Posted on

Are you brave or fearful?

Changing your mistaken thoughts to thoughts of love is for brave people. Once you decide to do it, the only way that you can transform them is when they come out of your unconscious so that you can look at them and accept that they are your thoughts.

This decision sometimes brings a lot of emotional pain. When you decide that you want to look at them head-on and heal whatever they mean to you, your Holy Spirit or Higher Self will attract circumstances into your life that force you to look at them and change them. Therefore, if you have decided to grow in awareness, the road can be full of ups and downs when life brings you opportunities to grow. Don’t be scared. They are just thoughts and emotions with which you have been carrying from a very young age.

These are the steps that I use when I am experiencing a time of great pain or turmoil:

1. First of all, I accept responsibility. I don’t blame whatever is outside of me but rather acknowledge that some thought of mine drew it to me so that I can heal it. Sometimes I know what thought is, sometimes I don’t. But I know that it is always my thought and not what someone said or did outside of me. This step takes me out of the victim role where I think someone did something to me.

2. I turn to the Holy Spirit (HS) in me. I speak to that part of me as if it were a friend. I say something like this: HS, I am feeling very lonely. (Here, I recognize how I feel). I know that comes from my thought that I don’t belong, but I don’t know how to change it. (Here, I assume responsibility). I hand over my thought to you so that you can help me see it differently, and I can forgive myself for having thought like that. (I deliver it to a higher level)

I don’t know if it was Einstein, but some wise man said that we can’t solve a problem on the same level it was created. You have to go to a higher level.

These simple steps, if you do them every time you are not at peace, which is your true essence, can help you in several ways:

1. You immediately step out of the victim role. When you project your thoughts outside and blame someone because they “did” something to you, you get tangled up in the world of the ego, that is, in your thoughts that tell you that you are separated from God and everything else. This idea causes a lot of fear and any of its ramifications like guilt, anger, etc. In order not to feel them, you project them to the one who is outside of you.

2. You take back your power. When you are a victim, you have to wait for the other person or situation to change to be happy. By regaining your power, you can be happy just by changing your perception to one of love. It is being able to see beyond appearances to the perfect being in front of you, who, with his behavior, is telling you that he is unhappy and needs love. When you manage to do this every time something takes away your peace, little by little, it becomes natural and effortless.

It depends on you. In every moment, you can choose peace. And if you fail, choose again.

Posted on

Principle 12: We can always see ourselves and others as extending love or giving a call for help.

As a young girl, I was nasty when I was upset. I used tones and put on faces, and when I was in that mood, no one could stand me. When we are acting unlovingly, we are disconnected in our minds from our true essence, which is love. It is a way we have to say, “I am unhappy. I need love.” The last principle: We can always see ourselves and others as extending love or giving a call for help applies here.

Usually, when someone speaks to us in an unpleasant tone, we react in the same way and respond, possibly, in a worse way. This reaction is because their unloving behavior reflects the lack of love that we feel. Here we return to the mirror theory.

I have a friend who was born wise. When I would get those outbursts, and I was mean to her, instead of answering me back, she used to think, “Poor Yve, today she must feel miserable.” Since she was a child, she lived this principle. It takes others longer to learn how to put it into practice. But, once we succeed, our relationships immediately change to ones of love.

Instead of seeing anger and attack, you can always see inappropriate behavior as the product of someone who is hurting because they feel unloved and are asking for help. It is the person’s inappropriate way of saying that they need to be loved. If you can see it like this, you can respond with love and compassion. That’s what I say to my granddaughter when she tells me that someone at school was rude or unfriendly: the more unbearable a person is, the more unhappy they feel inside.

If someone wants to hurt you, it is because they feel hurt. Unconsciously the person wants company on their level. Instead of lowering yourself to their level, bring them up to yours by giving them love and compassion.

A quote from Gandhi says, “No one needs a smile as much as one who cannot give it to others.”

Posted on

Principle 11: Because love is eternal, death need not be viewed as fearful

Part of our judgment is about death. So many people are afraid of it. We begin to let go of the fear of death when we truly believe that what is real never changes and that Love is always present.

Death is merely a transition from one state of being to another. The body is temporary and is an instrument that we have created for our learning, but life, our essence, being spirit, is eternal.

One of the main messages that Jesus came to teach us with his death and resurrection is that death does not exist, that we are eternal because we are extensions of pure Love.

I was honored to witness the moment my grandmother, my mom, and my dad passed away. In all three cases, it was the same. I could feel the precise moment when the soul left the body. Once it was separated, the body lay inert, lifeless, when the energy was felt inhabiting that body a few seconds before. My feeling was that my relative was no longer that body. It was much more, but no longer that body .

My grandmother died at 93 years old. She told me that sometimes when she slept, she felt my grandfather, who had died years before. I always told her to remember that Love eternally unites us and that it was possible that my grandfather would visit her some nights while she slept. The day she died, my watch stopped at the precise moment that I felt her spirit leave my body. I have always thought that she sent me a message so that I would not doubt that what I said was true. Death does not exist. We are eternal.

Those experiences led me to the certainty that death is not to be feared, as we are eternal. What dies is the body. Our essence of love never dies.

I invite you to make an evaluation of what you think about death. Write down all the scary thoughts that come up. Look at them one by one. Stick with each thought until you can identify where your fear is coming from. Practice feeling your oneness with everything. This is achieved through silent meditation. When you achieve that mental silence, the barriers that you have put with your ego thoughts are eliminated and you only feel the peace and eternal love that you are. If you’ve never done it, try little by little until you can do it for at least 20 minutes. Once you can feel the love that you are, whenever you want, the fear of death will dissipate and you can enjoy life much more.

Posted on

Principle 10: We can focus on the whole of our lives rather than the fragments.

Has it ever happened to you that you meet someone for the first time and you think, “I don’t like him”? After a while, you get to know him better, and he ends up being a great friend. When you look at a fragment of life, you miss the totality. At that moment, you forget that everything you see outside is your projection, and you judge. The above applies to judging yourself or other people. Many times, you talk or think about something without having all the elements.

Instead of judging a fragment of something, it would help to apply Principle 10 and focus on the whole instead of the fragments. This reminds me of an experience I had in my teens. I met a boy who I classified as ugly, and I focused on that. Without knowing him, I didn’t want to go out with him. As life leads us to where we have things to heal, we coincided in an activity months later. He was sitting next to me. I began to realize his intelligence, kindness, and many other qualities I was unaware he had. As the night went by, I saw him more and more handsome. I stopped focusing on a fragment and began to focus on the whole.

This principle applies to all areas of your life. For example, if you are diagnosed with a disease, do not identify with it as if that was all you are. If you are in a job and they fire you, do not identify yourself as a failure. If a relationship ends, do not identify yourself as someone who is not worthy of being loved.

Your Being is unlimited and eternal. It comprises everything. This truth is something you have to always keep in mind. We are all here to remind ourselves of that truth.

In this dimension of time and space that we call Earth, we think that we are made up of many separate parts, like the pieces of a puzzle. The number of fragments for each depends on their mental conditioning from birth. But that is an illusion that makes it difficult to see the whole. Decide to see differently and see the totality of who you are. See the puzzle complete. This decision will bring you a lot of peace.

Posted on

Principle 9: “We are students and teachers to each other.”

There is an interconnection between everything in the Universe. At that level, everything is one unit. There is no separation. What a person does has repercussions throughout the Universe. The Universal Laws govern this dimension.

Sometimes there are situations in your life, just like you were thinking about a friend and the phone rings and it’s her, and you say, what a coincidence. The psychologist Carl Jung called this synchronicity when events occur where something beyond the causal relationship is involved.

There are neither coincidences nor synchronicities. In reality, teachers and students come together when both are ready to begin healing. What you see outside is a projection of your thoughts. You are always looking at yourself in a mirror. All the people and situations that you have in your life are there because you have something to learn from them. Here the law of magnetism and the law of attraction is at stake. I have talked about them on other blogs.

As you understand the mirror theory and use it for your growth, you take advantage of these “teachers” to see which are your thoughts are projected outside. If you take responsibility for your projected thoughts, your relationships will become more and more harmonious.

That teacher helps you see things that you have within you that you have forgotten or that are so deep in the unconscious that you have not identified them. The best teachers are your family relationships because it is with whom you spend the most time. They can be adults or children. Age doesn’t matter. It’s your reaction to them.

But they don’t have to be people. They can be objects, animals, governments, entities, etc. So if you react to anything in any way other than love, you have to look inward and see what about you they are reflecting.

The same is true in reverse. For that teacher of yours, you are his teacher. There is a saying in Puerto Rico that says, “hunger and the desire to eat come together.”

When you manage to integrate this principle into your life, all your relationships will change. You come out of your role as a victim when you stop thinking that someone did something to you, and you become the primary role of your healing. Then, you recognize that you are only love, and you begin to extend it to all the people you meet. What a wonderful way to live!

Posted on

Principle 8: We can choose inner peace no matter what is happening around us.

Despite the apparent chaos in your life, you can choose to be at peace, knowing that you are always connected and sustained by the Source that is always loving and peaceful.

When something doesn’t work out in your life, the tendency is to put the blame on someone outside of yourself. However, what determines your peace are the thoughts you have about things or people.

When you think that you are a victim of circumstances, and to be at peace you have to wait for whatever is bothersome outside of you to change, you have no power.

Nothing outside of you affects you. What you think about it affects you. God’s best gift is the freedom to choose the thoughts you put into your mind. This means that every second you can choose peace over conflict. Once you realize that you choose what you think, you regain your power. You step out of the victim role.

I used this principle a lot when my husband passed away. When I thought about him and the pain became so intense that what I wanted was to cry and cry, I remembered this principle and immediately began to think about something else. I chose peace despite the fact that I no longer had him in my life.

It happened to me once when I was in the car. I began to think about how much I missed him. When I started to feel sadness, I immediately decided to look at the clouds and see what shape they had. I did not allow any other thought to enter my mind except the clouds. I totally focused on them until the pain passed.

You can do this with any situation or thought that takes away your peace. Emotions do not exist by themselves. They are always preceded by a thought. Sometimes that thought is so unconscious that we do not realize it, but you can be sure that it is there, before the emotion.

Exercise your freedom, always choose peace no matter what is happening in your life.

Posted on

Principle 7: We can become love-finders instead of faultfinders.

This principle helps you stay in peace and love. Every person or situation that comes to you brings something positive. Of course, it also has the potential to bring something negative. It depends on you where you focus your mind. If you focus on the positive, you will have peace, and in turn, satisfying relationships. If, on the other hand, you focus on the negative, you are going to have stress and stormy relationships. Whatever you put your mind on is increased. You can always use situations that appear to be negative by looking for the positive side. Ask yourself, what do I have to learn from them?

Dr. Jamposlky mentioned that, no matter what a person’s behavior is, you can choose to see only the light of love in them.

We all have an ego. The ego always leads us to judge, be angry, sad, and any other negative feeling. You will never be at peace as long as you act from the perspective of your ego.

If you are aware of this, you can begin to change your perception of people and situations and begin to see them from the love you are, and see only the love they are. When you achieve this, you feel immense peace and a sense of unity with everything around you.

Imagine a couple that all they do is look for faults in the other. I assure you that both are going to be upset and unhappy. If, on the contrary, they decide to start looking for the good in the other person and communicate it to them, the dynamics will immediately change, and they will be able to feel again the love that united them. Each one is going to be full of love.

The above example will repeat itself in any relationship, even with the people you come across. How often are you on a beach, and you start looking at people and judging them? That one is fat, that one is too thin. Those kids are very scandalous. When you do this, you are working from the ego, and you will not have peace.

I invite you to experiment for a week by just looking at the real and loving being of each person you encounter, no matter who they are or what they are doing. Look beyond appearances and feel love. Then in your mind, send love to them without a judgment crossing your mind. If a judgment appears, immediately change it for a thought of love. You will see how you begin to feel love more and more. That is your true nature. Enjoy it.

Posted on

Principle 6: We can learn to love ourselves and others by forgiving rather than judging.

Forgiving, in this sense, is not what you usually know as forgiving. It is not looking at someone who “did” something to you and saying, I forgive you, but I do not forget.

I have mentioned in other blogs that when you see something in another person, it is a projection of that something within you. Your thoughts make you vibrate to a certain level. If you have negative thoughts, you will have a denser vibration. If your thoughts are positive, you will have a higher vibration.

 By the law of attraction, you will attract people who have a similar vibration into your life. When that person you attract does things that you don’t like about yourself, and you don’t accept that you have them, it will make you very angry. You may think it is unforgivable. If you remove that person from your life because what they did to you is unforgivable and you don’t heal it in you, someone else with similar characteristics will come.

Those unforgivable acts, whether they come from someone else or you, come from the part of the mind that A Course in Miracles calls the ego. It is the part that believes that it is separate from God. The one that considers itself to be a sinner when in reality, our true being is still united to the Creator and is pure love.

Forgiveness in this principle means to see beyond the act to the true being who is perfect and always loving. It is seeing the other as our mirror and being able to look inside to be able to recognize what we have to heal. In other words, see the other as my teacher.

Forgiving does not mean that we accept the wrongdoing of another person. Forgiveness is an internal correction that makes our hearts feel lighter and frees us to live in the present, to live in love. It’s mostly for our peace of mind. By being in peace and love, we can extend them to others, which is the most valuable gift we can give.

Susan S. Trout, Ph.D., discusses these principles in her book To See Differently, where she tells the story of this lady and her family who spent years hating and wanting to take revenge on the person who murdered their 18 year old daughter. The anger and pain consumed them all.

After years she and her husband decided to confront the murderer in jail to ask him why he had murdered their daughter. When they faced him, the hatred that had consumed them suddenly disappeared, and they felt love for him. They were able to recognize his human condition and his pain. Seeing this, they felt compassion and love. They realized that he, too, was suffering from what he had done.

This is an example of what it means to see beyond the act to the person’s true essence of love. It is what the principle calls forgiveness.

When we choose to see everyone as teachers of forgiveness, each moment allows us to be happy and in peace and love.

Posted on

Principle 5: Now is the only time that exists and every moment is to give.

Pain, grief, depression, guilt, and other forms of fear go away when you focus the mind on the loving peace of this moment.

You can choose between love or fear only in the present moment. This choice is made instant by instant. In this holy instant, there are no worries or stress. There is only peace. Your peace is gone as soon as you allow any thoughts to enter your mind that are not exactly what you experiencing in this moment.

There is a quote from the Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh that reflects this principle very well:

“If while washing dishes, we think only of the cup of tea that awaits us, thus hurrying to get the dishes out of the way as if they were a nuisance, then we are not “washing the dishes to wash the dishes.”

What’s more, we are not alive during the time we are washing the dishes. In fact, we are completely incapable of realizing the miracle of life while standing at the sink. If we can’t wash the dishes, the chances are we won’t be able to drink our tea either. While drinking the cup of tea, we will only be thinking of other things, barely aware of the cup in our hands. Thus we are sucked away into the future, and we are incapable of actually living one minute of life.”

Living in the present moment requires practice because you are used to living in the past or the future. Every time you realize you are doing it, bring your mind back to the present. Focus totally on what you are doing. When you do, you will see that the only thing you feel is peace.

To achieve this it is necessary that you forgive your past and this includes everyone, but mainly you. Ask your Higher Self, or whoever you turn to when you need higher help, to help you see what your participation was in what happened and what lesson you have to learn from the experience. I have no doubt that little by little you will achieve it and there will be fewer and fewer times that your mind will leave from the precious moment that you are living.