Another View Point of the Emotional Baggage we Carry.

Here I place before you two videos that speak about Emotional Baggage and the effect it has on our health. Within these two videos is also embedded so to say the idea of how we could deal with our Emotional Baggage.

The First Video is Joseph Murphy. I am sure many of you have read his books. 

This second Video is Dr. Hegde speaking at Mediquest. It's quite likely you have listened to him on your WhatsApp messages.

Our Lives are precious. I hope and pray that our will to be happy and fulfill our mission on earth is much stronger than our fear of the past. Often we give more power to our fears than to the Love of the life that God has given us. We absolutely must give up our victim roles and take up inspirational and leadership roles. No one can make us happy and no one can make us sad. We need very badly to take responsibility for our happiness and health today.

This blog post is only an interim post. I have not had time to write. I will write. Blessings to all of you.

Sickness – A physical reality, of the Emotional Baggage We Carry!

My Experience.

Emotional Baggage! In all my years of counseling, I have never met a physically sick,  person who is without Emotional Baggage. I have great compassion for people who are sick. At various stages of my life, I have cared for them with much love. But also, with a lot of regrets. 

In life, there are neither rewards nor punishments. There are only consequences.

Sickness is the consequence of the way we live. You just repeat this to anyone, and you will see how vehemently they will deny it. To most people sickness “just happens”, or they believe they picked it up from some unhygienic place or situation or person.

Our beliefs, our emotional baggage – that is, the memories of hurts, rejection, traumas, death of a dear one, or whatever have created fear and insecurity in our lives. These eventually act on our glands, heart, organs etc. And so we fall sick.

Drop your Emotional Baggage

Among the sick persons, I have come across, there were those who were eager to get well and they were very much open to thinking out of the box. These soon learned and understood that their sickness was a result of the emotional baggage they were carrying. While taking the help of medicines and Doctors, they also worked at healing their memories, their relationships, and mending their lifestyle and food habits. (Bad lifestyles and food habits are a result of hanging on to emotional baggage.) These went into counseling, meditation, yoga, walking, exercising in general, and corrected their eating habits. They detached themselves from their emotional baggage and quickly returned to good health and happiness, no matter what their sickness.

People who often don't heal!

The other group of sick people I came across was basically made up of people who were themselves victims of society, born of abusive parents, children of broken families, or simply had had traumatic experiences, like severe accidents, loss of parents, sexual abuse, etc.  They were angry, moody, depressed, dependent, chronically sick, etc., etc. These people rarely if ever recover. They generally blame anyone and everyone, including God for their conditions. Perhaps with help, they could heal. And this is the goal of my article. They must be encouraged to introspect. They must be helped to understand that by looking at their own lives they could make new choices. 

Sickness - A Gift to complete Healing!

Sickness is like a red flag, warning you that it's time to take a look at yourself. Please! Whatever be your sickness, even if it be Cancer, or rather I’d say, particularly Cancer, be sure you can be cured. Yes, you heard me correctly. Cancer can be and is cured. Every sickness can be cured including the so-called incurable sicknesses. There is enough evidence to that effect. Choose to ask yourself; what is my sickness telling me about myself, my life. Choose to live a healthy and happy life.

Suggested Reading: 

• "The Secret Language of your Body" by Inna Segal.
• "You Can Heal Your Life" by Louise Hay

Steps to heal your life, in my next blog Post!

 

Impressive! Glory of God! Divinity!

Here below, I am sharing a video that impressed me no end. At times it brought tears to my eyes. No, not because of the pain she endured. More because in her, I experienced the Glory of God. That in humans there is the possibility of Divinity.  Divinity shines in her. I was impressed and inspired by her courage, by her attitude to life, the greatness she saw and experienced in herself, and above all the total inner freedom she reached in possessing herself, yet not possessing anyone nor being possessed by anyone. I am so very proud of you "Muniba Mazari", I hope I will someday meet you. God is with you.

I cannot help but share this video with you!

Please do send me your reactions and comments. Thank you.

The Purpose of My Life

 

Why was I born? What is the Purpose of My Life? Do I have a Purpose? Or do I have to discover the Purpose of My Life. Or will the Purpose of my Life be handed down to me on a platter. Have these questions ever troubled you? Am I the only one in the world asking these questions? Surely not. But ever since I was in my teens, I have been troubled by this question. I was at that time a voracious reader. The meaning of life and my Purpose in Life were big questions for me. I was restless, I felt like a rudderless ship.

When I was in my early twenties or so, this poster caught my attention and stopped me in my tracks. True I was on my way, but what truly was the purpose of my life. I was one of a herd of sheep. I asked and asked, but only got blank stares. I soon realized that there were some questions you just don’t ask. You follow the herd. Even if it is a herd that has chosen a “road less traveled”. What I mean is, whatever the journey, the semblance of a destination fast disappears or worse was never even considered. We get busy sustaining life, fulfilling personal needs, and defending personal boundaries that may be real or imaginary. Just take a look around you. From the so-called “advanced” nations to what are called “third world” countries, where is it that you find purposefulness, peace, harmony, equality or the sharing of goods. Which part of the world shows a high health rate? We all seem to have one destination today – The Hospital.

Sorry for being so depressive. But if I don’t look at the dirt in my room, it's unlikely that I will ever clean it.

Let me cut a long story and get to the point. It took me another forty years before some light began to emerge and I began to see a Purpose in my Life.

A quote From a Collection of Meditations by David Viscott caught my attention:

 

 

This quote certainly gave me a boost and a very real sense of Purpose. However, it did not take me long to understand that this was not the whole truth. To me, life had begun to mean much more than just using my gift. I had begun to realise, that what I took for purpose and meaning was in reality ambition or downright self-centeredness, covered with a veneer of altruism. Sure I was doing a lot of good and once again I was feeling restless.

 Well over the last 25 years or so this is what I have discovered about my life, about the Purpose of My Life:

• The Purpose of My Life is to know who I am. I learned all about my life by reflecting on my life at various stages, by listening to feedback from friends and enemies. By accepting my Bright side and my Shadow side. I am still a work in progress.

• The Purpose of my Life is to know Others. Eureka! As I began to discover and accept myself, I found it so much easier to accept and understand others, yes with their Bright side and their Shadow side.

• The Purpose of my Life is to Know and experience the Divine. As I began to discover the Divine in me, I discovered the Divine in Others. I soon realized we are all one in the Divine.

When we accept one another and are united we establish a world of Peace, Happiness and Perfect Health. When we reject one another, we are fragmented and create a world of Chaos, War, Disease, and Sickness.

 The Purpose of Life is to Incarnate the Divine on Earth. To Heal the Earth, to establish a New Creation. Yes, it is in our hands. It has begun!

 

A Personal Response to Covid-19

I am a senior citizen, soon to become seventy four in a few days. Apart from that I am a diabetic since the last forty years suffering from peripheral neuropathy as well. In short, I am what is termed as a high-risk patient. Apart from that I am happy to say I neither smoke nor drink Alcohol.

Let me start from this point. I was a social drinker and a rather heavy smoker. Fortunately, it was on being diagnosed with Diabetes, that I began a process of introspection. I realized that I was damaging my internal organs. With much difficulty I stopped drinking and smoking completely. (Thank you Diabetes, you saved my life.)

Confronted with Covid-19 since the last one year and forced into isolation, I felt I was once again being gifted by life the opportunity to introspect.

The basis of a healthy Spiritual life is Conversion. 

There is only so much one can look outside for health and healing or for that matter “Happiness”, that elusive state of mind, for which we are always searching, but it always seem to remain just out of our reach.

Today, after a year of introspection, I have to confess, happiness is not outside of me, but very much a part of me, within me, an expression of me. It only needs to be uncovered. Circumstances of birth and life, always create for us a belief in conditional love. It has been no different for me. Most of us unfortunately never really get of that treadmill of our search for happiness, our search for love, “unconditional Love”. Instead, like being trapped in sinking sands, we get disappointed, hurt, frustrated angry and get more deeply sucked into bitterness and depression. This soon creates a “depression” of our all-powerful, God given Immune System. Result: we are open to every sickness and disease. And worse to Auto-immune sicknesses that attack the very immune system that is meant to protect our bodies.

In this last year of Covid isolation, I got a chance of being, so to say in a prolonged retreat of silence, prayer, reading, music and confronting myself, my beliefs, my attitudes, my relationships, and most of all my preparedness for the ultimate reality – Death.

I spent time in sincere forgiveness. Asking God for forgiveness and people for forgiveness is totally secondary. In fact it is not even necessary. Primarily I realized, I have to forgive myself. 

It’s only now that I have learned to address the God in my heart. It is only now that I understand those famous words of Jesus from the Cross, “Father forgive them, because they do not know what they are doing”. Jesus exonerates his accusers; he declares them innocent. There is NOTHING to forgive.

Happiness is Unconditional Love. No one owes you and you owe no one. Drop all your expectations, all your attachments, all your fears, hurts and whatever; allow pure love to rise to the surface, to your consciousness. Become Love, become Divine and no sickness will touch you.

“….they shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them. They shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” Mark 16:18

A final word. I have not become a saint. Far from it. But I do experience a deep abiding Peace.

Healing Prayer

 

You are Born to Be A Leader - Part 3

 

In Part 2, I referred to Poet Rumi, who says “you were born with potential…. You were born with wings.” This is true of every single human born on planet earth. Yet, too many, just too many of us don’t believe it. It seems the circumstances of our birth, all, but destroyed the Divine spark in us. (Refer to my Blog Post “Debbie Ford”)

In the words of Eleni Makedonas,“I can say with confidence that the moment a person truly starts down the path of self-discovery, they will never turn back”. (Refer to my Blog Post “The Journey of Self-Discovery! My Decision to Find Myself!”, Eleni Makedonas)

 The American English Dictionary defines self-discovery as follows:

“a becoming aware of one’s true potential, character, motives, etc.”

It is up to each one of us to recognize our true potential, redeem ourselves, to relight this spark, so that our light truly shines before the world; so that we become leaders, rather than “crawlers”.

The best way to overcome fear they say is to face what you fear head on. So let us take a look at some qualities of a leader. I’m sure we’ll all qualify:

1.     Honesty and Integrity: Dwight.D.Eisenhower once said, “The supreme quality of leadership is unquestionably integrity”. 

2.     Self-Confidence: To be an effective leader one must have the confidence to make decisions and ensure that others will carry out his commands.

3.     Inspire Others: You must be a Beacon of Light, an Inspiration.

4.     Commitment and Passion: When your teammates see you getting your hands dirty, they will also give their best shot.

5.     Good Communicator: A good Leader must be able to clearly communicate his vision and Goal to his followers.

6.     Decision-Making Capabilities: A good leader must have the ability to take the right decision at the right time.

7.     Accountability: “A good leader takes little more than his share of the blame and little less than his share of the credit.” In the words of Arnold H Glasow.

8.     Delegation and Empowerment: A good leader empowers his followers and delegates tasks to them.

9.     Creativity and Innovation: In the words of Steve Jobs, “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”

10.  Empathy: Understanding the problems of your followers and feeling their pain is the first step to become an effective leader. Even that is not enough until you work hard and provide your followers with the suitable solution to their problems.

Conclusion:

To become a good leader, you must have all these qualities but if you lack some of these qualities, then you might struggle to make the mark in the world of leadership. You will have to set a good example for others to follow. That is where your commitment, passion, empathy, honesty and integrity come into play. Good communication skills and decision-making capabilities also play a vital role in success and failure of a leader. Lastly, innovation and creative thinking, as well as the futuristic vision, are a couple of key traits which make a leader stand out.

So believe in youself. You were given the gift of life for a purpose. That purpose is to find yourself, to find the Divine in you. God Bless you.

You Are Born To Be A Leader! - Part 2

Rumi

You Are Born With Wings, Learn to Fly!   

  Let me begin with a quote from Rumi:                                  

  You were born with potential. 

  You were born with goodness and trust. 

  You were born with ideals and dreams. 

  You were born with greatness. 

  You were born with wings. 

                                          You are not mean for crawling, so  don't. 

                                          You have wings. 

                                          Learn to use them and fly.

In my last blog post, the first of this series, I spoke a lot about the circumstances of our birth, that mostly straddle us for many years. And I would guess many of us go to our grave without ever having sung our song, or danced our dance. That is without ever having enjoyed this experience called life, let alone teaching others how to enjoy life.

The above words of Rumi, have always inspired me and challenged me. I was certainly one of those Eagles raised as a barnyard chicken who never never knew I could soar higher than the highest mountain, until a certain scripture passage from the Book of Genesis (OT) pierced my heart: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him" Gen 1/27. That was a shocker for me. A bolt that slowly woke me up from my lethargy and self pity.

To many the above scripture quote might mean nothing, might not create any stirrings of the heart. But it stopped me in my tracks. It made me take a second look at my self, my beliefs and meaning of life. If it was really true I was made in the image and likeness of God, then why was I behaving like a nerd thinking life (and God) had dealt me a bad hand.

A spark of fire began to burn in me. I began to re-evaluate my beliefs and soon realised that I was living not my life but the life of others - my parents, my teachers and may others. 

Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all. You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours.”

This is the famous passage from St. Augustine’s Confessions in which Saint Augustine states “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

Wait for the next post

You Are Born To Be A Leader!

Introduction:

Has it ever occured to you that by virtue of your birth, you are born to be a leader and guide. No matter who you are, what your background or situation, cast or creed, rich or poor, male or female. By virtue of belonging to the human family, you are meant to be a Leader from the very first moment of your existence. Meaning to say, you are born to be a teacher, a guide, a giver of life, a leader, To quote Jesus: "The thief come only in order to steal, kill and destroy; I have come so that they may have life, life in its fullest measure." Jn 10:10. I believe, like Jesus we are all born to give life.

Unfortunately this does not really happen, does it? I mean most of us if not all, rarely feel we are Leaders or Life Givers right from birth. On the contrary most of us feel we are victims. Life seems to be painful, or at best meaningless and a struggle.

Being born of Parents who were themselves victims and sufferers, we soon learn from them to become carbon copies and think that this is the truth about life. Life is a struggle. We soon identify with the negatives of life, and often get drowned in them. We learn to distrust ourselves and others. We learn that we are not complete in ourselves and need others, material things and power to make us happy. We learn fear, anger, hatred and more. Soon unhappiness becomes a way of life.

A sad outcome of all this is that we begin to look outside of ourselves to fulfill the emptiness within, to find peace and pleasure; not realising that we are stepping into sinking sand and only getting sucked deeply into misery, fear, hate and suffering. Short term pleasure and quick fixes like alchohol, drugs, sex as well as emotional addictions and conflicts become our staple.

What do you  have to say? Please write your comments and questions.

Take time to reflect on the above and look forward to my next Post.