Healing the Pain Program

If you want to understand why people continue to create abusive situations in their lives, (or in yours) I recommend that you read "A New Earth" by Eckhart Tolle. You can also watch the webcast of he and Oprah discussing the book chapter by chapter. If you go to Oprah's web site you can sign up for free to participate in this ongoing event. Then you will be able to view all the discussions at your leisure.

This book explains how and why we create pain in our lives and how to stop that unconscious behavior pattern. The amount of healing I am experiencing as a direct result of reading this book and implementing its suggestions is profound. I know there is a lot of negative talk on the blogs about Eckhart Tolle, but if you read his work or watch the videos, you'll know those people are just coming from fear. They are so invested in their pain and fear that they don't want to heal.

If you want to heal yourself and your life, check this out for yourself. Then you can decide if its for you or not. Just don't let other people make that decision for you. I share this because it IS working for me.

Uploaded on authorSTREAM by  JacquelineStone

I created an affirmation slide show for experiencing oneness and practicing presence. It is now available to view or download free on author Stream. If you have read or are reading Eckhart Tolle's "A New Earth" or "The Power of Now" you may get more out of it than someone who hasn't.

This is my gift to anyone who is ready to receive it. Empowerment is not just something we do for ourselves, but something we do for the benefit of all humanity, for all life.

Uploaded on authorSTREAM by  JacquelineStone

You Are Wonderful!

You are a worthy, wonderful human being! How often do you hear that? How often do you say it to yourself? It feels good, doesn't it? Well, it's true. You ARE wonderful. You are deserving of every good thing. You deserve to be treated with kindness and respect. Do you know this?

Psychological and emotional abuse is more prevalent than physical abuse and the effects are longer lasting. We can get away from a physical abuser, but the words someone used to cut us down stay with us. They follow us where ever we go and into every relationship. The longer we heard how bad and unworthy we are, the more deeply ingrained in our consciousness it is. It can be difficult and time-consuming to recover from this kind of abuse, but we can heal from it.

You are a special gift to the world just waiting to be given. There is something valuable in you that only you can give. You may or may not know what it is, but it's there. It's time to realize how valuable and wonderful you are.

Many people don't know how to love. They operate from fear in all their relationships. They attack out of fear. Unfortunately, we also attack ourselves out of fear. When we treat ourselves badly, other people will, too. It comes from a deep seated belief that we are inherently bad and deserve to be treated badly. This could not be further from the truth. We are the seeds of love itself with a tremendous capacity to love others, but we don't treat others lovingly until we begin to treat ourselves lovingly.

When everyone else is gone, who do you have? You have you! You have someone who never leaves you, someone who's every breath is devoted to your care. What a wonderful person that is who loves you unconditionally! Do you have a relationship with that person? When you get to know the one person who is always with you and learn to love that person, kind and loving people will be drawn to you. Get to know your best friend and constant companion. Appreciate this devoted friend. She/he is waiting to tell you just how wonderful you are.

A New Take on Gratitude

We know that we should be grateful and express our thanks, but how often do we give thanks for the things we don’t like? It may sound strange, but it is of greater value and benefit to us to give thanks for that which we dislike than it is to give thanks for the things that make us happy.

When you say “thank you” for something, you’re not resisting it, but allowing it to be. Remember, what we resist persists. What we bless, we have no resistance toward. It is our resistance to things that causes us pain, not the thing resisted, so it makes sense to want to put an end to resistance. We know we can’t stop resistance by fighting against it or willing ourselves into acceptance. Then how do we stop resisting people, things, and circumstances?

Gratitude is the beginning, but blessing is the full answer. Every one and everything that exists in our awareness is there to bless us in some way, whether we see it or not. That means that even the most unpleasant or downright painful holds a gift for us. It is not necessary to identify the gift in order to end the resentment. Just acknowledging that there is one is enough.

Think of all the things and people in your life that upset you, hurt you, or you just don’t like. List them, and then give thanks for them. Take it one step further and bless them. It may feel awkward at first, but with daily practice, this will begin to feel natural. You will find yourself resisting less and less in your life. As you do so, the things that you don’t like will cease to bother you, will transform, or will leave your life all together.

Sometimes, we all have a tendency to hold onto our anger and resentment. We’re human. It happens. How do you feel when you do that? We wish that certain people were not in our lives at all, but we know that we don’t have control over other people. We do have control over our thoughts and feelings. We can choose to stay in our anger, letting it eat away at us and make us miserable, or we can choose to change our focus. Giving thanks for our antagonists and blessing them puts an end to our resistance against them and our anger. It may take some time to completely let go of some of them, but the situation or relationship will begin to change immediately.

How much do you want to change? Do you want it bad enough to do anything? Try giving thanks for and blessing all that you dislike. You will be amazed at the results, and feel better about yourself in the process.

Injury to Asset

One of the benefits of healing from abuse is the ability to help others prevent it. A friend was talking to me about her relationship, confused about the behavior of her boyfriend. Let me paint you a picture.
He has to drive her to and from work, which is 5 minutes from their apartment, (because he wants to spend more time with her). The first time she didn't want to have sex when he wanted it, he threw a fit. When she laughed and joked with the boy who was waiting on them at a restaurant, her boyfriend was furious and left her there. They've been together for 2 months.

If you have been through abuse, you know what comes next. This road only leads once place. I was able to tell my friend about my experience so she could see how abuse begins and where it leads. She could see clearly that she needs to get out now.

We also talked about our responsibility for making particular choices in men. Most of us want to be in a relationship, to have someone to share our lives with, but there may be other motivating factors behind our choices. My suggestion to any woman in this situation is to make a commitment to herself not to get involved with any man until she figures out what it is in her that is making her make bad choices in men.
Whether it is a childhood-instilled belief of deserving punishment or an unconscious belief that we can't do any better, we have to find the root cause of our choices and heal that.

My friend and I talked about self-worth and deserving happiness. We talked about learning to love ourselves and value ourselves enough that we know we deserve to be treated well. It's all about honoring ourselves with the choices we make. If we don't love ourselves, we won't honor ourselves with our choices.

I certainly never would have consciously chosen to go through violent and sexual abuse, but having been through it, I'm glad that I can draw on those experiences to help someone else avoid them. I think any experience can become an assett, if we learn from it and use that knowledge to help another.

Empowerment & Enlightenment Reaches 100!

The 100th Lens in Empowerment & Enlightenment is "Knowledge Is Best Medicine" by lensmaster LilMizMo. This is a content-rich lens about personal development that I think we can all learn something from.
Monica has put a great deal of thought and effort into creating a great lens, with links to resources, appropriate photos, related products, and opportunities to participate.

The Importance Of Self Improvement
"Quite often, we all get wrapped up in our fears and insecurities, so
much so that we find ourselves wishing that we could be someone else.
When we feel like this, we start to believe that most people are better
than us, this of course is not the case and the truth is that most
people are more scared than we are."

Please stop by Monica's lens and congratulate her. You are likely to find something useful while you're there.

Lensmaster jasmineann submitted a great lens that most of us can benefit from. She receives an honorable mention as lens #101.

Check out her lens list and be sure to visit "Back Pain Relief Without Pain."

"Are you a back pain sufferer and seeking back pain relief? Do you have a bad back, herniated disc, back pain, or sciatic pain? Looking for straightforward suggestions to help cope with back issues?"

Conscious Change

Conscious Change is a beautiful, inspiring lens on Squidoo.com. Conscious Change is also a wikizine on Zimbio. Both are the webchild of Conscious Change International and its founder, Jacqueline Stone.

Conscious Change on Squidoo contains many inspiring and uplifting images, as well as insightful articles. You can vote in polls, participate in discussions, learn some powerful meditations, and find great resources.

Conscious Change on Zimbio is a wikizine, (just think Wikipedia, but magazine), with an extensive photo album, a huge collection of videos, fun polls, and informative articles. Viewers can add articles, photos, and videos, as well as leave comments.

Understanding Leads to Freedom

Many times, when we are in a victim mentality we don't consider the pain that our abuser has been through. Please don't misunderstand. I am not condoning abuse in any form. However, if we can understand the abuser it will be easier for us to let go and move on.

My ex-husband was raised by violently abusive alcoholic parents. The example of marriage that he learned as a child was constant arguing, throwing things, and hitting. His parents traded insults as well as blows. His father was controlling, possessive, and dictatorial. This was what he knew of marriage. In his own marriage, he imitated his parents.

The other factor I had to look at was his pain. He was rejected and manipulated by his parents, then abandoned. Nothing he ever did was good enough. He failed at everything he did, in spite of his intelligence and talent. My ex-husband had no coping skills to help him deal with daily life. Every situation that any kind of emotional depth was frightening and confusing to him. Unfortunately, he thought counseling was for wimps.

This doesn't excuse his behavior but it does explain it. It also gives me the opportunity to recognise certain potential problems in other men. I am now armed with considerable knowledge of the signs or indicators of an abusive person. I no longer hate, despise, resent, or fear my ex-husband. Nor do I fear other men, because I can spot the dangerous ones and keep my distance from them.

It is my choice to live without victim-consciousness and without fear. Understanding abusers is one of the ways I got here. They are not the devil incarnate; they are wounded children that never grew up. We just have to learn not to play with them.

When Wisdom Fails

What do we do when life gets rough and our normal wisdom fails us? I had the opportunity to find out when sudden drama threw me out of balance. There wasn’t time to stop and think or to consciously, deliberately choose my reaction. I could have handled it better, but I got to see why I repeat, over and over again, the tools I have for changing my consciousness.

Like most people, I had a lifetime of false beliefs and negative programming before I learned that I can create myself and my life the way I choose them to be. Habits, reactions, and thought patterns were well established, most of them dis-empowering. While I have made tremendous progress in changing them, it will take time to replace them all.

When everything suddenly went terribly wrong, some of my new programming was strong enough to help me avoid some mistakes. The mistakes I did make showed me where I have more work to do. I had to take a brutally honest look at some of my character defects and trace them back to the original hurt and fear that spawned them. It wasn’t fun and it wasn’t pretty, but that’s the healing process. If I can’t be completely honest with myself, then I lose the opportunity to heal the wounds that still cause me to react negatively.

Sometimes I get bored with my daily practices or think that I’ve done them long enough and don’t need to use them anymore. If I acted on those feelings by stopping my practices, I would halt my growth and most likely revert back to my previous programming. All the effort up to now would then be wasted. I just can’t do that. I’ve come too far to quit now.

I am pushing up the last stretch of the mountain. This is the hardest part and progress sometimes feels slow. The peak is within site, but not close enough to see over the top. If I give up now, I will never know what is on the other side. I will never know what my life could have been. I’ll keep pushing. Even small steps forward will bring me closer to what’s on the other side of the mountain top. I want to be standing there, looking out over a vast, incredible, boundless world; the world that is my new life. I hope I’ll see you there. 

Beyond Acceptance

Its been said that acceptance is the key to all our problems, but what does that really mean? How are we supposed to accept everything? Does that mean that we don’t ever fight against of for anything? Are we to be doormats, letting others take advantage of us, in order to be at peace? No, I don’t think that’s how it works.

Acceptance is the opposite of resistance, but it is not giving in to injustice or giving up on creating change. In fact, we can’t change anything until we accept the way it is as what is. With acceptance, we can say, “This is the way it is. I don’t like it or think its right, so I’m going to change it.” While we are in resistance, fighting against what is, our mind and energy is languishing in the problem. No problem can be resolved with the same energy that created it, so we need to get out of the problem. That doesn’t mean that we ignore it and hope that it goes away. It doesn’t mean that we pretend the problem doesn’t exist. That’s avoidance, not acceptance.

When we accept a condition as being what it is, we have the opportunity to turn our attention to possible solutions. Some times, its not a matter of solving a problem, but of learning from the unfavorable condition. Our greatest strides in personal growth often come through our greatest challenges. While we struggle against the challenge, unable to accept it, we prolong the condition and delay our blessing. There is always a blessing at the end of the challenge, but we can only get to the blessing, the gift, when we accept the challenge and start looking for how we can benefit from it.

Getting to the point of acceptance of what is is a great beginning, but we need to go further. We’re not talking about begrudging acceptance here. We need to get to joyful acceptance. In order to do that, we must believe that there is something good in all that is happening. Now lets take it one step further. True acceptance includes blessing all that is, as it is. Bless the gift, even when you can’t see a gift in the situation. It is there, but we often don’t perceive the blessing until after we have overcome the challenge. Give thanks for that blessing now. Bless the situation, as it is, knowing that it will in some way bless you.

When you bless what is, you cease to resist it; you cease to judge it. At that point, you can gracefully move through it fairly quickly. When you bless a situation or condition, you are immediately empowered to change it because you are no longer fighting against it. You don’t have to know what the blessing in it is to bless something. Just believing in your heart and mind that there is indeed a gift in it is enough to release you from judgment and resistance.

Try blessing your struggles. Bless your relationships. Bless your job and co-workers. Bless the traffic. Just try it and see what happens. Watch how you feel. Then you can decide how you want to react to the conditions in your life.

Choosing Freedom

Resentment: Burden and Barrier
I know that I am supposed to forgive everyone everything because resentment only hurts the one who holds it. That is so much easier said than done. One of the disciples asked Jesus, “Lord, how many times should I forgive? Seven times?” Jesus told him to forgive 70 times 7. The point was not the number, but that we should continue to forgive without limits. That reminds me of an old saying, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” I don’t know who said it or what he was referring to. It does express how I feel about total, unconditional, unlimited forgiveness. Am I, as a mere mortal, even capable of it? I don’t think God expects of us anything that we are not capable of, so it must be possible for me to forgive unconditionally, without limit.

There are many processes and practices for forgiving those who have hurt us, and to forgive ourselves. I have personally used several of them. The problem is that I continue to resent certain people, and it is my problem. I can easily justify all of them, if I choose to. I can decide to keep and simmer in my justified resentments because they are mine. That doesn’t sound like a very wise choice, does it? Resentment weighs on us like a backpack full of rocks. It also prevents us from receiving the good that we desire. That is worth repeating. Resentment is a barrier that prevents us from receiving the good we desire.

When we hold resentments in our heart and mind, our hearts are blocked from receiving. It’s like the mote around a castle that prevents anyone from coming in, or the walls around a fortress. Resentment is a darkness that thrives only in the presence of negative thoughts and emotions. We feed it when we think of our anger and judgment toward others. The more we nourish the dark energy of resentment with our negative thoughts about others, the bigger it gets. The wall between us and our good becomes an impenetrable force. Joy does not live in this environment.

O.K. We understand that resentment is bad for us. Now, what do we do about it? I believe I need to search my heart for my negative feelings toward others. I need to decide that I am done being angry. I have to make a conscious choice to let go of my resentments and judgments. Not just once, but daily. I have had 47 years of practice at holding onto and justifying resentments and I’ve gotten really good at it. It is an unconscious, automatic behavior. It will take more than a few days or weeks to correct this behavior. I have to pay attention to my thoughts about others and stop judgment in its tracks. If I can stop the judgment, I can prevent the resentment and subsequent justification.

In the process of changing this destructive, limiting behavior, I have to be diligent, yet gentle with myself. It will do me no good to forgive everyone else but not myself. With all that I am, I want to change. I want it so much that I am willing to do whatever it takes. The clarity to understand what I am doing to myself with judgment and resentment is a gift. It is the opportunity I needed to make real, lasting change. Now, it is up to me to practice forgiveness and release every day. This has to be a top priority if I am going to be free from this burden.

Ho’Oponopono is one of the best practices for forgiveness. I used it for a while when I first learned about it, but it became a chore and I stopped doing it. One day, I didn’t feel like forgiving someone and resentment got a foothold. After a few days of not feeling like forgiving, I stopped my daily practice. I was once again a prisoner of resentment, judgment, and justification. My attitude toward my practice of daily forgiveness has to remain positive so that I continue to do it. Even when I don’t feel like forgiving someone, especially when I don’t feel like it, I must practice forgiveness everyday. I have to remember why I’m doing it. I want to be free. I want to live in joy, not anger or bitterness. I want to be free from the burden and open enough that joy comes easily and naturally. Do I want that joy and freedom bad enough to do whatever it takes? Yes, I do!

The Chains of Judgment

Bondage By Judgment
When someone has hurt us, or someone we love, it’s easy to judge that person as bad, mean, or even evil. This may be a normal reaction, but it is not a healthy one. Our judgment of others binds us to them with invisible chains that time and distance cannot break. Those chains are built with anger, resentment, regret, blame, and fear. These are very powerful emotions that can eat away at us from the inside out.

As we make an effort to become more peaceful, joyful, and free, we know that we must let go of judgment; but how? Fighting against anything only ties it more tightly to us. Telling ourselves not to do a thing makes us think of it even more. Negative feelings cannot be changed by thinking about negative feelings. The key is conscious replacement of what we think and feel.

In order to free ourselves of the chains of judgment, and other negative states of heart and mind, we must turn our attention to that which heals. Unconditional love is the highest state we can reach for, but it may be difficult for most of us to attain right away. There are steps we can take to get there that will heal us along the way. Gratitude is a great place to start. The more we focus on what we are grateful for, the less we will think of what disturbs us. Joy is a healthy place to be and the best place to create from and gratitude can get us to joy.

Another benefit of gratitude is the increase in our awareness of things to be grateful for. By giving thanks, our attention is drawn to more and more of the things that bless our life. As our ability to appreciate increases, our ability to forgive and let go of what does not bless us also increases. Joy, love, and gratitude become our natural state. We begin to feel freer and lighter because we have stopped dwelling on and holding onto perceived injustices against us. The chains of judgment will fall away as we neglect them in favor of seeking out the good in all things.

Turn away from that which hurts you, limits you, and keeps you in bondage. Turn instead to light, to joy, to beauty, and to love. Keep your heart in gratitude and you will be free.

Off Center, In Focus

My recent struggles have provided a great opportunity to see where I still need to grow. I realized that I still have "not-good-enough-itis." Guilt crept up on me, reminding me of what I was told for so long by the people I loved, "You are always wrong. It's all your fault. You should be ashamed of yourself." The old tapes were still there, even after all my efforts to change my beliefs about myself.

It took a great deal of conscious effort and diligence to catch and stop those tapes. Whether I felt like it or not, I had to replace them with what I now choose to believe. I am a wonderful, worthy human being. I am intelligent and I do make wise choices. Making mistakes does not make me a bad person, just human.

The progress I have made in changing my beliefs showed in my absolute refusal to accept bad treatment. I knew that I did not deserve it and did not have to take it. It was never easy for me before to set healthy boundaries, but now I feel comfortable and confident in stating what I will and will not allow.

It is my responsibility to choose how I feel and how I react to whatever comes up in my life. I am getting better at making choices that honor and nurture me. When I feel off center, out of harmony, I take charge of my thoughts and direct them to that which inspires joy and gratitude. Sometimes, its harder than others, but doing this has made a tremendous difference in my life. When bad days come, I am getting back on track quicker and more easily. My daily practices that bring my attention to gratitude, joy, and self-love are paying off. I feel better about myself than I ever have before. The work is definitely worth it.

Self-Help Books Plexo, from Squidoo

Click through to see the plexo

Simple Love Meditation

The following is a meditation that fills me with the vibration of love, sends the energy of love outward to everyone and everything, and expands my awareness of oneness. It takes 5-10 minutes to go through the whole process, but the healing affects go with you through your day. It is very powerful, as well as simple.

Visualize white light in your heart. The white light expands with each part or area loved, until it fills the entire universe.

Thank you, God, that I am love. All that I am, I love you. All that I have been, I love you. All that I will be, I love you. My heart, I love you. My emotions, I love you. My mind, I love you. My thoughts, I love you. My unconscious, I love you. My body, I love you. My chakras, I love you. My higher self, I love you. My soul, I love you. My spirit, I love you. Thank you, God, that I am love. The space around me, I love you. My home, I love you. My neighborhood, I love you. My town, I love you. My county, I love you. My state, I love you. My nation, I love you. My continent, I love you. My world, I love you. Thank you, God, that I am love. Planet Earth, I love you. My solar system, I love you. My galaxy, I love you. My universe, I love you. All that is, I love you. Thank you, God, that I am love.

This is a tremendous gift to the world that we can give daily. The energy of love heals everything it touches. The healing we experience when doing this meditation is indescribable. It makes us more aware of the truth of our being and increases our awareness of oneness. All of our relationships are transformed by doing this simple meditation.

May you know that you are love and light.
Jstone

Back on Track

This past week, I have worked daily on forgiveness and reclaiming peace. I had to remind myself that everyone really does the best they can with what they know and where they are in consciousness. Including me. It would have been very easy to stay in anger and resentment, but that would only prolong my discomfort. That's a way of letting another person or a situation have power over me. If I want to be happy, I have to take responsibility for my emotions and make the effort to change them.

The little things I do each day that don't seem to be very important are what have helped me get back on track. Sometimes we get too busy to pray or meditate. We don't feel like reading or writing in a gratitude journal. Intentions may seem pointless. But it is the daily practice of these things that gives us the foundation to weather the storms that come in life. Choosing the person I want to be and claiming those characteristics out loud is helping me become more and more how I want to be. When I slip back into old habits of negative reactions, I now have the awareness to say, "Wait a minute. This is not how I choose to be." The old patterns catch my attention, instead of being completely unconscious. Awareness is the key to change.

Today, I am choosing not be in judgment or resentment. The results of the All-State Academic Team judging came in. 95% of the First Team winners are from the county where the judges are. I made second team, but so did the only two students with a 4.0 GPA and the president of Phi Theta Kappa. It is a big accomplishment for a dyslexic highschool drop-out, but everybody likes to come in first. Next week I get a letter from the governor, a medal, and a check at a banquet for all the winners. I intend to enjoy it without resentment towards the obviously biased judges.

It is good to be back to myself again. Taking responsibility for my feelings has been empowering for me, in every area of my life. Thank you to all the people who have expressed support and compassion. You brighten my day and re-awaken my heart. :)
Jacqueline

Self-Defense

Last night, my husband's oldest daughter tried to attack me. The self-defense training I had a few years ago kicked in and I was able to subdue her without hurting her. It was a shocking experience, but I was grateful that I had the training. I never thought I'd have to use it on a family member.

The fact is, more people are attacked by familly members than by strangers. I think every woman should get self-defense training, because it is generally not in our nature to fight. We hope that we will never have to use it, but if we need it, we need to know what to do. I haven't thought about self-defense for 3 years, but I instinctively knew what to do because of the 1 week training I had.

Today, I have to work on forgiveness and releasing resentments. What I feel right now is not good for me. It is keeping me from joy and gratitude. Its up to me to redirect my thoughts and feelings to a healthier focus. I am divorcing my husband, and his kids, but we have to live together today, in peace. My husband is not a violent man. We get along very well. In fact, he came home from work to set his daughter straight last night. He handled the situation much better than I could. His children resent their natural mother because she abandoned them and they are taking it out on me. I don't deserve it. I am leaving them, with my own 2 children, to live a better way. I have done everything I can for them, but they don't want to heal. They want their anger. I can't live that way.

Now, I need to work on my own state of heart and mind.
Jstone