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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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?

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.