to watch for.  If they follow that timeline, they will miss the remarkable events & spectacular energy transfers occurring around them now.  Pay attention, it won’t be happening again. It’s now, it’s on, it’s powerful, and it’s for you.

The Mayan Calendar is a very complex mathematical and scientific object that divides the evolution of our planet into a 16 billion year cycle, with 13 distinct segments that represent each stage of the development of life, from the first cell to today’s advanced consciousness. The longest cycles are the first ones, covering billions of years and slow stages, like cellular development, then plant development and so on.  As the vibrational frequency of Earth speeds up, the consciousness of life on Earth also accelerates. When this occurs, cells evolve into higher species with more advanced consciousness.

The Earth has now passed through all 9 waves or 13 Ahau cycles and arrived at the very last day of the Mayan Calendar, Oct. 28^th, 2011. Each cycle was faster and shorter, each leap in awareness more profound than the last. This last cycle began on March 9, 2011 and is now concluded as of Oct. 28^th, 2011. It was intense, energetically challenging and very rapid. I’m sure you’ve all felt something, or seen massive changes around you. Keep watching as the world continues to transform before your eyes. We’ve done our spiritual homework and are ready for the fruits of awakening.

What does this mean for us today?

What this means is that the consciousness of Earth is no longer operating from a place of separation, or duality consciousness, but has accelerated in frequency to a place of Oneness, or total Unity Consciousness.  We have evolved to one united organism.  Everything is going to look and operate differently than you’ve ever known. Get ready for New Rules. It’s going to be harder to fight wars, compete, hoard money and starve the poor, lie to each other, take bailouts, or in general operate the way we have been told to operate by the oppressive system we live under. We will naturally want to help and support our fellow men and women.  We will seize our birthright and heritage….freedom , joy, abundance, and opportunity.

How will this manifest? Look around you…Occupy Wall St., universal hatred of financial, corporate and government oppression, worldwide revolution, the Arab Spring, and so on. It’s already happening before us, and its Grand Finale is today, Oct. 28^th, 2011. It’s going to get grander, more transformational, more liberating and more spiritual than you could ever imagine.

There are many possibilities of how this will look. It could be like the 100^th monkey theory when everyone is thinking and seeing the same reality at once and will thus create it. The energy of billions of like-minded people focusing on change, peace and transformation at once could set it in motion. We could then experience a massive wave of transformation in an instant.  The veils will be lifted and the many cosmic presences will become visible because we will be vibrating at a rate fast enough to make it visible. People will finally see what was always there, one united Universe of peace, love and Universal support. Angelic presences, the truth of Spirit, the web of connectivity, the reality of Unconditional Love, all available to everyone willing to step forward into Unity Consciousness and out of fear and separation.

Prepare yourself for a miracle. It’s possible the financial system could transform because the Long Count systems of old will not hold up in this new system. It’s possible that peace suddenly feels like the only option worth entertaining. Soldiers may lay down their arms, wars cease, and enemies embrace one another. It’s possible that the vibration is so fast that we all wake up at once, never again seduced by the illusions of today’s lies and propaganda, and instead join in brotherhood, harmony and love. 

That will be my hope for humanity on Oct. 28^th, 2011.

---

Salini Teri Apodaca is a published author, lifelong mystic, healer, Shaman, and spiritual leader. You can visit her website at www.soultransformation.us

Bon Jovi Opens a Restaurant with Soul

Bon Jovi is one entertainer who has connected his soul to the souls of those less fortunate. He has opened the first “Soul Restaurant” in New Jersey:

Customers pay only what they can afford.

It’s true. There are no prices on the menu. If you can afford it, Bon Jovi would like you to pay a minimum donation of $10 to help pay for those who cannot afford it.

To be clear, this is not a soup kitchen. If you come to the Soul Restaurant, you get to eat in an actual restaurant setting with linens and silverware. (When you are struggling financially and are broke, the idea of being able to go out and eat at a restaurant occasionally makes you feel so much better. I know this because I’ve been there).

But the Soul Restaurant is also not a total handout to people. It's an enterprise designed to empower the community. For instance, if you cannot afford to pay for your meal, Bon Jovi would like to see you donate your time at the Soul Restaurant or other charitable agencies.

Will this enterprise work?

I don’t think that Bon Jovi is thinking about that as much as he is thinking about doing whatever he can to help.

At the grand opening of Soul Restaurant on October 19, Bon Jovi said:

"At a time when 1 in 5 households are living at or below the poverty level, and at a time when 1 out of 6 Americans are food insecure, this is a restaurant whose time has come…This is a place based on and built on community – by and for the community."

Amen. We need more love in this world. I think the Soul Restaurant is a great idea and I send many blessings to Bon Jovi for starting it.
What do you think of Bon Jovi’s idea of opening the Soul Kitchen? Do you think it will be a success?

The True Meaning of Forgiveness

Forgiveness is an important spiritual law, without which we cannot easily manifest our desires.  Jesus frequently spoke about the need to forgive all others before praying to God. Yet, few of us can say that we hold no grudges or resentments against certain others in our lives.

I believe that the reason we cannot forgive others is that we do not know what forgiveness is. Rather, we believe what forgiveness is not. Let’s start with what forgiveness is NOT, then.

Forgiveness is NOT accepting what that person did to you.

Forgiveness is NOT saying that what that person did to you was okay.

Forgiveness is NOT allowing that person back into your life if their behavior is such that they could hurt you again.

So what is forgiveness? 

I had what Oprah Winfrey calls an “Aha Moment” by watching this YouTube video from Oprah’s Lifeclass.

Forgiveness is not accepting what that person did to you; forgiveness is accepting that it has happened to you.

Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could be any different than what it was.

Forgiveness is giving up the perception that what had happened to you was bad, giving up the judgment of that action. Then coming back to the present and living here.

After watching this video, I can feel the shift taking place within my soul. I feel the baggage of unforgiveness—the resentment and trauma of a narcissistic and verbally abusive mother—dropping from me.  

I feel the lightness of my being.

Do you have trouble forgiving others? Tell me some stories of your battles with forgiveness. I’d love to hear them.

World Group Meditation for Global Compassion: October 23, 2011

Have you ever wished that people of the world could show more compassion?   Have you ever wanted there to be a lot more love and a lot less pain in the world? Have you ever wished that you could do something about it?

Well, here’s your chance to put your thoughts to the test.

An event called the “World Group Meditation for Global Compassion” will be held on October 23, 2011.

And get this…

You can join the 144,000 participants (who have registered so far) for a world group meditation on compassion. Famed author Gregg Braden and Howard Martin of Heart Math and Global Coherence Initiative will lead the meditation.

This is not just a random meditation event; it is a formal experiment to see if a group meditation really does affect others.  

I plan to participate in the World Group Meditation for Global Compassion event, and I hope you do, too.

Together, maybe we can change the world!

Occupy Wall Street: The Time has Come

Washington Square Park, NYC

The Occupy Wall Street movement is now worldwide. The movement has raised close to $300,000 so far. Hundreds of thousands of people are standing in the streets, signs of protest raised high above their heads, demanding that the needs of the average citizen be heard (for once).  

Hundreds of protesters of the Occupy Wall Street movement have been arrested, injured, pepper sprayed.

And still they keep coming. Their voices will not be silenced—not this time.

They protest the inequality between the super rich and the super poor. They protest that the wealthy now make all of the rules. They protest that, though greedy bankers largely caused the recent economic collapse, the only people punished for it was us, the average folks.  

The Occupy Wall Street protesters have many reasons for why they protest, but they all boil down to these questions:

When did it all become about money?  When did basic human decency, love, and compassion leave and cold, hard cash take its place? Why are the rich bankers and industrialists running the entire world?

Why?

Why indeed.

The Occupy Wall Street movement is the result of a spiritual principle beautifully expressed by Victor Hugo: “There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”

The old, materialist worldview—and the coldness with which it expresses itself—is passing away before our eyes. While the rich bankers and industrialists were intent on making more money and consolidating their power bases throughout the world, they failed to see one thing:

THE TIME HAS COME.

Deep Wisdom: The Marriage of Science and Spirituality

By Gregg Braden

Author of Deep Truth

During the last years of the Cold War, I had a front row seat as a senior systems designer in the defense industry to one of the most frightening times in the history of the world, and the thinking that led to it. During the last years of the most potentially lethal, yet undeclared, war in human history, the super powers of the United States and the former Soviet Union did something that seems unthinkable to any rationally minded person today. They spent the time, energy, and human resources to develop and stockpile somewhere in the neighborhood of 65,000 nuclear weapons—a combined arsenal with the power to microwave the Earth, and everything on it, many times over.

The rationale for such an extreme effort stems from a way of thinking that has dominated much of the modern world for the last 300 years or so, since the beginning of the scientific era. It’s based in the false assumptions of scientific thinking that suggest we’re somehow separate from the Earth, separate from one another, and that the nature that gives us life is based upon relentless struggle and survival of the strongest. Fortunately, new discoveries have revealed that each of these assumptions is absolutely false. Unfortunately, however, there is a reluctance to reflect such new discoveries in mainstream media, traditional classrooms and conventional textbooks. In other words, we’re still teaching our young people the false assumptions of an obsolete way of thinking based in struggle, competition, and war.

While we no longer face the nuclear threat that we did in the 1980s, the thinking that made the Cold War possible is still in place. This fact is vital to us all right now for one simple reason: For the first time in human history the future of our entire species rests upon the choices of a single generation—us—and the choices are being made within a small window of time—now. The best minds of our time are telling us that we must act quickly to avert the clear and present danger of a host of new crises that  are converging in a “bottleneck” of time covering the first years of the 21^st Century.

The journal Scientific American released a special edition (vol. 293, no. 3, September 2005) to bring the world up to speed on the critical situation we find ourselves in today. The title, Crossroads for Planet Earth, says it all. The way we solve the simultaneous crises—such as our response to climate change, the unsustainable and growing levels of extreme poverty, the emergence of new diseases, the growing shortages of food and fresh drinking water, the growing chasm between extreme wealth and extreme poverty, and the unsustainable demand for energy—will chart the destiny, or seal the fate of our global family that is estimated to reach a staggering 8 billion by 2025.

The key here is that the way we address the greatest crises of human history is based in the way we think of ourselves and the world. Clearly, the thinking that led to the war and suffering of the 20^th century is not the thinking that we want the delicate choices of our survival based upon!

Developing a new level of thinking is precisely what we need to do today and the magnitude of crises that face us may prove to be the catalyst for doing just that! The emerging bridge between the sciences that tell us how the universe works, and the spiritual traditions that give such knowledge meaning in our lives, plays a vital role in the new thinking that heads off the darkest possibilities of our future. But while the crises of the moment may be the catalyst for such a shift in thinking, something even deeper is emerging.

The new shift in thinking is the gateway to human transformation. And because of the sheer number of people involved in the shift, and the growing magnitude of the crises that are driving us to change the way we think, we are standing on the threshold of human transformation at a level unlike anything ever before known on Earth.

The spiritual traditions that I’m describing are the core principles of ancient and time-tested understandings—principles now confirmed by 20^th century science that include the interconnected nature of all things, the power of the human heart to positively influence the magnetic fields of the earth and all life, and the cyclic nature of life, climate, civilization and change. The spiritual traditions of our ancestors got these principles right and embodied them at the core of their lives in their time. It’s the marriage of these holistic principles with the best science of today that help us to tip the scales of life, balance, and peace in our favor, in ours.

While the specifics of spiritual principles may vary from tradition to tradition, the essence of their message does not. It’s simple, direct and states that we live in a world where everything has meaning, and is meaningful to everything else. What happens in the oceans has meaning for the climate of the mountains. What happens in a river has meaning for the life that depends upon the river. The choices that you and I make as we express our beliefs in our living rooms and around family dinner tables have meaning for the people in our immediate lives, as well as for those connected through the fields of the human heart coherence living halfway around the Earth.

By crossing the traditional boundaries that define the science, religion, and the history of our past, we are shown the power of a larger, integrated, and holistic worldview. I cannot help but believe that our destiny and fate as a species are intimately entwined with our willingness to accept the Deep Wisdom of a spiritually based science. It’s all about the way we think of ourselves, our relationship to the Earth and to one another. When the facts become clear, our choices become obvious.

*** ***

Gregg Braden is a New York Times best-selling author, a former Senior Computer Systems Designer for Martin Marietta Aerospace, former Computer Geologist for Phillips Petroleum, and the first Technical Operations Manager for Cisco Systems. His book, Deep Truth, releases October 2011.

For over 25 years he has searched high mountain villages, remote monasteries, and forgotten texts to bridge their life-giving secrets with the best science of today. His work has led to the cutting edge books such as The Divine Matrix, The Spontaneous Healing of Belief, Fractal Time, and Deep Truth. Gregg’s work is now published in 17 languages and 33 countries and shows beyond any reasonable doubt that the key to our future lies in the wisdom of our past.

Website: www.greggbraden.com

Problem with Authority Figures? Six Steps to Overcoming Them

GUEST BLOGGER

Mary Ann Robbat

Adapted from her new book, "Engaging Your Power"

Have you ever trembled in your boots when your boss called you into his/her office? Do you stiffen up and get ready for an argument when a cop approaches? When you walk into a job interview, do you get tongue-tied? These are all physical manifestations of some old belief about authority figures that's buried deep in your subconscious. This old belief sprang from a negative experience or pattern of experiences you had as a child. Back then, you didn't have the skills, experience, or knowledge to cope effectively with someone who was more powerful than you—and abused that power—so it was perfectly logical to be intimidated.

What's so interesting about problems with authority figures is that when we grow up, they no longer make sense in most cases. You may be very masterful in your peer group and you may even be an authority figure to others (a coach, parent, teacher, supervisor, and so on), yet those same ancient kneejerk reactions happen anyway. Until you identify and let go of the underlying belief that is causing you to cower or react in some other way, it doesn't matter how powerful you are. You'll still have those same unpleasant and unhelpful responses to authority figures.

The most important relationships we had with key authority figures in our lives—which could include parents and older relatives, childcare workers and teachers, doctors, law enforcement officials, coaches and mentors, clergy, and others—largely determine how we react to authority figures as an adult. If you had very few challenges from authority figures in your life when you were young, chances are you have few issues with authority as you've aged.

However, if as an adult you experience extreme physical reactions to authority figures, even though you know it's illogical or silly, you bet there was an issue when you were younger! Here's what you can do.

Step 1: Note your reaction.

What type of reactions do you have when you're with someone who you perceive has more power than you? Pay attention to physical reactions, such as lowering your eyes, racing heart, crossing your arms in front of your chest, or butterflies in your stomach. Or it may be more subtle, such as not wanting to take up anyone's time, shying away from speaking up, or always contradicting the authority figure. It's helpful to write down all the reactions you notice.

Step 2: Identify the main power broker.

Most people who have problems with authority don't have a difficult time naming the top person in their life who had the most influence on their adult behavior related to authority—usually a parent, older relative, or caregiver. Once you have that person in mind, try to remember how you felt around him or her. Once again, notice if there are any corresponding feelings in your body.

Step 3: Connect the feelings with a specific memory.

Try to recall a specific early experience with this person when you felt a strong negative emotion, such as shame, embarrassment, fear, pain, outrage, hurt feelings, frustration, or despair. Close your eyes, if helpful, and relive the experience from a child's point of view. More than likely, you'll feel the same physical sensation you felt in step 2.

Step 4: Identify your corresponding beliefs.

Close your eyes again and think about what you, as a child, believed would happen if you spoke up or defended yourself. For example, If I give my opinion, I'll be mocked. If I speak up, I'll be shushed. If I fight back, I'll get hurt or punished. Write down two or three things you believed very strongly as a child when confronted with the event in Step 3.

Step 5: Reframe your beliefs as an adult.

Take the statements from Step 4 and rewrite them from your adult perspective, so they become positive, not negative, statements. For example, If I give my opinion, others will have the opportunity to benefit from my point of view. Reframing and rewriting your old, unconscious beliefs in a positive light is a powerful way to begin changing your behavior.

Step 6: Make your new beliefs "stick."

For some people, it works to read their new beliefs every day for a month. Others repeat them aloud like mantras. Still others practice saying them silently right before a potentially threatening situation, such as asking a boss for a raise. Repetition helps you replace old, unconscious beliefs with new, conscious ones.

Take the time to work through these six simple steps and watch how your attitude and behavior around authority figures changes.

* * * * *
Mary Ann Robbat is a widely esteemed energy healer, shaman, and coach, and runs the Robbat Center for Advancement of Energy Healing, which trains people in energy-based healing modalities. Her new book is Engaging Your Power: Using Your Divine Energy to Have the Life You Want, available at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. Learn more at www.robbatcenter.com.

Thy Will be Done

We all want to get what we pray for. We all want to manifest our desires. We all want assurances that our prayers will be answered in the affirmative.

For that reason, many of us hate saying “Thy will be done” at the conclusion of our prayers. But what are we so afraid of?

Do you think that your Source is going to let you down? Do you think that God doesn’t know what is best for you?

This is certainly part of it. Our egos (which stands for, according to Dr. Wayne Dyer, “edging God out”) does not want anyone dictating anything to us.

But here’s the thing…

When you align with Source, wherever Source may lead you, your life goes smoothly. When you resist aligning with Source—when you allow your ego to dictate your actions—life becomes rough.

Letting go and saying “Thy will be done” is a declaration of your alignment with Source. At the same time, it is an admission that you can do nothing without Source. It also speaks of a strong faith that God will never bring you to harm.

Saying “Thy will be done” does not weaken you; it empowers you. Moreover, this simple statement, when said with feeling, opens up the floodgates of heaven on your behalf.

Try it sometime and see what miracles start happening in your life.