Houses of Healing

The Value of Negative Emotions

I believe that the most important thing in the world is that you feel good. When you feel good, you are most likely to experience your greatest growth and evolutionary change.

The problem for me is that I so naturally seem to find the negative in any situation. I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to stop homing in on the negative. But then I realized that something that comes so naturally to me might actually be a benefit.

Negative emotions have well understood evolutionary value. Negative emotions such as fear, loss, and aggression signal the activation of our flight or fight response. When we experience negative emotions, we have a feeling of aversion, which sets us on course to identify what is wrong and eliminate it. Negative emotions and thoughts are associated with a survival alert that activates a reaction to fight, flight or conserve - each reaction with obvious evolutionary value.
That is all well and good. But it still seems kind of negative. In contemplating this, I linked up with a principle from the teachings of Abraham and The Law of Attraction – “desire is born out of contrast." What this means is that when you are experiencing something negative in you it prompts you to connect with what you really want in your life.

“When you find yourself in the midst of negative emotion... now here's a new twist to it. You are all understanding are you not that when you are feeling negative emotion it is your Inner Being telling you that you are RESISTING something that you WANT!! That is not an easy thing for everyone to understand ...” --Abraham-Hicks

If you hate your job, that negative experience is what summons from you your desire – your dream – for the kind of job you really want.

If you are in a “bad” relationship it prompts you to identify your desire and dream to have an intimate, loving, and kind relationship.

Experiencing the negative, seeing the negative, identifying the negative acts like a wake-up call for you to embrace your dreams and desires. And bringing forth your dreams and desires in the world is what pulls you forward in your evolutionary growth and development.

Negative emotions become troublesome when you spend all of your time there. When something negative happens there is a temptation to embellish the event and tell your sad and sorry story to anyone who will listen – even if you are just telling it to your self over and over again. We can easily get stuck in the negative and feel compelled to grind it into reality.

If you are experiencing something negative, the trick is to quickly identify what desire or dream it is conflicting with – and then get off the negative.

When you are experiencing a negative experience quickly get the message you are sending to yourself about what it is that you really want and move on. Figure out the dream or desire that is calling to you and put your attention there.

Now then, isn’t that a more creative, resourceful, fun, and useful way to handle anything negative that is in your life?

Appreciation Rituals

“Each Night Before You Go to Bed, My Baby”

When we were younger, my husband and I would get in bed at night and spend a few minutes talking about our day. Over the 38 years this custom helped us remain connected even as it has evolved.

Our daily review had slowly turned into noting all the problems we had to deal with. And when that got to be a bit depressing for bedtime talk we just dropped out the whole review altogether. When we noticed we were missing that connection we started up again with a new form – appreciations – and we love it.

At first it was a little forced but now it has grown and evolved into a robust and nurturing tradition.

Our Appreciations

We start by talking about at least three things we appreciate about the day. Sometimes we do have to reach a bit to find three things but mostly many more than three things just come flowing one after the other.

We also add at least one appreciation from each of the following categories:
• What we appreciate about each other
• What we appreciate about ourselves
• What we appreciate about our health
• What we appreciate about our wealth/ prosperity
• What we appreciate about ourselves as the creator of our own life

Plus, every night we rotate through all the members of our family and say at least one thing we appreciate about whose ever turn it is

We also add a thing or two that we appreciate about our dogs. (Yes, we are dog people.)

We end our Appreciations with our intentions for the night and our intentions for what we want to create for tomorrow.

I Don’t Have Time For That

You might be looking at this idea and get tired just thinking about doing it. Maybe it seems overwhelming to you – “I can’t think of that many things to appreciate” or “I don’t have that much time I have to get to sleep sometime tonight”. But that is probably you just being stuck in your old ways.

Really, it only takes about 5 minutes. It is relaxing and fun to do. Plus, it is supportive, nurturing, and soothing, builds a great connective relationship, and certainly helps you sleep better than thinking about all that went wrong that day or all you have to do tomorrow.

You can always find something to appreciate.

I remember the day that our granddog Ko-Hai got hit by a car. We really love that dog and it was such a touch and go day – would he make it or not? Just before going to bed, my son called from the animal hospital and wanted to talk to me about the Vet’s recommendations. The vet thought we should put Ko-Hai down. Ko-Hai was having a really hard time and didn’t look good at all. According to the vet “dogs who get hit by cars going 55 mph don’t live.” My son and I talked at length about what to do. We cried a lot and in the end he choose to let Ko-Hai have his chance to recover.

When I got in bed after that phone call and my husband started our Appreciation ritual, I just cried and said I could not find anything in myself to appreciate that day. But he started anyway saying we had a lot to appreciate:
• Ko-Hai was still alive
• Luckily, the person who hit him knew whose dog he was and came right away to tell us he had hit Ko-Hai. If he had not done that Ko-Hai would have certainly died by the side of the road and we might never have known – just another missing dog
• We could appreciate that we had been able to find Ko-Hai after he had been hit. He had staggered off into the bushes before he fell down.
• We could appreciate that the nearest vet had still been open (it was Saturday) and was able to stabilize Ko-Hai for the hour trip to the Emergency Care Animal Hospital.

Yes, even in the face of something sad and scary and traumatic there were things we could find to appreciate.

Taking the time to appreciate your life changes you in ways you won’t understand until appreciation becomes part of your life. I can tell you all the incredibly wonderful things appreciation does for your biochemistry – real chemical and physical changes. How appreciation helps reduce your experience of stress. How it makes you more creative and intuitive. How your relationships are better when you practice appreciation. And these are all good reasons to make appreciation a formal part of your life. But the biggest gain you get from setting aside time every day – no matter what – to review and savor what you appreciate in your life is that it helps you to live this wonderful life full-out.

Right now -this very moment – pick 3 things you appreciate about today. And now design your own Appreciation Ritual.

And Ko-Hai is fully recovered now and as sweet and loving as ever.

Sacred Journey Stories

"I would ask that you remember only this one thing,” said Badger, 'The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive." --Barry Lopez

Once a woman has taken a Vision Quest, she joins the Council of Elders. It is important to share her story with others. To tell and retell her story is part of bringing her Vision alive.

As you read the Stories of Those That Have Gone Before, please give appreciation and gratitude to each woman’s sacred story. And may you journey well.

Why not expand your horizons in the New Year with a feminine contemporized version of the traditional Vision Quest?

Take $200 off on my unique Vision Quest for Women program when you register now and mention this promotion.

Feel Called to a Sacred Journey?

Joseph Campbell notes four experiential qualities that define the call to a sacred journey:

The call feels like a compelling need not an escape from responsibilities. You have a sense that something is there for you to find and that the truth of your life depends on finding it.

It is a strange thing that somehow feels “profoundly familiar.” You recognize it as yours even though you don’t know anything about it and couldn’t explain it if you did.

You “know” that one part of your life is over with.

You didn’t expect it and you don’t want it but you know that you are being pulled into it by some unseen dynamic.

You might find a Sacred Journey calling to you if…
• You are unsure in which direction your life is heading.
• You have been torn away from a part of your life that you are not ready to leave.
• You are ready to leave behind a life design that no longer works for you.
• You are poised on the threshold of beginning something new in your life.
• You feel adrift and without internal guidance.
• You want to be of service to your community but are not sure what that means for you.
• You have no vision or your vision is unclear.
• You feel a certain discontentment – irritable, angry, and unsatisfied for vague reasons.
• You feel called to an unknown adventure.
• You are questioning your life.
• Somehow, your choices have lost meaning.
• You just know that it is time to journey deep within yourself and give yourself to the unknown tasks.

If this is the time for you to take your Sacred Journey don't pass up this opportunity to take $200 off on my unique Vision Quest for Women program when you register now and mention this promotion.

If you feel that a Vision Quest is right for you or just have questions about a Vision Quest; feel free to set up a time with me to talk about what is happening for you.

Rites of Passage

After my last child was born when I was 34 years old, I embarked on an intensive healer’s journey that lasted almost until I turned 50. I explored the more esoteric realms of healing. I experienced the depths of woman’s spirituality under the guidance of Susun Weed. I deepend my Native American roots by being initiated into the Seneca Wolf Clan Teaching Lodge by the Clan Grandmother Twylah Nitsch. And I traveled into unknown mystical / multidimensional territories with a long apprenticeship in Cherokee mysticism.

When I completed that journey, I brought back with me an understanding of our multidimensional nature and the value of honoring and interacting with all the aspects of ourselves. I merged these right brain experiences with my left brain training in psychology and found I had discovered the potency of nature centered therapy and environmental psychology, and the power of rites of passage.

Learning to manage your moods and energy has many aspects.

Yes, you have clear up fundamental physical imbalances and understand how to organize your day and regulate your basic physiology. You also have to understand what your emotions are telling you and how your mind is guiding you through your life. At some point in your healing journey you will most likely find that in order to be truly healthy you “must go off in search of the one life you can call your own” – the place where “out deepest gladness and the world’s hunger meets”.

There will be times in your healing and in your process of emerging as your true self when you will feel that it is necessary to take a more intuitive, symbolic healing path. Rites of passage are time honored traditions designed to reconnect you with the soul of yourself.

Rites of passage are initiations incorporated in community life as a vehicle for making meaningful and important life’s transitions. They are used to mark such events as the onset of puberty, menarche, marriage, divorce and mid-life.

Rites of passage are a means that the community uses to officially recognize the leaving behind of an old phase of life and the embarking on a new role and function in the community. A rite of passage honors your transition and gives meaning to your life changes. There are many initiations you will be asked to undergo as you pass through the different stages of your life.

By traveling deep within yourself, you will connect with your call to embark upon your next initiation. Each initiation offers you the opportunity to grow in grace, wisdom and courage. Each gateway to the depths of yourself requires focused, guided, hard personal work in order to move to the threshold of change.

Why not expand your horizons in the New Year with a feminine contemporized version of the traditional Vision Quest?

Take $200 off on my unique Vision Quest for Women program when you register now and mention this promotion.

No room at the inn

When new clients come into a Mood and Energy Management Program, they are uplifted and excited.

Their energy has been in the dumper, their moods are not in the “happy, happy” realm, and they feel like crap - and their doctors are still telling them that nothing is wrong with them.

They are uplifted and excited because they have come into a paradigm where the source of these imbalances can be found and re-balanced. Who wouldn’t feel uplifted?

I spend a lot of time letting prospective clients know that it will take a big investment of resources for them to work through my most advanced programs – but mostly they are hearing that here is a solution to turn around how they feel – finally!

Things go fine for a month, two, or even three and then suddenly their ability to cram this new life that they are diligently setting up into their old life bursts apart at the seams. I take it as sure sign that things are at the busting point when I start talking about the need to change their lives and they start perspiring.

So here is the thing (to paraphrase Ben Franklin or Albert Einstein – depending on your source) – you cannot keep doing what you are doing and expect to get different results. Somehow we have a hard time applying this basic idea.

If you keep doing (and being) what you are now – alas, you will keep getting what you have now.

And when you try to do more of what you are doing now, you just get more of what you have now.

You can try moving faster in order to take all those new supplements, fit in your new regime, and hurry to get to bed and wake up “on time”. But moving faster is part of what got you where you are – the place that you don’t want to be.

The bottom line is this – you have to change your worldview about life, health, wellness, well-being, and success. You can keep trying to cram all the new health and wellness recommendations into the old worldview - but your life is already full – there is no room at that inn any more. You are going to have to find an upgrade.

What’s the upgrade? A paradigm shift. A new conceptual view of the way things work and your place in the world. Luckily, a paradigm shift isn’t all that hard to achieve - but it does take attention. It is sort of like consciously directed self brain-washing in the direction that you want to go.

When clients in these integral programs are not doing well, part of the reason is that their worldview isn’t working for them anymore. They are out of synch in some way with the growth, development, or evolutionary process they are going through and the resistance or drag in their systems shows up in feeling bad.

When you are feeling bad it is time for an upgrade to your new current worldview.

I have some specific tricks of the trade to engineering a paradigm shift but a simplistic and very workable approach is to selectively choose the kind of data and experiences you expose yourself to.

I once read that if you read an hour a day on a subject for two years you would be an expert on the subject. If you did it for 3 years (maybe it was 4) you would be a world expert. Same principle.

I recommend to my clients that they use the wonderful “Golden Hour” - right after they wake up in the morning - when their mind is easily shifting between the conscious and unconscious state, to read. Best done outside in a natural place.

Read something that is attractive to you that is just beyond how you currently view the world and your place in it. Choose something that is pleasing, attractive, and uplifting to you. Don’t make it the same stuff you already know - instead reach just a little outside your comfort zone to a place that is intriguing and exciting.

Instead of reinforcing what is making you feel bad why not reach for a conceptual shift that is going to support what you want in life? Go find another inn – maybe one where they serve you breakfast in bed.

Thoughts Become Things

“I Want to Be Healthy, Well and Experience Well-being but I’m so tired, annoyed and frustrated.”

You don’t have to bother debating the “truth” of worldviews like the Law of Attraction or do experiments to prove its veracity to understand that if you keep thinking, doing, or feeling the same thing over and over that that is what is going to keep showing up in your life.

If you are feeling tired, depressed, lonely, defeated and you keep talking about it and talking about it there is just “no room” in your life for anything else to happen.

Instead, look for just one point of your life that you can feel different about and lavish it with attention. Bespeckle it with jewels of appreciation and gratitude. Expound on it with deliciousness, joy and bliss – low and behold it can grow and multiply.

Before you know it, you will have brought to your awareness all kinds of inspired actions to help you create different things in your life. And that one bright spot can grow and expand to touch all the areas of your life until soon you aren’t thinking, feeling, or acting the same and your life is different.

Focusing on your desire is not about getting strangled in the frustration of not having it. Focusing on your desire is really about being now who you would be and having the experience, thoughts, and feelings you would have when your desire shows up in your outer world.

How would you be if what you wanted was already in front of you? If you were totally healthy, well and full of well-beingness what would you be doing? What kind of experiences would you be having?

However that would be for you then - that is the way to be now. Dream about it. Think about it (again not the absence of it but already having whatever you want). Act as if you have it. Experience having it. Write about having it.

In all ways have that reality even before it shows up. And even as you do this - if something is in front of you to do that doesn’t quite fit your desired reality - just do what is in front of you to do and don’t give it any power. Do it and move on in the experience of your desired reality.

So if you are constantly tired. Give up telling elaborate stories about being tired. Instead, image what it is like being full of vibrant, sparkling energy. Think about it. Dream about it. Act as if. And take the inspired actions – supplements, adrenal stress test, extra naps, regular meal times, see the new health care practitioner, - whatever – that your mind has come up for you to take - but do them in the reality of having your desire rather than in the reality of the absence of your desire.

Spring Rites of Passage

Spring is stirring and you may be feeling the call to take your own Sacred Journey.

A Sacred Journey is different than a spiritual experience. A spiritual experience reaches upward to connect with the divine. A Sacred Journey requires that you move into the depths of yourself. A sacred journey takes you deep into your deepest longings – for in those longings with all their uncertainties and dark mysteries lies the jewel of your self.

A Sacred Journey asks you to trust the darkness, to trust the waiting, to trust what is unknown. It does not ask for faith as much as it asks for courage. Courage to dive into the deep, dark waters of our soul and return with your gift to the world.

Unless your burden of responsibility is relinquished, your spirit can not be regenerated. The rules and regulations of the adult world can not indefinitely freeze over the child – that newness of spirit longing to run free and flow unbounded. There must come a time when you are ready to undergo the initiations of spring – when you are ready to let the ice melt and feel again, laugh and play again, and touch the deepest place of the sacred within you.

In spring your heart, mind, body and soul hear the stirrings of rebirth. Are you ready to step away from your adult world and immerse yourself in your initiation?

The Spring Rites of Passage initiate you into the deeply sacred. They “trick” winter into dying so that rebirth can come forth within you. The spring initiations are meant to break the hold of winter so that death can come – because without death there can be no rebirth.

If you are spiritually stuck in winter - you are a mature adult trapped by maturity and the responsibility of adulthood - the absolutely necessary task of caring for others and yourself has burdened you with trying to do too much of what is the right thing.

Those who are ready to loosen the grip of winter and undergo the Rites of Spring will undergo the initiations of being reborn, enlightened, entering the spirit world, merging with their life purpose and coming to know themselves to be of nature. Only in this state can symbolic death come to the adult and the mantle of the child – the new – be taken up again.

If you feel the need to work with an initiatory midwife as you embark on your sacred journey you can give me a call at 434-263-4996 or email me to talk about the gateway you are entering. Find out more about our guided Sacred Journeys at www.evenstaronline.com/sacredjourneys.

Did Oprah Steer Us Wrong About The Secret?

"Generate and build the experience of positive affective states rather than simply extinguishing negative emotions. Positive affective states create an “upward spiral” and become the fuel and the raw material for experiencing more growth and development, more exploration and discovery, more mastery and successful interactions in the world, and building, developing, using and leveraging our strengths."

Many of you have probably been exposed to the DVD The Secret. Oprah had two shows dedicated to the concepts touched on in The Secret and now that it is a “phenomena,” lots of public backlash is being seen in the media.

So far, what I have seen is that people are having a hard time accepting that feeling good (e.g. thinking positive thoughts, not being drawn into negative drama, and looking on the bright side of things) is a good thing. The media backlash seems to be implicating that somehow feeling good is damaging to you.

Well, luckily, especially for the linear minded among us, there is some science behind the value of feeling good. Positive Psychology - the new branch of psychology that came on the scene a few years ago - experienced a similar lashing when making its claim that feeling good was an important and crucial part of healthy psychological development.

For my Master’s Thesis in psychology and counseling, I researched the scientific literature on feeling good – and below is a synoposis of that research.

You Feeling Good is the Most Important Thing in the World

Did you ever wonder why at Evenstar we don’t just focus on herbs, supplements and diet as the major contributors to health and wellness? We believe that there is nothing more important than you feeling great. We didn’t just come up with this idea on a whim or as a flight of fantasy – there is actually real research to show that happy people do better on nearly every aspect of life than non-happy people – including health and wellness.

Feeling good brings more successful interactions in the world – not the other way around. It’s a myth that “when circumstances change you are going to feel better." If that were true, we’d all be totally at the whim of things we have no control over- a scary thought! (And the stuff of existential crisis.)

It has even been scientifically “proven” that - beyond basic survival needs - the circumstances of your life are not what make you happy or unhappy. Circumstances are not what cause you to thrive or to languish.

You can learn how to feel great. You can learn to thrive and flourish. You don’t have to depend on circumstances. Developing the art and skill of feeling good by better managing your mood and energy opens the way for more friendships, stronger love, better physical health, and more creativity.

When you feel great, you go further, with less effort and in less time. Growth, positive development, and more successful interactions in the world have their foundations in you feeling good … in you feeling great!

What’s in it for you? (Besides feeling great? )

When you feel good you benefit in many ways and experience mastery in every life area. And when you feel great you take these advantages even further.

When you feel good you are healthier – lots healthier

• People who feel good live longer and are less likely to become disabled. Feeling good buffers you from the wear and tear of aging.

• Happy people spend more time playing. Playing has survival benefits and is associated with increased creativity, muscle tone, and cardiovascular fitness.

• Happy people have better health habits, lower blood pressure, and stronger immune systems than less happy people.

• Happy people endure pain better, take more health and safety precautions when threatened, and make use of more health risk information.

It is easier and more fun to learn how to feel good than it is spending your time getting sick, getting older faster, experiencing more pain and disability, and dying younger. Feeling good is a "prolonger of life and improver of health." The choice to feel good – and it is a choice - should be a no-brainer.

When you feel good you are more effective and successful in the world.

• Happy people see more good things happening in their lives and forget about more of the bad stuff. They view themselves as more successful in the world and think that they have more skill than others think they do. People who feel good about themselves experience success as lasting, personal and pervasive and failure as impersonal, temporary and specific.

It is nice to feel good about yourself. You’ll build your self-esteem and pave the way for things to work out for you. Success breeds success and means you’ll continuously build from a strong and favorable foundation. Believing the winds of good luck are always with you steadies and strengthens you.

• When events are threatening, happy people, more readily than less happy people, switch tactics and adopt a skeptical and analytical frame of mind. Happy people are more likely to switch tactics when involved in a task that appears to be failing. People who feel good deal better with adversity.

The better you feel (even in down times) the better you’ll deal with life’s ups and downs. The downs won’t keep you down. You won’t get caught in a rut of doing the same old, ineffective things. Remember Benjamin Franklin’s definition of insanity – doing the same thing and expecting different results. Being happy doesn’t mean you become oblivious- just positively selective.

• Feeling good makes gainful employment and higher income more likely. People who feel good are markedly more satisfied with their jobs than less happy people. Feeling good actually causes more productivity and results in higher income.

Instead of climbing the ladder of success take the elevator. Feeling good helps show you the money and you will laugh your way to prosperity.

• Adults and children who are in a good mood select higher goals, perform better, and persist longer on a variety of tasks and solving problems.

Have more fun and you won’t be afraid to go for what you want. Feel good and you will get where you want to go sooner, easier and won’t get sidetracked.

When you feel good you are more connected with others

• People who feel good have more secure relationships. Very happy people differ markedly from average people and from unhappy people in one principle way - a rich and fulfilling social life.

You don’t have to be lonely. Feel better and more people will feel better with you.

• People who feel good have more close and casual friends, are more likely to be happily married, and are more involved in group activities than unhappy people.

When you feel good, you develop genuine charisma.

• People who feel good have more positive social interactions. They are more tolerant.

Feeling good is an easy way to being kinder.

• Happy people are more altruistic. When you are in a good mood you are less focused on yourself, you like others more and share your good fortune more with others.

When you feel good, ripples of good are created.

When you feel good, you are more creative and open to new ideas

• People who feel good have a greater drive for exploration and discovery. They engage in more active, playful exploration, and discovery

There is so much to do and discover in this life. Adventures are exciting and expansive. When you feel good, you live to the fullest. The better you feel the more life will expand for you.

• People who feel good are more open to new ideas and new experiences. They are more expansive, and creative.

Be pleasantly surprised as you open yourself to the wide world of wonderful ideas.

• People who feel good are more creative, think quickly, and do not succumb to premature closure or other forms of superficial intellectual processing.

Think yourself creatively through your life rather than getting trapped in dead ends.

• People who feel good have a different way of thinking and acting. Their thinking becomes creative and broad-minded, and their actions become adventurous and exploratory.

When you feel good, you’ll let your life expand to meet its potential.

People who feel good are more mentally and psychologically healthy

• People who feel good develop a strong foundation for growth and exploration and build the intellectual, social and physical capital for further growth and development. People who feel good build the resources and capital that will become the basis for growth and development in years to come. Happy people reach outward and broaden their resources through exploration and discovery.

When you feel good you feel empowered. The better you feel the more you’ll expand and reach outward. There is no limit to the good you can experience for yourself and the good you can give to others.

• People who feel good look for the virtues of what is happening. They become constructive, generous, un-defensive, and open to seeing possibilities.

Wouldn’t it be nice to broaden your horizons and feel open to the world and others? The better you feel the more intuitive wisdom you will have and the more effective you’ll become at going around obstacles.

• People who feel good "broaden and build,” They seek growth and development, exploration and discovery. Feeling good increases your survival chances because when you feel good you broaden your intellectual, physical, and social resources and build reserves to draw upon.

Feeling goods leads you to give up being satisfied by the same old, same old. You reach out for all the good you can. You’ll get involved with all the great things going on in the world.

• People who feel good have more successful interactions in the environment. This produces more useful information about their environment and they develop sense of greater personal mastery.

Feeling good connects you with your power to make your dreams come true.You start to live your life by design and not just by circumstance.

Feeling good creates an upward spiral of even more good

The upward and outward spiral of feeling good starts an upward and outward spiral of even more positive emotions and thus more exploration, discovery, creativity, and insightful thinking and more success and mastery in life.

You can learn how to create that upward spiral of good and power charge it.

The most important thing in the world is that you feel good.

Feeling good gets rid of negative emotions and reduces the negative physical and psychological stresses of negative experiences. Feeling good tells you that you are in a potential win-win situation and guides you to be more expansive, tolerant, and creative. Feeling good helps you maximize the social, intellectual, and physical benefits of any situation.

You can learn to better manage your mood and energy and feel better. As you feel better and better, you’ll experience growth and development, exploration and discovery, mastery and successful interactions in the world. You’ll discover, develop, and leverage your natural strengths and talents. You will create win/win situations all around you and give up that win/lose mentality.

All leading you to the good life. You know … the good life in which –

• You are being who you really are - doing what you really want. Then going beyond that and taking it as far as you want.
• You are living fully with all your quirks and talents. And loving yourself all the time.
• You are giving your best, getting your best and living life full out.
• You feel great about your self, your life and your health.
• You naturally flourish and thrive and take yourself into new and more expansive realms of living.

Do we really need to hold onto the “fact” or “truth” that life has to be a struggle? If watching something like The Secret can help you feel better – more power to you. When you feel better you open the way to bringing to you many, many benefits.

(References available on request.

“I believe that the very purpose of our life is to seek happiness. That is clear. Whether one believes in religion or not, whether one believes in this religion or that religion, we are all seeking something better in life. So I think, the very motion of our life is towards happiness”
-- The Dali Lama