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Principle 4: We can let go of the past and the future

To give love freely, principle 4, which says that “we can let go of the past and the future,” helps us.  Imagine yourself living with anger or feelings of guilt about what happened to you, or what didn’t happen to you, what you did or didn’t do, or, on the contrary, fearing the future because you think it will be a repetition of our past. In that case, you’re not going to seize the only real moment you have, which is the present moment.

Your responsibility is to forgive the past, let go of it and not project it into the future so that you can freely give love and start each new day or each new relationship, enjoying how wonderful it can bring to our life.

 I once had lunch with a lawyer who began to tell me about her ex-husband. From the way she spoke, I thought that she had just divorced him because I saw her suffering and with a lot of anger. When I asked her, she told me that she had been divorced for ten years. I couldn’t believe it. She spent ten years living in the past, so she didn’t enjoy the present moment. She didn’t know how to live the previous principle.

When you judge someone or repeat in your mind things that happened in the past, not only do you continue living the same drama in your present, but you deprive yourself of having peace. The past lives in your mind. It no longer exists. But you relive it every time you think of it.

The same goes for the future. If you worry about what may happen in your future, you are projecting situations that have already happened. As your thinking is creative, you continue to recreate the same that’s in your mind. Did you know that about 90% of the things you worry about don’t happen? What a waste of time where you could have enjoyed your life.

Both recreating your past and worrying about the future deprive you of enjoying every moment with what life brings you. Let go of what happened, forgive whoever hurt you, and forgive yourself. Without forgiving, you will not be able to enjoy every moment. Have you heard the saying “the past is gone, the future has not arrived, the only thing that exists is the present”? Apply it to your life, and you will have a full and loving life.

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Principle 3: Giving and receiving are the same.

The vast majority of people think that if they give something, they have less because they think only of the world of forms. So if I have $10.00 and I give you $5.00, of course, I only have half left. I call this a scarcity mentality.

As I have mentioned in other blogs, there are spiritual or universal laws. These laws deal with a higher dimension where everything is energy. At this level, what I give comes back to me. Things that we perceive as materials are made up of energy. What I give is preceded by a thought of giving. Considering that energy is electromagnetic, that energy joins the energies that comprise creation and, by the law of magnetism, attract similar energies that return to me multiplied.

Let’s see this in action. I once read the story of a woman who had recently moved to New York and knew no one. To make matters worse, shortly after arriving, her husband left her. Christmas came, and she felt like the most lonely and miserable being. She couldn’t handle the depression. She began to think about others who were worse off than her and called a center that fed the homeless and asked if she could volunteer that night. After serving and giving love to these people, she felt so much peace and love that she thought that this was the best Christmas day she had ever spent in her life.

She managed to live the third principle of Attitude Healing that says that Giving and receiving are the same. When we focus on giving and bonding with others, fear goes away, and we accept mental healing for ourselves.

When we give, we are not thinking of anything other than extending love. There is no room in our minds for fear. When we feel that love, our natural inclination is to want to share it and, when we share it, everything else ceases to exist in our mind. So if we give love, we receive love. If we forgive, we receive forgiveness, and so on. I invite you to give only love.

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Principle 2: Health is inner peace. Healing is letting go of fear

When talking about healing, these principles don’t refer to the healing of the body but of the mind. That’s why the second principle states that Health is inner peace and that healing is letting go of fear.

When our goal is to change the body, we forget that our only goal is peace of mind. We will never know true peace as long as we think we are vulnerable. Our true being is eternal and doesn’t suffer from anything.

I know many people who are healthy in body but don’t have inner peace. They are disease-free but unhappy. That is because they are full of fear, fear of scarcity, fear of loneliness, fear of the future. In short, they have their minds set on things that take away their peace.

On the other hand, I had a friend who got cancer in his forties. He chose not to have any invasive treatment. Many people, blind to the reality of our being, began to judge him and say what he had to do because they understood that he had to undergo chemotherapy or radiotherapy, surgery, etc., to heal his body.

The rest of the people were hysterical, but he was at peace. He knew he wasn’t that body and chose to leave it alone. His body never healed, and he died, but he was healthy because he had peace of mind. He wasn’t afraid of death. That is true health.

A Course in Miracles tells us: I want the peace of God. The peace of God is everything I want. The peace of God is my one goal; the aim of all my living here, the end I seek, my purpose and my function and my life, while I abide where I am not home. I am not a body. I am free. For I am still as God created me. (W-p1.205.rVI.1:6)  

We are pure love. The body is only a vehicle we have to experience and learn from a life in the physical world of matter. When we leave it because it no longer serves us, our essence or pure love continues to exist in another dimension and continues its evolution and learning at other levels. We are eternal. It depends on us, as we decide whether to focus on love or fear, if we will be at peace or if we are going to suffer on our journey on Earth. What are you going to choose?

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First Principle: The essence of our being is love.

The first principle of Attitude Healing says that the essence of our being is love. Love is eternal. The mind is unlimited; nothing is impossible. This principle is based on the premise that our true identity is spiritual rather than physical. Love is the part of us that is real.

And what is love? Love cannot be defined. It is an energy that contains everything that is Real, that which comes from the Creator. It is the unity of all that Is. It is the total absence of fear, which comes from the ego or thought of separation.

A few years ago, I went for hypnosis to see if it could improve my claustrophobia. I had a very interesting experience. Already immersed in the hypnotic state, the doctor told me to go to the first moment where I had felt claustrophobic. I immediately saw myself stuck alive inside a coffin in a boat that was going down a river. You can imagine the claustrophobia and fear that I began to feel at that moment. As soon as this state of claustrophobia began, the doctor told me to go to a place of peace. It’s incredible how instantaneously I went from fear to love, merely by concentrating on peace.

To begin to change the thoughts of fear that I had in my mind, the doctor reminded me that I was not that body, that my true essence is love, that my being is unbreakable and perfect. He told my unconscious mind that my body can die or get sick but that my being, which is love, is eternal. Having managed to feel that love that I am, devoid of all fear, has helped me tremendously all my life. I was able to experience in a moment of hypnosis that where I put my mind will determine if I am at peace and love or fear. It is as simple as that. Are you not at peace? Change your thoughts and choose again.

You don’t have to be in a hypnotic state to feel your essence. By closing your eyes and taking a few deep breaths disconnecting from your scary thoughts, or in a meditative state, you can feel it. Practice it until you make it. In this way, every time you find yourself disconnected from your true essence, by doing this process, you reconnect to the love you are.

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The Principles of Attitudinal Healing

On December 29, 2020, one of my favorite authors on A Course in Miracles-related topics passed away. Gerald Jampolsky, M.D. Dr. Jampolsky mentioned that when his life was upside down, a friend gave him a manuscript to read. The title of that manuscript was A Course in Miracles, which hadn’t been published yet. The content of this manuscript and the work he did with himself with the principles of the Course changed his life completely.

Dr. Jampolsky developed 12 Principles based on the philosophy fo the Course and he opened in Tiburon, California, a center to work with children with terminal illnesses, using these principles. His work was so successful, that it was expanded to include the parents and relatives of the children. Later, this work was exteded to anyone who needed healing their attitudes.

As a tribute to him, who taught me so much, I will dedicate my following 12 blogs to one of the Principles of Attitudinal Healing that he wrote about in his book, Teach Only Love. Gerald Jampolsky, MD, was the author of many books. He was an internationally recognized authority in the fields of psychiatry, health, business, and education. Jampolsky was a child and adult psychiatrist, a graduate of Stanford Medical School, an author, and an inspirational speaker.

I met Gerald Jampolsky in Puerto Rico when I was starting on my spiritual path. The impression that I got from him as a loving and caring person and the sense that his philosophy made to me led me to be trained as an Attitudinal Healing Facilitator.

In the Introduction to his book Teach Only Love, he wrote:

         As we emerge from the birth canal, we enter the world desperately struggling for breath. Most of us travel through life continuing to struggle feeling unloved and alone. All too often we are afraid – afraid of sickness and death; afraid of God; even afraid of continuing to live. Often we leave the world the same way we entered it-desperately struggling for breath.

I believe there is another way of looking at life that makes it possible for us to walk through this world in love, at peace and without fear. This other way requires no external battles, only that we heal ourselves. It is a process I call “attitudinal healing,” because it is an internal and primarily mental process. Properly practiced, it will, I believe, allow all of us, regardless of our circumstances, to begin experiencing the joy and harmony that each instant contains and to start our journey on a path of love and hope.

The mind can be retrained. Within this fact lies our freedom. No matter how often we have misused it, the mind can be utilized in a way that is so positive that at first it is beyond anything we can imagine. However, before the mind is retrained, it seems to be nothing but tightly locked compartments. We sense our potential, but it is held behind “closed doors.” ….(t)hese blocks are really only attitudes in need of healing, and because they are attitudes that we alone have chosen, they can be altered.

May he rest in peace, and his teachings keep helping millions.

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Do you run away from suffering?

Suffering is part of your life. No matter how much you change your situation so as not to suffer, at some point, it reaches you. The important thing is what you do with the suffering.

And why do you suffer? Your true essence is love. If your mind is full of thoughts of love, you will be at peace. If, on the other hand, the ego and thoughts of fear fill your mind, you will suffer, be it stress, anxiety, or any other emotion that arises from fear.

Suffering is an excellent opportunity to see what those thoughts are that take away your peace. They are usually part of your unconscious mind, so you need to play detective a bit. What you have learned so far is to look outside for the source of your suffering. So-and-so said such a thing to me, and it offended me. Or, that person did or didn’t do something to me and hurt me.

I invite you to do something totally different. When you are suffering, don’t run away from it. Stop and spend some time alone with yourself to see where the suffering is coming from. Search within yourself.

• What do you feel?

• What does that remind you of your childhood?

• What person from your childhood do you associate with that feeling?

•Once you manage to identify similar memories in your childhood, what decisions did you make about yourself? You may be seeing them outside of yourself and are now making you suffer?

Once you can answer all these questions, write them down in your notebook so that it’s easier for you to identify them in your future. Realize that the one reacting is your inner child, the part of you wounded from childhood that wants to be healed.

Give yourself a lot of support and love. Whenever a negative thought arises, repeat to yourself that it is not true and change it to a positive affirmation. This internal healing is a process. Little by little, you will realize that you no longer react to something similar with the same intensity as before.

The important thing is not to look outside but inwards every time something takes away your peace. Don’t run away from suffering. It can be your great ally in your healing process.

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The other side of COVID-19

Have you considered that there is another way of looking at COVID? When at the beginning of 2020, they announced COVID 99.999% of the world population panicked. I remember that I asked for everything from Instacart. When it arrived, I would enter the groceries and wash each item before putting it away. Other people left the bags outside, and they would spray Lysol on them. After they considered that everything was “purified,” they entered it. Before entering the house, they left their shoes outside not to infect the inside of the house. What I still don’t understand was the mass collection of toilet paper.

Here are some of the positives I saw:

• With the closure of schools and offices to work from home, I began to see other things. I remember that one day I heard children laughing. When I looked out the window, I noticed that parents were playing with their children in a green area on the other side of the lake behind my house. That only happened on weekends before COVID. I began to see them cycling, enjoying themselves as a family as they couldn’t do before.

  • I saw the difficulty of parents who had to work from home while their children went to school online. This motivated companies to realize that employees working from home had similar performances with less stress for those who had to travel more than an hour to work. It was possibly less expensive for the companies.

• Now, medical plans accept visits online. In situations where you don’t have to be in front of a doctor, you can “see” the doctor online, avoiding getting infected in an office where sick people go.

• Since there were almost no cars on the roads, pollution decreased.

• People saw animals walking the streets in some cities near fields or mountains.

• In the canals in Venice, the water cleared and fish could be seen.

• All of these changes have helped us do introspection and determine our priorities, putting aside things that are no longer important. In my case, this led me to find time to do what I felt I had to do for many years, this blog.

Although the situation is improving, it isn’t over yet. Each one has to decide whether to watch the news with the horrors mentioned, talk all the time about negative things, or look for the positive side and know that everything will be fine in the long run. This without detracting from the people who have suffered the loss of their loved ones.

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Look beyond appearances

A Course in Miracles reads, “Appearances deceive, but can be changed. Reality, is changeless. It does not deceive at all, and if you fail to see beyond appearances you are deceived. For everything you see will change; and yet you thought it real before, and now you think it real again. “(T-30.VIII.1.1-4)

And what are appearances, and what is reality? For the Course, what you see from your ego-mind are appearances since you can see a situation or a person in one way today and tomorrow in another. What is real never changes. Your real self is that part of you that knows that it has never separated from God. Reality is love, wisdom, compassion. Appearances are the product of judgment, of your perception of the moment. That is why it changes.

I’m going to give you a life situation so you can see it live and in full color. You project what you think outward and it’s what you know as the circumstances of your life. You see them and feel them as if they were real but if you change your way of thinking, tomorrow you will see them differently.

Imagine that you have a very unconscious thought that says that you don’t deserve and you can fill in the blank to what it is that you don’t deserve. It could be many things.

You have an appointment at 6 pm with your boyfriend whose cell phone ran out of battery. When he leaves to pick you up, he finds an accident on the road and he can’t call you to warn you. He arrives at 7 pm to pick you up.

All that time you’ve been furious because, at some level, you felt like you didn’t deserve him to call you. You aren’t going to see it that clearly because it’s in your subconscious but that’s the reason you are reacting like this. You think that he is inconsiderate, that he doesn’t love you enough, and many other thoughts that make you unhappy. When he comes you insult him without letting him speak. And you are sure that you have every reason to feel that way and to react as you are doing.

When he manages to explain what happened, you feel very badly for having reacted like that. Now you see the same event differently. What you saw, which was real to you, were only appearances that arose from your perception of the situation.

Reality is unchangeable. If instead of seeing the situation from your negative thoughts you had seen them through love, no matter what happened you would’ve been at peace at all times. You would’ve thought that your partner is a being of love and nobility and that if he didn’t arrive on time it had nothing to do with him or with you but with some circumstance beyond him. You wouldn’t have judged him and when he arrived you would have been in total love since that’s your true nature.

If you practice seeing things from love instead of from your mistaken perceptions, each time it’ll become easier and you’ll have many more moments of peace. You’ll be much more frequently in the reality of your being, which is love, rather than in the perceptions of the ego, which is fear. Try it.