Think of a time in your life when you enjoyed yourself. It might have been a holiday or a trip to the park. As you think about that time you may feel a bit happier. Now think of a time when you were sad, like at a funeral, and you will probably feel quite down.

Your thoughts can be your best friends or your worst enemies. They can lift you up, and they can pull you down. If you want to feel happier and calmer, you need to become aware of the way thoughts affect you and to start questioning negative thoughts. You may argue that this isn’t realistic. You’d like to be more positive, but life is tough and chances are things won’t work out the way you want. You’re right. It is unrealistic to expect positive outcomes to everything; when you do, you set yourself up for disappointment. But the next time you are negative about something or tell yourself that you are useless or you can’t cope, ask yourself instead, “Am I being realistic? Are my thoughts misleading me? Am I taking into account other possibilities?”

Don’t believe everything you think! Question it. You don’t always believe what other people tell you or what you read in the papers, so why accept everything your thoughts tell you? You don’t need to replace negative thoughts with positive ones, but you do need to start replacing them with more realistic ones.

What is your biggest challenge in extricating old negative thoughts?

When this stage is reached with the beloved, the healing process begins to branch out into other aspects of your life. The following changes will often be in evidence:

• You stop measuring people by whether they live up to your expectations. You begin to resist the urge to correct their mistakes and give unwanted advice.
• You lessen your habit of taking care of others without really caring for them.
• You become tired of trying to keep track of every detail of your life and bored with people who have always given in to you.
• You begin to listen to objections and disagreements instead of using them to trigger your own opinion.
• Unexpected emotions come to the surface. This usually arouses self-criticism because you can’t control your feelings anymore as you once did. At another level, however, this eruption of emotions comes as a great relief.
• Your impatience begins to lessen.
• You take stress seriously, no longer believing that you thrive on it.
• You begin to listen to your body, which has all along been giving you signals of tightness, fatigue, etc.
• Your mind gives up calculating every move in advance.
• You stop holding grudges and remembering slights. Resentment begins to be replaced by tolerance.
• You quit setting external goals for yourself and believing that achieving these goals faster, better, and more tirelessly makes you a good person.

How can you love without need? Know the difference between ego and spirit.

How intricately these wild animals are part of nature, I thought, and how vulnerable they are to the shifts and changes that will result because of global warming. I was reminded of the words of a wise and thoughtful Cherokee medicine priest, David Winston, who told me that the Cherokee believe that humans are here on Earth, in part, as caretakers of the Great Life. Creation gave us all gifts, he said, and the gifts are the basis for that specific species’ offering back to Creation. The bee makes honey, the maple tree runs sap and the silkworm spins silk.

Our gift as humans is our large cerebral cortex, he says, and our offering or role is to find our way back to the path of being truly human and to leave the Earth better than we found it by using our problem-solving abilities. He says this gift was too much for us and, traumatized, our spirit shattered into two, our hearts as one and the shadowy side of human nature as the other. The result of this shattered spirit is the “John Grabs All” mentality toward the Earth.

Weaving our heart and shadow back together is very hard work, what the Cherokee call remaking yourself. This is necessary to heal so that we may find our way back to fulfill our sacred spiritual contract and become caretakers of the Earth.

I have a deep sense of trust that humans’ problem-solving abilities will begin to get a handle on solving global warming. Next time around, instead of “John Grabs All” we will humbly acknowledge that we are all interconnected and we need to caretake the whole.

How are you being a caretaker of the planet, or the animals on our planet? Share your thoughts in the comment field below.

Awareness has depth.
The deeper you go, the more reality will change.
Reality is dependent upon your state of consciousness.
Ass your awareness goes deeper, it acquires more power.
This power can change the world, both inside and out.
There are no facts that cannot be influenced by awareness.
Ultimately your awareness creates everything you experience.

Regarding this list, I can imagine someone saying, Well, if all that is true for everyone, then it must be true for religious people and scientists. Happily, it is. People from every walk of life have stepped into the invisible realm. The scientific label for this place is quantum, although it would be more fair to call it quantum with a difference. The difference is that humans—and not just quarks and superstrings—have a place in the invisible realm.

In cosmic consciousness, we find that relationship is the most important thing in life; everything in life is a confluence of relationships. We begin to see that everything is a balance between feminine and masculine energies, the yin and yang, and anytime there is more of one than the other, we are out of balance. Right now, we need to reawaken the feminine because the dominance of the masculine has led to belligerence, arrogance, and aggression, the very problems we see in the world right now.

In cosmic consciousness, we are aware that we are not the physical body, nor are we the mind and all the roles we play. We are the silent witness, and a sense of freedom and liberation comes out of this awareness.
We are involved in our roles, and yet we are free at the same time. We recognize that after death our spirit will continue to play other roles, and we feel more ease. As we abide in cosmic consciousness and allow it to blossom, the universe plays itself through us, and the whole dance of life becomes effortless.

The physical world we normally experience is a shadow of the real world. The real world, the world of spirit, exists behind a veil, and the veil is our own conditioning. In truth, we are not bound by the world of space, time, matter, and causation, but the veil prevents us from seeing this truth. It also prevents us from living in power, freedom, and grace.
In the fourth state of consciousness, we begin to sense the deeper reality that is orchestrating the physical world, and there is a tearing in the veil that separates the physical and spiritual realms. Just as we have to wake up from the dream state to experience waking consciousness, we have to wake up from what we call waking consciousness to glimpse our spirit, our inner self. This is called glimpsing the soul, and it’s the fourth state of consciousness. It’s simply to be in touch with our soul.

This leads to the fifth state of consciousness, or cosmic consciousness, when our soul fully wakes up in waking, dreaming, and sleeping. Our body can be fast asleep, but our soul, the silent witness, is watching the body in deep sleep. Our body can be walking, and the silent witness is watching the body walk. Our awareness is localized in space time, and it’s non-local, or transcendent, at the same time.

If we don’t interfere with nature’s intelligence, then we start to awaken into the sixth state of consciousness, divine consciousness. In divine consciousness, we see and feel the presence of spirit in everything. When we wake up in divine consciousness, we don’t just see a leaf, or a table, or a cloud, or a rainbow; we see the whole universe being all these things.

Next, we waken to the seventh state of consciousness, which is unity consciousness. This is when the spirit inside us, which is now fully awake, merges with the spirit inside objects, which are also now fully awake.
The universe is conscious, and because it is conscious, it is conscious of itself. So the eighth state of consciousness, infinite consciousness, is its own observer. The observer is the discontinuity, the gap, the off.

1. Find a place and time where you won’t be interrupted.

2. Feel for any sensations in you physical body: Tingling, pain, pressure–anything. Place your attention in that area. Allow the sensation to expand and capture your full attention. Quietly ask the sensation what it represents, and why it is there.

3. Use as many forms of communication as possible. You might perceive images, sounds, and kinesthetic sensations in your muscles and tendons.

4. During meditation, prior to sleep or while relaxing, notice your visual imagery. What are the colors, symbols or actual scenes? Hold within your consciousness specific questions. Anything will do. Should I change my diet? What do I need to learn most right now? Is _______ a good movie? Send the question away from you into the region of your visions, and release it. Watch what happens. Do you see another scene? Do symbols come directly to your awareness? Do you feel differently?

5. Throughout the day, assess your feelings. While walking down a street, you may feel like heading in an other direction. While driving home, you may feel like changing your career. While talking with your spouse, you may fee like going out to dinner.

6. Play with these thoughts, feelings, and images. Notice if symbols intuitively mean something to you. Further attend to them by following their lead and using them as guidance. Start with minor suggestions at first, like walking in another direction and going out to dinner on the spur of the moment. For larger, life-changing directions, investigate further. Enter a full, inner dialogue with yourself, using as many modes of perception as possible.

7. You will develop your own internal language from the symbols, sensations, and other perceptions you experience. With time you will isolate those that work best for you.

8. Trust this information. You will discover that this information has your best interests at heart.

They are non-locally present in our soul, they manifest in our brain cells, and they get encoded in every cell of our body.

Your body is a field of ideas, and the body you’re experiencing right now is an expression of all of the ideas you have about it. If you have the idea that your body is a physical machine, that it’s supposed to age a certain way, that it gets imbalanced because of environmental changes, all of these ideas translate into chemical changes in the body. If these ideas change, and they will change according to scientific discovery, then just that change in how you view the body will spontaneously cause transformations in the body.

You participate in creating your reality by interpreting your sensory experience. The world is a construct of your won interpretations.
The human body is a field of ideas, and the body you experience is an expression of all the ideas you have about it.
When the rhythms of your body-mind are in sync with nature’s rhythms, everything is effortless and the universe flows through you in joyful ecstasy.

When you are comfortable with both your strengths and weaknesses, you radiate simple, unaffected humanity. This is the essence of being lovable because you are not subject to behaviors that drive love away. You do not constantly look for approval by getting caught up in thinking: What do others think of me? Am I superior, am I inferior? Do people like me, or do they dislike me? You don’t constantly compare yourself to an ideal that doesn’t exist. Your ego doesn’t say to you, “I’m not good enough. I’m not pretty enough. I’m not handsome enough. I’m not rich enough.”

If your experience of yourself is object-referred, it is fear-based and resistant to what is. If your experience of yourself is self-referred, it is love-based and accepting of what is. Self-referred people are natural and unaffected by the opinions of others. They are innocent, simple and childlike. Thank you, God, for making me just like I am. I have good things, and I have bad things; I have all things in me. I am complete. Self-acceptance, total self-acceptance, means self-forgiveness. When you forgive yourself and stop judging yourself, then you won’t judge others, and there will be less conflict in the world.

All relationship is a mirror to the self. Identify the qualities that attract you to others, and the qualities that repel you. Write them down on a piece of paper. This is who you are. And if you accept yourself as you are, and love yourself as you are, you become immensely attractive because you are natural.

The massage takes only a few minutes, and it will almost immediately help bring nourishing blood to the brain and naturally stimulate it. This simple physical act opens the gate to reflection and can be done anywhere, anytime. Tapping into our energy flows can be mental or physical. This gentle exercise starts energy flowing immediately.

1. Light frankincense in a burner, then gently blow out the flame. Wave a feather or your hand over the burning edge of the incense to fan it slightly and keep it burning. Inhale this ephemeral, delicately woodsy smoke of the ages; realize that what you smell is the same scent that fascinated the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans.

2. As this timeless aroma permeates the room, allow yourself to submit to its power. Be calmed, be transported to a level of genuine relaxation, be at peace in silence.

3. Curve your fingers inward toward you and, beginning in the middle of your forehead, tap gently. Move the fingers to the side of your head, as if you were opening up your brain. Tap gently.

4. Next, start at the top of your head and move your fingers down to the temples. Tap gently.

5. Make the same gesture from the top of your head to the bottom of the back of your skull. Tap one more time.

You can do this exercise using the five steps here, or perform a simpler version without tapping. Move your fingers to the temples and rest for a few moments. By just allowing the energy points on the tips of your fingers to rest on your skin, you can transmit warmth and energy to your skin and help yourself relax. Next, move your fingers from the top of your head down the back of your head to the top of your neck. Rest your fingers at your nape. Feel the warmth emanating from your fingertips, and notice how it relaxes you.

With your eyes closed, imagine yourself opening up to the world and all its possibilities. Rest quietly for a few more moments to still your mind and allow reflection on the mystery of life and your connection to it. Now open your eyes. Feel how refreshed and energized you have become. Sit quietly for another few minutes, allowing this wonderful new feeling to wash over you.

Extinguish the incense and continue with your day, more alert, more aware, more energetic.