Daily Inspirations Can Change Darkness into Spiritual EnLIGHTenment

Life is difficult – when it is conscious. In the absence of consciousness – without spiritual enlightenment –human beings live in a massive void of darkness, without it ever becoming a major life problem to be dealt with. Normally, one is born, lives 70-80 years, and never really experiences the darkness – unless something or someone in one’s life breaks the seal of the primitive brain, and opens the stored neural darkness to glimmers of light and conscious sensation.

Our Real Enemy
Our real enemy as human beings is not illness, poverty, bondage, or death—but consciousness. We can endure the worst of circumstances and even death – as long as we are not forced to do so consciously. And everything can be going exactly as we think we want it, externally, but if our level of consciousness is too high, we are of all people most miserable. So our brain resists and fights consciousness as if it is death. Actually the fear of death is the fear of consciousness – of ultimate conscious separation and abandonment.

Stay Away From the Light
The problem with consciousness – with the Light coming on inside -- is that it begins to expose the wretched separation and abandonment that is the real human condition on this material plane. We human beings live separated and alone – aching in the shame that something is terribly and horribly wrong with us, and that this is the reason we are so alone -- why no one is there – no one is there inside with us.

iWorld
As a result, our brains have closed our eyes to truth, and created an imaginary world, composed of imaginary people -- where we have a collection of alternating imaginary selves –masked selves – who participate in this imaginary world without having to experience the Darkness -- consciously.

“I Am Not Sick!”
There is a story told about Jesus talking to a group of religious intellectuals of his day. He said to them, “those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” For years I puzzled his statement. Spiritually, these intellectuals were some of the “sickest” people of the day. Then one day I experienced what he was saying: if a person does not consciously experience that they are sick – or in the Darkness – they have no need for help – or the Light – no matter how sick or how dark their lives are.

The fortunate -- or unfortunate -- few have had some major life event or series of events that shoves them into consciousness of the Darkness – and they have been blinded by the initial light of human consciousness. The result is major conscious bearing pain and fear.

So when this happens, what can we do? How do we learn to live in Light?

Connect with the Light of Presence
Darkness involves our brains blocking out parts of the neural network in order to avoid conscious experience of the absence of higher Presence and of the incredible separation and alienation from ourselves and from others.

First light begins when human life experiences expose these dark areas of the brain to light – human conscious awareness. If higher Presence is not also accessed, the brain will reassert darkness, and the human conscious awareness will fade back into the dark abyss.

Sustained Light begins with the insertion of an emerging spiritual experience of higher Presence, which most frequently begins with the experience, strength, and hope of others. So to begin we need to connect with others, specifically through the experience of daily inspirations. We need to connect with the Light of Presence.

Openings
Daily inspirations are others’ expressed experiences of the Light that has entered and influenced their lives. These expressions are openings for receiving spiritual enlightenment that reconnects us with the Light. I believe that sometimes these expressions were conscious experiences for the author, and sometimes they were expressed in unconsciousness. Ultimately, what I hear and experience is more important than what was said – or meant.

These openings – daily inspirations -- include inspiring life quotes, inspirational readings, spiritual coaching, and the stories and sharings by others of spiritual principles -- their application of spiritual enlightenment.

Connecting with the Light of Presence means to collect and regularly experience those daily inspirations --spiritual openings and resources -- that bring spiritual enlightenment and Presence into our Darkness on a regular basis.

The Light of Presence reveals and heals the Darkness of the past and present – creating openings and opportunities for spiritual enlightenments and a Better Life by Higher Design.

Daily Inspirations Jewelry and Gifts .
Daily Inspirations Readings
Daily Inspirational Clothing, Daily Inspiration Music

Photography/graphics by W. Wass

Twelve Spiritual Principles of Daily Inspirations And Spiritual Enlightenment: Part Five -- Spiritual Therapy

Now that we have completed an initial spiritual history of our human disease, and have shared it with our higher Presence and ourselves by admitting its secrets to a spiritual coach or guide, these next two spiritual principles are the spiritual therapy which can bring spiritual healing.

Daily inspirations are sources of spiritual enlightenment and Presence from inspiring life quotes, inspirational readings, spiritual coaching, spiritual meditations, and others’ personal stories and experiences. They prepare us to receive spiritual therapy, and they are administered regularly as actual spiritual therapy.

Daily inspirations provide sources of spiritual energy – intimate Presence – which begin restoring us to spiritual enlightenment with others, ourselves and our higher Presence.

Sixth Spiritual Principle: We became entirely ready to have our higher Presence treat and heal the symptoms of our humanness.

As we disclose our secrets, we begin and continue the healing process of spiritual therapy for our wounded brains. To continue the process of spiritual healing and spiritual enlightenment, we must proceed through the progression of spiritual therapy treatments – inserting and improving conscious connection to our higher Presence into the unPresence. For this spiritual principle to operate, two things are necessary:
1. Our level of conscious human experience – pain -- must be great enough to create a willingness to be treated. Short term, spiritual therapy is going to increase our neural discomfort. Long term, only spiritual therapy will actually heal our humanness and eliminate our symptoms. If the conscious pain is not great enough we will abandon spiritual therapy, and return to active human illness.
2. Our level of conscious spiritual Presence must be great enough to protect us from being overwhelmed by emerging consciousness, and by resulting emotional pain. Our level of higher spiritual Presence must be great enough to restore serenity to our unPresent neural pathways.

This spiritual principle involves preparation for spiritual therapy, and the maintenance of this preparation, both by the steady practice of daily inspirations with the help of spiritual coaching.

Seventh Spiritual Principle: We humbly asked Him and/or Her to heal our humanness.

We ask humbly because we are powerless to remove our own symptoms and illness. This too is a part of the process. I cannot treat my own illness or remove my own symptoms. I must maintain and experience an intimate relationship with my higher Presence that allows me to ask and receive the necessary spiritual therapy of Presence.

We receive the spiritual therapy of increasing Presence
1. When we are faced with circumstances that make our illness and symptoms conscious.
2. When we respond – humbly – to these circumstances and events by disclosing our feelings and experiences in spiritual coaching, and asking through this support and through daily inspirations for spiritual healing.
3. When we have experienced the renewed calmness and serenity of spiritual enlightenment.

In practicing these principles of spiritual enlightenment and spiritual therapy, we begin to regain our lost and wounded selves from the neural abyss of our brains – and our lives become a Better Place by Higher Design.

Daily Inspirations Jewelry and Gifts .
Daily Inspirations Readings
Daily Inspirational Clothing, Daily Inspiration Music

Photography/graphics by W. Wass

Step Eight -- Changing Memories from the Past -- Daily Inspirations

Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
(Step Eight from the Twelve Steps of AA)

I have done quite a bit of listening and reflection on this step because I have found its spiritual principles critical to deeper, more wounded areas of my lost selves. I believe that it is important to clarify my experience of the word “spiritual”. I experience spirituality as the level of conscious contact –conscious higher Presence -- I have with my God, then with myself, and finally with others.

As I was journaling today, several experiences and spiritual awakenings appeared.

Simplify

First was the need to break the principle down into simpler pieces and then reconnect them into a more conscious and effective whole.
1. “Make a list”. Write it down in an orderly columned fashion.
2. “Of all persons” – as in Step 4, list every person and relationship important enough to be remembered, and be prepared to remember more.
3. “Of all persons we had harmed” – rate each person on a scale from 1-10 as to how much we “feel” we harmed them – essentially rating our level of guilt when we remember or think of them. These levels are only perceptions and not actual facts. This is not rating how much we “wronged” them because Step One – admitted we were powerless – removes any moral judgment from what we are rating.
4. “Become willing” – “and able” – reach a level of conscious contact with our God where we have the ability to choose addressing our perceptions of having harmed others and change what we can. If we do not have a level of conscious contact that matches our levels of perceptual guilt and shame, dealing with harms will be virtually impossible -- only options and not real choices we can exercise.
5. “To make amends” – we reach a level of conscious contact with our God where we can actually decide and act to change our perceptions of our perceived harm – internally and/or externally.
6. “To them all” – to the extent we can amend or change them all, we will become freed from the flesh eating cancer of our disease of shame and guilt. We will become reborn to our truest and deepest selves.

Symptoms of Our Injuries and Disease

Step 4: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

Another spiritual awakening was how Step 8 relates to Step 4. Step 4 deals primarily with the symptoms of our disease by remembering the harm or injury that was done to us by others. Step 8 reviews the symptoms of our disease by looking at the advanced stages and effects of our injuries and disease – how we harmed others, resulting in even more harm to ourselves. The focus of each of these steps is at a different level of our illness.

We Are Dealing with Perceptions Not Facts
Still another spiritual awakening is that Step 8 – as well as Step 4 – is really only dealing with perceptions. Our “victims” frequently have very different perceptions of what actually occurred. And perceptions are more powerful than actual facts – what actually occurred may ultimately be of minimal to no importance.

As we begin to practice this principle, we need to realize the role of perception in this process. There is my perception of what happened, and their perception of what happened. “They” and I may not remember, or our brains may deny what actually happened (denial), or our brains may exaggerate or distort the details by attaching the “harm” to other “harms” or separations received from others.


Definition of Harm
An important part of this step, which is also clarifying about Step 4, is the actual experience being referenced with the word “harm”. My experience is that “harm” is any situation or circumstance within a relationship where emotional separation occurred – abandonment, rejection and/or abuse. The details of the event have varied relevance, but the bottom-line, common denominator in every instance was abandonment, rejection, or abuse – whether conscious or unconscious –whether real or only perceived – separation – loss of conscious contact with others, with our selves, and with God -- that is “harm”.

I am working with someone on this step, and he was having considerable trouble identified specific harms he had done to others. As I processed his dilemma, I realized that his problem was that he had really done very few overt harms to others. However, he has had three divorces and other troubled relationships where at least abandonment had occurred. Our brains really do not discriminate between action and thought in this area. If we think and feel “evil” in our “hearts”, even if it is not accompanied by harmful actions, we experience that we have harmed or wronged them by separation – and we have harmed ourselves.

The experience of separation creates a deadly poison which eats away our inner heart’s tissues and leaves us wounded, sick, and dying –even without having taken overt action to hurt someone.

Sin?
What we are talking about here is commonly labeled by religion as “sin”. To him who knows to do good, and does not do it, it is “sin”. Sin is believed to be where we somehow harm our God’s standards or conditions for our actions, thoughts, and feelings, and punishment – from God – is imminent.

In my experience, my God has no rules or conditions. Sin is where we violate ourselves by separating from others, then ourselves, and ultimately from our God. Their love and acceptance is unconditional. We are, in fact, the judge, jury, and executor of our selves.
(Aside: Try replacing the word “sin” with the word “shame”: for example, “for all have been shamed and come short of the glory or Presence of God.”)

Forgiveness
What we are moving toward is “forgiveness” -- not by God -- not even by others -- but forgiveness of and by ourselves. We damn ourselves to our own living hells by our involuntary, uncontrollable perceptions that we are bad, not good enough, not deserving to be loved or cared about – self abandonment and abuse – because we perceived we have wronged others – and others are us, too.

Forgiveness involves reaching a level of conscious contact with our God where we experience Their intimate and unconditional love and acceptance, and we begin to perceive our selves with Their eyes, and not our wounded brains. To God, we are perfect and wonderful. To our injured selves, we are worthless, evil wantabes who will never be good enough, and we will continue to involuntarily harm every person we touch – by withdrawing or withholding our own loving presence.

Forgiveness will never come from thought, knowledge, or understanding. It can only be produced by consistent and increasing conscious experience of our God’s loving and caring Presence. And we have been given each other – the consciously wounded and broken – to be the sacred messengers and carriers of God’s precious Presence.

Hell
Imagine “Hell” –a place within our brains where we are judged by impossible and nonexistent standards, and where we are punished unmercifully by our own brains for the perception that we have harmed others and been harmed. The “just” punishment, according to our diseased brain, is eternal damnation to total isolation, and abandonment, and wretched loneliness. This “place” is my experience of my illness of shame and separation.

Hence the saying, “Religion is for people who afraid of hell – and spirituality is for those who have already been there.”

A Format for Writing Step Eight
I would offer to you a format for doing this step that has been effective for me:
1. First, list every person important enough to have been remembered.
2. Rate each person on a scale from 1-10 as to how much separation you “feel” you did with this person, 1 being low, and 10 being very high. Note another way of looking at this is how much guilt or shame we experience when we think of this person.
3. List any specific actions that you did that could have or did harm the other person: for example, lying, cheating, stealing, verbal and/or physical abuse, and neglect.
4. Whether specific harmful actions occurred or not, how did you separate yourself – withdraw your caring presence -- from them: for example, silence, sarcasm, indifference, ignoring of their needs and feelings, judgmentalism and negative vs affirming statements, and a lack of cooperation and/or empathy and sympathy.


Practice Prior Spiritual Principles
With This Spiritual Principle
Finally, it is critical to practice the prior spiritual principles in this spiritual principle, as well as all our affairs.
1. Step One – we are not bad or evil because we were actually powerless and without the ability to choose or control our attitudes and actions. This step is critical because we have a disease of overresponsiblity – obsession with outcomes -- which judges and punishes us for all of our thoughts, feelings, and actions as if we could have and did deliberately choose our perceptions, reactions, and actions. This is the damning lie at root of all our symptoms and disease.
2. Step Two –we have to be restored to the ability to act and perceive sanely by developing a conscious and intimate relationship with our God. Without this, we are hopeless and helpless – and we do not have to be.
3. Step Three – we take the action to surrender our human controllingness and judgmentalism of ourselves and others over the loving care of our God – within an intimately personal relationship.

I believe and have experienced that when we take the action to list and identify perceived harms, combine this with a steady practice of the first three spiritual principles, we begin to achieve self forgiveness -- instead of living in our own private hells. We begin to live within the fellowship of our loving present spirits – and life becoming a better and place to be.

Daily Inspirations Jewelry and Gifts .
Daily Inspirations Readings
Daily Inspirational Clothing, Daily Inspiration Music

Photography/graphics by W. Wass

Becoming Acquainted With Grief

For more information, click here: Elizabeth Wass -- Becoming Acquainted with Grief

Are We Enabling Others or Empowering Ourselves Through Daily Inspirations?

Today I was in a meeting of a spiritual support group I attend, and the subject was “enabling” – how do we know when we are supporting others’ unhealthy behaviors by taking responsibility for outcomes that are really their responsibility? As I listened, I heard many messages – externally in others’ comments, and internally in my own experiences and awarenesses.

First, all human families develop and operate from an overall script which defines the specific roles and expectations of each family member. Based on the historical health of the family’s past ancestors, and based on the current emotional health of current “leaders” -- adults and parents – the family’s roles become rigid or remain fluid and flowing. The rigidity of roles depends on the level of conditions and rules which the family members use in emotionally connecting or separating from and abandoning each other.

There are many different roles that can appear: for example, enabler, victim, perpetrator and/or hero, lost child, scapegoat, and mascot. Without the enabler or hero, unhealthy families or relationships would seemingly self-destruct.

A metaphor that fits well in my experience is that when a person is born, and the umbilical cord is cut physically, it begins to be reconnected mentally and emotionally - in different forms -- to others. These "others" are initially the adult parental characters in our script, and brothers, and sisters, and continues on in time with other relationships. The dependency that this connection creates makes the relationship seemingly critical to our survival, and provides the energy to direct us into our “necessary” roles in other social settings.

I am aware that in every social situation I entered, I surveyed the people present for the roles they wanted and would expect from me, and put on that self or mask so I could be “successful”.

These factors are important, to me, because it sets the backdrop for all else that is about to happen – in the past, and presently. The motives behind our actions come from two directions:
1. To avoid the pain and shame of separation and abandonment by controlling outcomes. What flows down the emotional umbilical cord seems critical to survival, and therefore, any threat to the flow of attention, companionship, or intimacy must be avoided.
2. Our roles and our efforts to do this become harmful because they are trying to control the uncontrollable, and when we fail, we develop a “mental illness” – an unhealthy brain programming – which is separating and abandoning by its very nature – not matter what actually occurs in our lives and relationships. No human relationships alone can fill the wounded, infected hole we now have inside.

Our minds struggle to survive, and in the process they takes the greatest strengths we possess, and converts them into our egos – an artificial, survival self, who plays the prerecorded roles in an attempt to control outcomes, and avoid shame and abandonment. What were collections of our strengths changes into collections of our symptoms or "character defects" – emotionally motivated compulsions to avoid the pain of separation.

Something else I realized is that the “pink elephant” that we are dealing with – the harmful, unhealthy, dysfunctional behavior – is sometimes literally in the living room of our homes, and more frequently, the “pink elephant” we are dealing with is in our minds. They are both just as real as the other, only different in the specific details of our “illness” and treatment.

The “pink elephant” in our actual living rooms transforms over time into a mental “pink elephant” that only exists in our minds. Again, they are both equally powerful and harmful, only different.

When I first got into recovery, over twenty years ago, I began to receive a lot of information, knowledge, and understanding – answers – about what had happened and was happening to me. I was told that now I had choices – which I believed, because I believed that knowledge and understanding would give me control of my life’s outcomes. But I was wrong. I did not have the solution – only the answers. I had mental information and not spiritual experience. I had options but not yet choices.

I had to find a way to allow my umbilical cord to be disconnected from others, and reattached to my God. And I could not do this by my own intention or will.

I began to be taught certain spiritual principles which began to and still do change and empower my life.
1. First, I was taught to experience and admit my powerlessness – that my life – my perceptions, reactions, and actions – which included my roles and motives – were totally unmanageable by me.
2. Then, I was taught how to begin allowing the umbilical cord that was attached to others to be disconnected, and reconnected to the higher loving Presence of my God. I began to experience consciously that my God could restore me to my truest self by supplying me with the unconditional, and unending spiritual nutrition and power of Their Presence.
3. Finally, I was taught how to use this spiritual nutrition and power of God’s Presence to enable me to be disconnected from other people, things, and outcomes – to become surrendered to my God’s loving care. This process requires active participation in an intimate relationship with Them.
4. After this, I was taught to make a searching inventory of my history of past and present unhealthy roles with others – my "umbilical"connections. This was followed by a spiritual process of increasingly disconnecting from past unavailable others and reconnecting to my very present God.
5. And after this, I was taught to make a list of how I had connected my umbilical cord to others by harming them or believing I had harmed them. Then I began to make amends and change – to forgive and accept my unconditionally through my God’s Presence.

One person related how she had enabled her husband’s drug use, and she used the phrase, “shame on me”. Without this spiritual process, we believe we are responsible - have control over - for our unhealthy actions in our relationships. And we convict, sentence, and execute ourselves with painful separation and self abandonment. We are not, and never were bad – we have always done the very best that we could. But we will never “know” – experience consciously – our true selves, unless we come to consciously connect and experience our God’s loving Presence.

To me, recovery is about practicing daily inspirations in all my affairs. Inspirations are encounters with my God through words, events, and relationships which improve my conscious contact with my God. I need to do this “daily” and moment to moment because I need the steady and consistent nutrition of their loving Presence in order to survive as my real and deepest self. When I am on a steady diet of God’s Presence through “daily inspirations”, I have the opportunity to heal and become and love – to have an amazing life – unfettered by the injuries and illnesses of the past.

Daily Inspirations Jewelry and Gifts .
Daily Inspirations Readings
Daily Inspirational Clothing, Daily Inspiration Music

Photography/graphics by W. Wass

Twelve Spiritual Principles of Daily Inspirations And Spiritual Enlightenment: Part Four -- Spiritual Therapy

The next two spiritual principles involve the beginning of spiritual therapy through spiritual enlightenment regarding our human illness. We must humanly experience ourselves with our higher Presence’s help, through the spiritual coaching of others and with the support of daily inspirations, in order to have our discomforts treated with spiritual therapy. As the wounded and diseased neural pathways of our brains begin to heal, a spiritual enlightenment – an inner light – begins to appear, and our perceptions and reactions respond to continuing spiritual therapy.

Life becomes a Better Place.

Fourth Spiritual Principle: We made a searching and fearless spiritual inventory of our humanness – past and present.

In this principle, we do the equivalent of a medical history that one would do with a doctor. For spiritual therapy to be maximally effective, we must understand and experience our humanness. In this process, daily inspirations and spiritual coaching is essential for thoroughness and for our protection from possible neural reactions.
1.We list the events and relationships in our lives where we felt abandoned.
2.We write down all injuries that we perceive we have experienced from others abandoning or abusing us.
3.We note the specifics of our resentments – the neural scab that the brain creates to protect us from emotional/neural injuries.
4.We list our fears – the expressions of our expectations of continuing separation from others, ourselves and our higher Presence.
5.We describe how our illness became expressed in our actions and words towards ourselves and others – our continuing symptoms.

Anger is how we fight our stored painful neural energies, and fear is how we take flight away from this neural consciousness.

When we are “finished”, we have begun having a conscious spiritual enlightenment that reveals how our humanness has been wounded, and how our injuries and our human illness have expressed themselves in our lives. Daily inspirations and spiritual coaching protects us through the process.

Fifth Spiritual Principle: We admitted to God and to ourselves through another human being the exact nature of our symptoms and disease.

With this spiritual principle, we disclose the details as accurately and consciously as possible – to God, and to ourselves through others in some form of spiritual coaching.

Our disease of humanness was caused by abandonment by others, resulting in separation within our brains from ourselves, others and our higher Presence. Spiritual therapy with daily inspirations begins with reconnecting with ourselves, and our higher Presence through another human being bringing intimate spiritual enlightenment.

Abandonment, and our belief in our responsibility for our relationship outcomes, creates wounds of unPresence, which can only be treated successfully by restoring Presence. This spiritual principle begins the process of spiritual therapy.

Daily Inspirations with spiritual coaching gives a comforting and guiding flow of Presence energy. Spiritual therapy restores us to a state of spiritual enlightenment where life can be lived as a Better Place by Higher Design.

Daily Inspirations Jewelry and Gifts .
Daily Inspirations Readings
Daily Inspirational Clothing, Daily Inspiration Music

Photography/graphics by W. Wass

I Am Afraid of the Pain

A friend wrote this comment on Facebook:

I have to go to bed. Why can't I act like a normal human being and go to bed at night? I know. I've had PTSD since my surgery. I'm afraid to go to sleep; afraid of the pain that will be there when I wake up.

My personal experience is that “trauma” is anything separates me from conscious contact with God, with myself, and with others. This loss of conscious contact – separation – separates my conscious cognitive reasoning and decision making abilities from my impulse driven primitive brain, and I am either unconscious and numb, or conscious and overwhelmed by waves of pain, fear, and horrible loneliness.

For me, there are “answers” which my cognitive brain can know and understand, but these answers are not solutions which can heal my woundedness and relieve my pain and fear. In my experience, the trauma was the loss of conscious contact by pain and fear, and the solution is a spiritual process of improving my conscious contact with my God, with myself, and with others.

Spirituality, for me, is about my conscious experience of intimate relations with my conscious Higher Power’s Presence.

In separation – trauma – my brain constricts neural energy in order to try to control the pain, and ends up creating an ongoing illness which inflicts more pain and fear – separation – even when the trauma is less or no longer occurring. For me, the following has become my daily, moment to moment process of dealing with post trauma and chronic separation:
1. Experience and admit my powerlessness over the pain and fear, and their causes. This, for me, is an improvement in conscious contact with myself, with the beginning of a conscious experience that I am not expected to – nor could I when I tried – control my perceptions, reactions, actions, and the outcomes of my life experiences.
2. Connect with a Presence greater than myself. “Abandonment”, separation, loss of conscious contact was ultimately the actual trauma. So the solution, treatment, medication for the “illness” is a restoring of conscious contact – intimately, personally and consciously. The major way that I have been able to do this is by self disclosing –expressing -- my pain and fear to others who have experienced and/or are consciously experiencing similar trauma, separation, and their results. Where two or more are “gathered” together in conscious contact with themselves, God will appear – intimately and personally – as an unseen but infinitely powerful Presence that can soothe our pain and restore healthy connection to the separation within our brains – and relationships.
3. Based on the Presence I have begun to experience, take actions of trust and confidence in my God. I was taught, “if you believed that your God were healing your life and taking away your pain, what would you be doing right now?” At times, it was as simple as taking conscious deep breaths. Other times it was giving a smile or a nod, or a listening ear to someone else. Other times it was having fun, or finding something humorous to enjoy.

I believe, from my experience, that you cannot change your situation and pain with thought, knowledge, or understanding. But I believe that there is hope – because you – we -- are Never Alone.

Where two or more come together in conscious powerlessness, God is allowed to consciously appear – to be intimately Present – and “things” change. Maybe you have been given this opportunity as a spiritual means of becoming even more than your have ever been. Experience and Presence will tell.

Spiritual Principles of Daily Inspirations Part Three

We are powerless over our mental perceptions and over our emotional reactions and therefore the experience of our lives is unmanageable. Spiritual enlightenment requires that we start here and move forward with finding daily inspirations that begins to address our powerlessness.

Second Spiritual Principle: We came to experience that a Presence greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

The problems I have had with my perceptual filters of life were caused by an absence or loss of Presence – separation from God, and myself caused by actual or perceived abandonments by other human beings. Many of us have experienced a repairing or restoring of our mental filters when we began to reconnect with a higher Presence through others and through daily inspirations. And we still don’t know how damaged the neural network of our brains is.

This higher Presence begins to restore connections within our brain between the neural pathways of our primitive brain, and of our conscious reasoning brain. We begin to have “choices” – proportionate to our experienced levels of conscious Presence, and to the level of neural reprogramming that healing Presence has completed within our neurally stored pasts

This spiritual principle is about:
1. Experiencing a personal Presence greater than ourselves.
2. Finding daily inspirations that progressively reconnect us to our higher Presence, to ourselves and to others.
3. Using our spiritual experiences, and our daily inspirations to activate increasing spiritual enlightenment.
4. Receiving spiritual coaching to enable higher Presence to give us a neural soundness that frees our brains to receive spiritual enlightenment.

Third Spiritual Principle: We made a decision and took the action to turn our wills and our lives over the care of God as we experienced Him and/or Her.

Based on the intimate Presence that began to emerge in Step Two, we began to surrender our perceptions and decisions (our wills), and their outcomes (our lives) over to our personal and caring higher Presence. A critical part of this spiritual principle is Action. A decision without action is not really a decision – it is a mental exercise in fantasy. Action – like daily inspirations – accesses the brain’s neural network, and allows higher Presence to reprogram the darkness of lonely abandonment into the light of loving intimacy and warmth.

The action taken demonstrates a spiritual enlightenment and resulting trust relationship with our higher Presence. This actions takes the form of acting as if this Presence is taking care of us, and then “doing the next right thing” as an action of trust in this Presence. I have been unable to do this without spiritual coaching.

Summary:
In my experience of over twenty years, these initial three spiritual principles are ultimately the basis of all spiritual enlightenment, daily inspirations, and spiritual coaching. They have to be practiced and lived consistently to produce consistent results.

Spiritual coaching involves an experienced spiritual seeker, supporting and guiding a process of discovering and experiencing daily inspirations – moments of contact and intimacy with a higher Presence. This process of daily inspirations generates a neural openness that produces spiritual enlightenment as a natural and growing result.

And life becomes a Better Place by Higher Design.

Daily Inspirations Jewelry and Gifts .
Daily Inspirations Readings
Daily Inspirational Clothing, Daily Inspiration Music

Photography/graphics by W. Wass

Spiritual Principles Of Daily Inspirations Part 2

Introduction
My life is the product of my level of spiritual enlightenment, created and maintained by a steady diet of daily inspirations, and supported by spiritual coaching. In maintaining my spiritual life, I need spiritual principles – living guidelines – which direct and fashion my spiritual journey toward the spiritual enlightenment I am seeking. This is an introduction to these spiritual principles.

(These spiritual principles were adapted from the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous using my experience, strength, hope, and daily inspirations)

First Spiritual Principle: We admitted we were powerless – that our lives had become unmanageable.

Our species is addicted to living, and therefore to outcomes that seem to determine our survival -- existence and comfort – we are addicted to Control and Outcomes. With control of outcomes being a major life task of humans, we begin to believe that we are responsible for all outcomes. Such beliefs are encouraged by the following myths:
1. “You can be or do anything you want, if you put your mind to it, and if you try hard enough.”
2. “A person is just about as happy as he makes up his mind to be” (attributed to Abraham Lincoln).
3. Everyone’s ultimate success is determined by his or her “choices”.

Shame begins as we judge and evaluate ourselves by these myths.

Many will struggle with this concept in specific situations, which will be addressed later. For now, let’s follow a simple course of consideration: Our perceptions and reactions to life ultimately determine the quality of our lives – not the specific events and outcomes of life. Research has shown that the major perceptual filters of our brain are actually controlled by a primitive part of our brain that does not operate in thought, facts, reasoning, or judgment. It operates simply in neural impulses.

So when my brain perceives a person, thing, or situation, the major filters that the sensations go through are unconscious to my thinking brain. Therefore, my “happiness” or “success” is not based on reality or fact, but on the unconscious programming that was created either genetically, and/or by prior life experiences stored as suppressed neural energy within the brain.

We are powerless over our mental perceptions and over our emotional reactions and therefore the experience of our lives is unmanageable. Spiritual enlightenment requires that we start here and move forward with finding daily inspirations that begins to address our powerlessness.

Daily Inspirations Jewelry and Gifts .
Daily Inspirations Readings
Daily Inspirational Clothing, Daily Inspiration Music

Photography/graphics by W. Wass

Spiritual Principles of Daily Inspirations

Introduction
My life is the product of my level of spiritual enlightenment, created and maintained by a steady diet of daily inspirations, and supported by spiritual coaching. In maintaining my spiritual life, I need spiritual principles – living guidelines – which direct and fashion my spiritual journey toward the spiritual enlightenment I am seeking.


Spiritual Enlightenment Begins with Human Experience
Over 22 years ago, my life was an absolute wreck – at least inside. The sewage of my past was leaking into my present, and I was emotionally and spiritually ill – my feelings crashed like huge tidal waves of neural energy, knocking me senseless -- wounding me even more – and there was seemingly no presence or Presence – I was hopelessly and helpless alone inside.

In the pits of my humanness, someone suggested and introduced me to twelve spiritual principles – adapted from the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. In my desperation, I grabbed hold, became involved in spiritual coaching, and began to practice these spiritual principles and daily inspirations “in all my affairs”.

Spiritual Principles Are Not Answers –They Are Solutions
Having been a therapist for nearly ten years at the time, I had “answers” – and with these answers I was able to help others -- but these answers failed to help me. I have since realized that “answers” are mental illusions that deceive me into believing that I understand my problems and can therefore control the outcomes of my life. Answers are not solutions -- solutions can really change my life. What is frequently being sold in the market place of self-help and therapy are answers and not solutions.

Answers did “work” temporarily at times. I was able to use my thoughts to anesthetize my feelings, creating an artificial state of well being. Answers are information without experience and higher Presence – facts without the means to spiritually enlightened – serving only to convince me that I know what I need in order to control my life. I become responsible for what happens, no matter what.

Over the course of the last twenty-two years, from personal and from professional experience, I have revised these twelve spiritual principles to fit any and all life challenges – chronic or temporary. I would like to introduce these spiritual principles and my “practice” of them as a means of living daily inspirations that brings major spiritual enlightenment, through spiritual coaching.

Daily Inspirations Jewelry and Gifts . Daily Inspirations Readings Daily Inspirational Clothing, Daily Inspiration Music

Photography/graphics by W. Wass

How Do Daily Inspirations Change Our Lives?

To change, we must become willing to experience a certain level of discomfort.
Marie Lindquist

I have tried to change my self, and my life ever since I can remember. I believed that I would be “happy” if something changed. The problem was that “things” have changed over the course of my life, but it never really brought happiness. I did not know that real happiness was not connected to “things” -- at least not external things.

Do you want the best of life? Then live as near as possible to God, the Master and Giver of all Life.

Twenty Four Hours

Change began with level of discomfort that made me willing to listen. Then I learned to listen to a higher Voice speaking through others. I began to realize that when I listened, I heard a higher Presence, and as I listened to this higher Presence, we got to know each other -- intimately And that has made all the difference.

I began to experience a closeness to others, to myself, and to my higher Presence that began to change the most important factor in my life – my perceptions. I found daily inspirations within others, within inspirational readings, within life events, and within the seemingly accidental off hand comments of strangers. I was listening and hearing and experiencing changes that my brain could not produce or imagine.

Change – a neverending pattern of miracles unleashed by a deeper experience of self.
Marianne Williamson

As I connected with my higher Presence, I began to be freed – I began to experience life directly and without interference – I became more a natural child with higher Parents. Messages began to appear more and more often. Daily inspirations became moment to moment inspirations I would stress and strain for hours for the meaning of something, to have it appear in an instant of Presence -- when I listened.

Our soul is nurtured and fed by taking pleasure in the beauty in this world.
Melodie Beattie

Experience of daily inspirations produced an intuitive connection that changed my world of perceptions, and made life became very different.

I learned how to ask for help, and listen. I had been trapped inside my pain – some nameless, faceless version of myself was tearing my insides apart – trying to get out. I would freeze, thinking it would go away if I didn’t move. It never did.

And now I am actively listening – and experiencing change. I am becoming – different – and better. I am being freed from the prison of my brain by a continuous experience of daily inspirations – and a neverending flow of inner miracles of Presence.

Daily Inspirations Jewelry and Gifts .
Daily Inspirations Readings
Daily Inspirational Clothing, Daily Inspiration Music

Photography/graphics by W. Wass

How Do Daily Inspirations and Spiritual Enlightenment Make a Difference?

“A consciousness of God’s presence,

as One who loves you,
makes all life different.
The consciousness of God’s love
promotes the opening of your whole being to God.”
Twenty-Four Hours a Day

The normal human condition is one of constriction – closedness – to others, ourselves, and our higher Presence. It is a natural, and generally unconscious reaction to the fear and expectation of ultimately being abandoned – separated from others.

I have learned that there are certain symptoms that frequently remind me of my shame, and my fear of separation:
1. Worry – the mental preoccupation with outcomes related to any person, thing, or situation that catches my attention. My unresolved past attaches to my immediate present, and I live emotionally the neural energies of fear, trying to escape with desperate thought.
2. Anger – when I am irritated, my brain is avoiding shame and separation by bursts of neural energy, generally discharged toward people, things and situations that are not as I think I would like it to be. This is displaced energy, and not true responses.

As my consciousness rises, I become aware that my insides and outsides are tight, tense, and constricted. If it continues for any length of time, I will begin to experience physical symptoms of my illness.

Daily inspirations are about allowing our consciousness to be redirected by “God’s Presence” to an experience of God’s or our higher Presence’s unconditional adoration and affection for us. As we find and experience the cues that are in daily inspirations, we can experience an “opening of our whole being to God”, to ourselves, and to other human beings.

There are various blockages to this opening. One is the human desire or demand for guarantees. How can I know that when I allow higher Presence to open my being, that I will be safe, loved, and nurtured in the future? This is a question that ultimately daily inspirations must begin to “answer”.

“Understanding is the reward of faith.

Therefore seek not to understand that thou mightest believe,
but believe that thou mayest understand.”
Aurelius Augustinus

Faith and belief, in spiritual terms are not thoughts. Traditional religion, being thought based, tends to imply that faith and belief are done by thinking – which is with our brains. Unfortunately, that will not work. The part of the brain that thinks is very tiny. The part of the brain that feels fear and shame is massive. Thought will do little more than distract us from our human condition. Our brains are ultimately not where the spiritual “guarantees” of my life are written.

Daily inspirations teach us how to believe spiritually – to experience an intimate closeness with a Presence that the brain cannot comprehend. The result can be a spiritual enlightenment that transcends thought, and activates our heart to “know” without using our brains to do so. And suddenly there is a peace and confidence that defies and confound mental thought -- and I find my guarantees written on the intuitive tissue of my heart.

My experience is that it was divinely planned by my higher Presence, that I not be able to mentally comprehend the Plan for life – the rhyme and reason of my life. The only way I can know is through an ongoing intimate relationship with my higher Presence -- the goal and outcome of steady and consistent daily inspirations.

One of the barriers I experience is that my brain is rarely silent. It chatters – with details, observations, and projected explanations and expectations. I use daily inspirations to stop, breath, allow my mind to still, and then quietly listen to that “still small voice” of Presence.

Another barrier is “education” – trying to amass enough information mentally into my brain that I can understand and control my life. I have learned that spiritual education is a private matter – it has nothing to do with colleges or schools. Spiritual enlightenment comes from experiences which take my brain beyond my thoughts, into spiritual enlightenments that are self-changing – the rebirth of my lost selves into present Presence.

This spiritual enlightenment is a return to the child who we really are. To survive, we became adults – took responsibility for the uncontrollable, donned masks that hid our wretchedness, suppressed natural emotional experiences with intellectual thinking, and generally lost sight of the beautiful creatures we were created to be.


“Some of our feelings have been stored so long
that they have freezer burn.”
Melodie Beattie

We are using daily inspirations to be restored to who we are underneath all the fire and ice. We are beginning to have “breakthroughs” – more and more transformative experiences -- that are changing our very genetic spiritual structure back to our natural states.

Our higher Presence is reweaving the tapestries of our lives and we becoming beautiful and awesome – children and masters of God’s infinite and unconditional love and grace.

We are becoming truly amazing.

Daily Inspirations Jewelry and Gifts .
Daily Inspirations Readings
Daily Inspirational Clothing, Daily Inspiration Music

Photography/graphics by W. Wass

Birth of Granddaughter, Nancy Jane

Nancy Jan was born Thursday, January 14, at Baptist East Hospital. She weighed 8 pounds, 4 ounces, and was 20.75 inches long.