Spiritual Enlightenment --How do we discover daily inspirations within inspirational life quotes? Part I

Daily inspirations – especially through inspiring life quotes -- involve finding openings within the material world through which intimate energy – higher Presence – can flow, and spiritual enlightenment – transformation of the neural processes of the brain – can occur.

The spiritual world is all around us. We are blinded by the broken neural programmings of our brains. The past – the separations and abandonments perceived and recorded in the neural network of the brain – forms a reservoir of unprocessed sewage, which leaks constantly into our current perceptions of and reactions to current life events.

Developing the skills of finding daily inspirations through inspiring life quotes begins to build a spiritual treatment “facility” in our brains and hearts, which begins to process the sludge of the past. We begin being restored to clear, flowing spiritual experiences of higher Presence – spiritual awakening. Spiritual awakenings form more and more collections of Presence-filtered neural pathways, which eventually create warm flowing light – spiritual enlightenment. Daily inspirations and inspired life quotes maintain and increase this spiritual enlightenment.

How can this work? Consider with me the following inspiring life quote:

Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change. So suffering must become love. That is the mystery.
Katherine Mansfield

What do you hear in these words? Take a few moments to breathe deep, and absorb the energy and Presence of the words. My God or higher Presence (or whatever name you use) speaks wherever, and whenever I am listening. This has been my experience over the years.

The starting point is to slow down -- admit and experience the darkness of my brain – its inability to hear a higher Voice. My brain operates in digital data called thoughts, which are formed with words. Thoughts cannot hear or experience Presence.

The darkness is created by the wounding experiences of my past that exist in my brain for which there was never spiritual healing, and therefore are current and reoccurring.

Next, I breathe deeply – in my powerlessness – and connect with my higher Presence – or “God” to most. I have learned to use my breathing to slow down and nurture my brain, allowing it to quiet its chatter.

At first, hearing this higher Voice was like a faint rustling in the background of my thoughts. As I have practiced, this connection has become clearer -- yet wordless and intimate – an experience of personal Presence. What I hear is like a still small voice – someone very close by – speaking softly to my heart – the emerging spiritual part of me that begins to connect softly to my brain.

Then, I take the action to trust this Presence by writing down, or sharing with someone else what I am experiencing. This actions seems to bring my human experience of unknowing, and my spiritual experience of a personal and caring Presence together into a growing spiritual enlightenment. I experience a peace and serenity which exceeds the neural capacity of my brain to understand. It becomes living, dynamic, flowing, and life changing.

Daily inspirations through inspiring life quotes open my heart and my brain begins to experience spiritual enlightenment.

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Love Touches Hearts -- Grief and Daily Inspirations

What most of us want is to be heard – to communicate.

Dory Previn

The greatest gift we can give a person is rapt attention.

Unknown

Why?
Recently I have been asking my God and my selves why I want to write, express, and communicate. As I have listened, what I have heard is that I want to reach out and touch others with my experience, strength, and hope – because in those moments, I feel most clearly the loving life changing touch of my very Present God. To have Presence that transforms my life with new and loving energies, I must give Presence to others. I want “to be heard”.

The Golden “Principle”
Consider the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Religion has made this statement into a moral mandate about how we should not mistreat others. I experience that the Golden Rule is actually a loving suggestion related to improving our conscious contact with God and ourselves by “loving others” – unconditionally. It gives us a principle of intimacy with others that benefits us, not a warning that we will be punished if we are bad.

The Apostle John wrote, “Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God, and knows God. He that loves not, does not know God: for God is love.”

“Understanding” Inspirational Life Quotes
Before I discuss this quote, I want to reference something that is important to me about how I “understand” Biblical inspirational life quotes. I will be writing more about this later.

Having studied the Bible and religion academically and intellectually since I was a child, I have experienced how worthless and even harmful this specific method of understanding scriptures can be. So I had to be given another way to experience spiritually related words, and their energy and life meanings. The way that I have been given is what I presently call “experiential intimacy”. This involves having a personal and interactive relationship with my God, where I come to “know” by being with Them, and by listening to their words and responses. So when I share my perceptions of scriptures or other inspirational life quotes, I am sharing my personal experience with my God – He and She -- , and I am sharing what I “hear” them saying as I listen and speak to Them.

The Love Principle
Let’s look at this Biblical quote again: “Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God, and knows God. He that loves not, does not know God: for God is love.”

First, I am aware that religion makes “love” a rule and not a spiritual life principle. Love cannot be legislated. If it is not there, it is not there. And we are only using warm fuzzy masks to cover up the separation and loneliness we are experiencing with others and ourselves. We can only give what we have.

Next, what in the world is “love”? It is a term that we humans use frequently arbitrarily as if everyone knows and agrees on what it means. Not really true.

I have experienced that my God’s love is Their unconditional and unending caring for me – without rules, conditions, judgments or any form of separation by Them. I experience that they see me as being perfect and wonderful – you, too – and They are only concerned about our inability to see ourselves as they do. And, by the way, they know everything – there are no secrets with Them – and They still see us as perfect and wonderful.

Love as Action – Touching Hearts
Another part of “love” from my experience with Them is that it involves action – being actively Present. They are emotionally attentive, courteous, thoughtful, encouraging, playful, humorous – and very honest and direct. They actively “touch” my heart and I can feel Their unconditional warmth and Presence.

“Let us love one another” – as our God does – for love is our God’s gift of intimate Presence to us. When we give our presence to others – when we touch others -- we experience a higher Presence of our God than we are capable of by ourselves.

Gifts of Loving
Every one who gives unconditional Presence is given two gifts:
1. First, we are “born” of God. I experience this as a rebirthing transformation of my being. In the warm and unconditional loving womb of their Presence, I began to be reborn out of my human, shame based, conditional genetic makeup. I began to become transformed into the loving truth of Their being. And as I “touch” and love others, I become increasingly reborn into Their loving “image” – I begin to take on their spiritual genetic makeup. They are spiritually, in fact, my real Parents.
2. Second, we come to “know” God. Mankind, religion, and the human brain makes this word mean, “we come to understand God intellectually, with our brains.” For me, “knowing” is an intimate experience of growing conscious closeness and interaction. My experience is that the “kingdom of God is within us” – within the sacred intimacy that They offer and that is infinitely possible for us.

When we do not lovingly “touch” others with our spiritual presence, we become disconnected from God, from ourselves, and from other human beings – not because our God is punishing us, but because our humanness has separated us.

The essence of my God is “love” – total, unconditional, caring, “touching” and interactive Presence. That is who They are. That is who we really are. Life more abundant is the active sharing of that “love” with others – which reconnects us to our God and ourselves.

Love – Grief and Loss
Because grief and loss is something that I help many people with, I like to reference this topic in each of my articles. What actually creates “loss” is a loss of presence – loving connection with others. It can occur with death, where we experience a loss of conscious contact with the person who is deceased. And it occurs every time someone was unable to “love” us – and whenever we were unable to love them. In my experience, there is a collective effect of losses over time, and there are violent and sudden losses of presence, for example, divorce and physical abuse. The most effective way I have found to grieve and “digest” loss is by finding others who want and can accept my “love” , and give them my presence and attention on a steady and regular basis – while receiving the same from available others and my God.

Love and Finding Daily Inspirations
Another important topic related to each article is “finding daily inspirations”. In order to available for, and in order to maintain spiritual awakenings, we must have steady, dependable, and effective sources of our God’s Presence. Otherwise, we go as far as our spiritual resources, and have to stop. Or we find ourselves losing what we have gained. I encourage you to find your own spiritual words, persons, and groups that give you optimum connection to your God – daily inspirations – and live with them rather than just visit.

To be continued…..

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Beware of Daily "Anti-Inspirations"

Happiness in the older years of life, like happiness in every year of life, is a matter of choice – your choice for yourself. (Harold Azine)

We empower ourselves every time we accept responsibility for choosing the thoughts and feelings we act on. Choosing behavior that encourages happiness is often as easy as any other choice… We complicate our life unnecessarily when we choose to act out of meanness, self-centeredness, or self-pity… Happiness is if often as simple as making the decision to take charge of who we are now, as we rely on God’s will for us. (IGC)

This quote was taken from one of my favorite meditation books that I have read almost daily for over 15 years. And it represents a type of daily inspiration that I believe needs to be avoided wherever possible – daily "anti-inspirations". It looks positive and uplifting – appears as an angel of light – but really it is the poison that man and woman first ate in the “Garden of Eden.”

Humanitis – a Mental Illness

Programmed into the genetics of the mental illness of “humanitis” is the belief that we have some unquestionable ability to choose how our lives will be, how we will react to life, and what actions we will participate in – separate from our God. Religion aptly calls it “free will” – free of God’s influence and strength -- and uses it to justify rejection and abandonment – sometimes even abuse – of others who do not meet their established standards of thought and behavior.

And so as a species, we perpetuate the shame and guilt by failing to realize that – without an intimate personal unconditional and conscious connection with our God, our faculties of mental perception, emotional reaction, and conscious decision making ultimately fail, and we are miserably lost in an abyss of endless hopeless helplessness. The hardware and wiring is there, in our brains, but the power to activate and operate it does not exist -- outside of our God’s conscious Presence.

Does It Hurt Enough?

I am debating whether to be logical or simply leave these words open to those “who in mortal combat” with their own human weakness have consciously been adequately defeated to be able to hear what I am saying.

I was leading a group on spiritual maintenance today. There was the usual reluctance to what I am sharing about “choice”. And one lady spoke up. I have known her for many years -- she is normally very quiet and shy, and I know how struggle intensely with her humanness and spirituality, including the painful death of an alcoholic son recently. And what she said to others very passionately, from the depths of her soul was, “you may have choices, but you can’t speak for the rest of us!” She had done everything she could for her son and he died of his disease. And she still hurts – and she does not have a choice whether to hurt or be sad or not – separate from her conscious contact with her God.

Can We Be Reasonable?

The logic of this subject seems to include:
1. If we had a choice to be happy or not, we would never be unhappy, sad, depressed, angry or frightened. Why would we choose to hurt?
2. It is not hard for us to be happy, it is impossible – alone.
3. If we could choose to be happy, and we are not, we are “choosing” to do something “evil”. “To those who know how to do good, and doeth it not, to them it is sin.” (The Bible) We are left with rejection, judgment, and shame – because we could be happy, but we have supposedly chosen not to do so.
4. An electrical appliance – for example, a computer – may have all the necessary parts and wiring, but if it is not plugged into a power source, it will not operate. The same is true of us – in my experience.

Where Does Spirituality Begin?

In my experience, the Twelve Steps of AA and Alanon is the only set of spiritual principles that has the First Step – “We admitted we were powerless – that our lives had become unmanageable.” Every other system seems to hold people accountable, before they have been restored or reconnected to conscious Presence with their God.

All of us are doing and have done the very best we could, in every situation and circumstance, since we were born. We are not bad – we are wounded and sick. We would never deliberately choose “to act out of meanness, self-centeredness, or self-pity” because it would hurt us – like slamming our fingers in a car door.

Grief and Loss

Some of the major life losses we have experienced have come from our belief that we had “choices” and made the wrong decisions – causing seemingly irreparable damage and harm. We have lost major parts of ourselves as a result.

I am only sharing from my own experience, strength and hope, the suggestion that we consciously note the dangers of meditations and inspirations that state or claim that we have choices. Without the conscious connection I have with my God today, I would be continuing – helplessly – to perceive, feel, and act in harmful ways – without hope. Today, my life is continuing to become a better and better place – with my God, with my self, and with other human beings.

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Step Nine -- Changing Memories from the Past -- Daily Inspirations: Part Two

Step Eight: We made a list of all persons we had harmed and
became willing to make amends to them all.
Step Nine: We made direct amends
to such people wherever possible except when to do so would injure them or
others.

Please consider reading the prior article on Step Eight, before reading this article. Click here: Step Eight -- Changing Memories from the Past -- Daily Inspirations: Part One

In Step Eight, we make a list of all the persons we believe we may have harmed, evaluate the reality and level of the harm, determine what action could and needs to be taken to amend or change the situation, relationship, or memory, and become spiritually prepared with a steady and improving level of intimate conscious contact with our God In Step Nine, we take the identified action needed to forgive and release ourselves from the guilt and shame of perceived harms we have done to others.

Understanding the Nature of our Harms

In experiencing Step Nine, we need to remember the dynamics that are involved in our illness, and in our harm of others:

1. As a result of others emotional injuries and/or illnesses, others abandoned and abused us – two major forms of emotional separation.

2. In this emotional separation -- abandonment and abuse, we became injured and ill as well. Our injuries and illnesses were caused and perpetuated by our brain’s reactive constriction of emotional energies.

3. In our injury and illness, we abandoned and abused others – with our thoughts, words, and/or actions. We “harmed” others.

4. Abandonment is where we withdrew our attention, care, and presence (conscious contact) from others – separation – frequently with passive indifference and inability to share our experiences with others.

5. Abuse occurred when we actively pushed others away with the force of our anger, rage, and overall negative energy – whether in attitude, actions or words. Typically this abusive and separative “harm” involved exaggerating circumstances to the point of damaging the living human flesh that connected others to us. I remember taking situations that were level two or three in actual problem level, and making them rageful “tens”.

6. Abandonment and abuse are about our primitive brains trying to protect us from the ultimate death – separation from persons we are emotionally connected to. Abandonment harms by an internalized constriction of emotional energies, and abuse harms by an externalized discharge of constricted and forceful energy. Separation in either or both forms is an ongoing pattern of harmful perceptions, reactions, and actions that have been programmed into our instinctual brains, forming our ego, our guardian and protector self. I am not a programmer. But my God is.

Definition of “Amends”
“Amends” means to change something about the harm. Ultimately the change we need is self-forgiveness – much more so than the forgiveness of others. And our God holds nothing against us, so we only need to be able to accept their unconditional loving care.

The Serenity Prayer says, “God grant me the courage to change the things I can.” But this follows the more important request, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.” We will attempt to change or “amend” the things we can, hopefully with the needed level of conscious contact – higher Presence – with our God that allows us to forgive ourselves in the process, and not be dependent on external outcomes.

Four Levels of Amends
In my experience, there are four levels of amends and change involved in this step. It is important to note that “direct” here, in my experience, means with conscious contact (with God, ourselves, and others) and with actual action in some form. The specific level or levels of amends needed will be determined by our level of pain – guilt and shame – attached to the harmful event:

1. Direct awareness, acceptance, admittance, and experience of how we have harmed others.

2. Directly practicing spiritual principles – conscious contact with God – with every perceived harm.

3. Direct and active presence (conscious contact) with others in the forms of kindness, generosity, courtesy, honesty, and empathy – the opposite of separation.

4. Direct addressing, as appropriate, of our harms with the others we have harmed, offering remorse, concern, repayment for losses, and/or restoring of personal contact and presence,

In my experience, we are not “ready” to make amends until we have admitted and reviewed our harms list and the specifics of our potential or planned amends –changes -- to a spiritual sponsor, .

Grief and Loss

When we harmed others, we wounded ourselves, and experienced painful losses of our selves in the losses of our closeness with others. “Harm” – in any form – rips us away from essential emotional connections to others, our God, and to ourselves. Steps Eight and Nine are about identifying our losses, and participating in a healing treatment of amending our memories and past experiences -- unconditionally forgiving our selves of our harms – through improving conscious contact with our God.

Spiritual principles – principles of healing higher Presence – give us the intimate means to relive and re-experience our pasts-- and have different “outcomes”. Life can become a better and better place as we live by our God’s loving redesign.

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Emotional Stability Through Daily Inspirations In Others

Step One: We admitted we were powerless –
that our lives had become unmanageable.
Step Two: We came to believe that a power

greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

The topic of my spiritual support group today was the second spiritual principle of recovery and spiritual living. One thing that continues to catch my conscious awareness is how powerfully the sharing of our experience, strength, and hope produces spiritual awakenings and increasing conscious spiritual Presence with our God.

As I listened, I remembered that up to nine or ten months before I began recovery (over 22 years ago), my life was not unmanageable. I was not “insane” – emotionally and mentally unstable – in my perception. I was sufficiently unconscious to be unaware how devastated I was inside – hemorrhaging in every part of my mind – ripped and bludgeoned by my own shame – alone and separated from my God’s loving Presence.

A very unhealthy marriage ended – she left – and I breathed a sigh of relief, thinking I was now on “easy street”. I was wrong. Without the unconsciousness that the sick relationship had given me, I began to come apart – consciously. As feeling rushed back into areas of my mind that had been deadened by massive levels of distraction, I began to really fall apart – and I couldn’t stop my “fall”.

I had many professional colleagues who were professional therapists – like myself – but all the “kings” knowledge, and all the”kings” intellect could not put “Humpty” Will back together again. I was out of options.

In my desperation, some one suggested a spiritual support group for people with my background of problems – and I went. Even though I was a therapist, I had no choice but to go – or die.

The group was strange – unfamiliar – like nothing I had experienced before. They were people, who, like me, had become conscious of their overwhelming pain, who had come together to share their conscious experience, and be restored to “sanity” – an emotional balance empowered by a higher Presence that they had discovered and experienced together.

The incredible Presence that appeared in the meetings was revealed by the conscious pain and fear each person had experienced, as they shared their hope and strength with each other. They were healers empowered by their woundedness and by the humility of their continuing experience of conscious powerlessness and unmanageability. They were “themselves” – not experts or professionals.

In the process of today’s meeting, I heard some experiences that resounded with my experience:
1. One person shared how he had tried to take care of God, instead of letting his God take care of him. One of my powerful distractions before recovery was trying to figure out “God’s will” – God’s conditions for our relationship, believing that if I could satisfy God’s desires, He would love and take care of me – not abandon or reject me. It was a mistaken, mood altering distraction.
2. Another person told about how her recovering husband had finally told her she was right about something for the first time in over twenty-five years of recovery. She related how insanely she had tried to be right at the expense of her own happiness, but now, after reached a point of choosing happiness over being right, she actually had a chance to experience being right.
3. Another person related how her husband had admitted he was having emotional difficulty, and she reacted insanely believing she had control over his emotions, and was responsible to fix him, even though she had learned she did not cause his problems, she could cure them, and she could not control them.
4. Another person described how she had “relapsed back into being a shrew” in a life situation, and she felt so “ashamed”. She was working to reconnect with her God so she could be restored to lovingness and emotional balance.

These are all incredible humans sharing their woundedness and their healing in miraculous and life changing ways – and being sacred sources of healing love for others.

When I was in high school, my chemistry teacher asked us to consider the molecular make up of different metals, and determine which metal was the best conductor of electricity. We were unsuccessful. So he told us that silver is the metal that best conducts electricity.

I see that this is a metaphor for my spiritual recovery group – and groups like it. There are many channels for the flow of our God’s conscious Presence, but the best is where there are no experts or gurus – only consciously wounded people connecting to other consciously wounded people. Together, we can create a spiritual silver lining in our lives where our God’s Presence can flow freely and strong.

We need to consciously experience our humanness, which opens our hearts and minds to God’s Presence. And we need to consciously connect experientially with our God’s higher Presence so we can be restored to spiritual intimacy and emotional balance. And it is impossible – and unnecessary -- to do this alone.


"The Second Step of the Twelve is the one that opens the door to understanding and growth. Once we have admitted our helplessness – and our inability to manage our lives – then w are ready to “
believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”
One Day at a Time February 2nd

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Rememberings - Daily Inspirations

Friday morning, I was sitting in the ICU waiting room at Baptist East Hospital. I had just driven back from Lexington to Louisville because doctors believed that my daughter may have experienced a stroke and/or seizure, and might be paralyzed on her right side. She had given birth to a beautiful little girl just two weeks before, and Thursday morning she had begun having a major hemorrhaging. They did a DNZ Thursday, and had given her two pints of blood. But something happened while she was recovering in her hospital room, and she was rushed to ICU. Billy had called me in Lexington at about 12:30 in the morning, and I drove back, while calling family members – Billy’s cell phone was going out. The situation sounded and felt majorly out of control – people were sobbing in fear – and it had been five years this very night since Liz died.

I am sitting here in the ICU waiting room watching the clock – listening to other voices around me – and remembering -- 2:15 – 2:20 – 2:30 – that’s when I had realized – five years ago – lying beside Liz in her hospice bed – that she was gone. And I am sitting here – now -- fully awake – experiencing the humanness of my life and rememberings – wondering and amazed at the precision of my God’s planning and action.

There is a Plan. There are no accidents or coincidences – no mistakes. I have learned by experiencing their Presence that they are very much in control of what occurs – or what doesn’t occur. They have infinite unconditional love – and total consciousness of what is and could be. And in Their infinite love and wisdom, They direct our lives directly to what we would want, if we had Their level of knowledge and understanding.

I read a story, as a child, in a Sunday School commentary that has stuck with me my whole life. Obviously, I have had fluctuating levels of conscious experience of its truth, but it has seemingly always come back to me in painful situations.

The story is that a man saw an ant crawling on the ground looking for food. The man decided that he wanted to help the ant, so he dropped a piece of bread in the ant’s path. The bread startled the ant, and he ran off in the opposite direction. So the man got down on his knees, and using his hand, he blocked the ant’s path, gradually turning him until he brought the ant back to the bread.

I experience my God’s Presence in this way. Nothing happens in Their world by mistake. Acceptance – the conscious experience of their lovingness – is the ultimate solution to all my”problems”. My “problems” are my human, limited, and wounded perceptions and reactions. When I consciously experience their love, I become intuitively aware that all is ok – that I am being cared for, protected, and loved.

All of this reminds me how important “daily inspirations” – conscious inspirational experiences of my God’s Presence – are to my human experiences of life. I need to have a steady and consistent flow of Their Presence in order to remain comfortable – and conscious – to be able live my life within its own conditions and circumstances as clear and present acts of my God’s love and care.

Sunday: Dana is doing well now. Her temperature is down. She can use the right side of her body. She was able to have her baby – Nancy – stay with her and Billy last night at the hospital. She has received many gifts of presence from many loving family and friends. A very different outcome from five years ago.

And we go on. Grateful for life – and maybe for death – because we are maintaining our conscious intimate contact with our God through steady and strong “daily inspirations”.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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