An Open Letter of Hope, When Life Seems Hopeless

This Blog is based on a letter I wrote to a client recently who was going through some very difficult and hopeless feelings.  Upon reflection, I realized it is the basic message that I have been assimilating and learning for many years now to find my own peace of mind and ease in the face of my own despair and hopelessness. It is about loving myself and giving myself the gift of a joyful, free, expansive life.  These understandings are at the core of every session I co-create with my clients.

An Open Letter To Myself and All Others Who Struggle Mightily To Have Lives That Flow Smoothly, Abundantly, and Joyfully:

There are many things you can do to begin to reverse the downward spiral you sometimes have been getting into, and to begin to feel hopeful and more excited about creating the relationships, the work, the health and whatever else you want for your life.

Probably the main thing I can say is that it is in your control to change your state. We can get into this place where we reinforce one negative thought after another, and then when our feelings are also reflecting our thoughts that things aren't going the way we wish they were, we sometimes can get into that downward spiral. It’s just because that’s what we are focusing on too much. In reality, every moment we have the capacity to choose other thoughts.  Our unhappy or frustrating feelings are telling us that our Inner Being, our Source Self, sees things differently.  It knows that there is not only a way to have the life we desire, but also, how to get to that result, that manifestation, in the most pleasurable way possible.

First of all, you might consider listening to what you are telling yourself about your situation.  As you know, if your thoughts and feelings are about what's not working for you in your life, and you believe that you are spiraling down, and you focus on this state of being often, then by the Law of Attraction, you will, of course, attract more of the same. 

It is my experience that you can choose instead to believe, trust and know that a way to have what you want is already created for you in this place Law of Attraction advocates call your Vortex, or you might say, your "reservoir of expanding, fulfilling possibilities” in the Unseen Realm. 

I would suggest that you consider that a way to have the relationships, health, money and work you want is completely within your realm of possibility.  In fact, it is a done deal already in your Vortex of expanding possibilities!  It is your sincere desire to have that wonderful, wonderful relationship, and the ideal job, income and health you want, combined with your belief that it is definitely coming, combined with the feeling of hopefulness about that possibility evolving and coming to you, that opens the doors for the Universe to begin to bring that to you.  Feeling the good feeling of allowing your good to come to you is what will bring it to you.

In other words, you can slowly learn to choose to take your focus off thinking and feeling constantly that things aren't working the way you want them to in any area of your life.  Instead, you can ask yourself to begin to embrace the belief and the good feelings that come when you accept that you are well on your way to having what you want. Remember that whatever you focus on is what you will get more of in your life.

Often a belief and a feeling is so strong that things aren't working out the way we want them to, that it seems impossible to feel hopeful and expectant that we will get the things that we want. But this is where all the work (or play!) needs to be done, in relaxing and trusting and allowing ourselves to believe, and even better, to know that the better life that we imagine for ourselves is possible.

The way I see it, it's a choice that we make over and over and over, a choice to get back to feeling good no matter what conditions we are facing.  We need to accept and feel the not so pleasant feelings, but know that those feelings are just telling you that there is another way to go about this, another way to imagine all that is happening.  Your Source Self is guiding you and loving you through all these trying times.

Know that there is a presence of Divine Love in your life that is focused on you very intently and wants only your success. In the eyes of that Higher Love, your Higher Self, you are completely taken care of, and you will succeed. Your Higher Self sees you as already successful in every way you wish you were.  This is no small thing.

You're coming out of a long period in your life of believing in struggle, and frustration, and a belief that things are hard. Though you may not always recognize it, and may often forget it, you have also learned a lot about how to relax, how to trust, how to love yourself, how to allow Life to show you its magic and its blessings.  Something basic to who you really are knows how to choose happiness over fear, how to choose confidence over doubt, how to choose having fun over stressing out.  That’s because those qualities come built in with your human Being-ness. 

Life is actually very abundant, and you have every right to have a ton of that abundance in your relationships, your work and your health. Believe and know that this is possible for you. Begin to focus more on the positive expectation that it is coming to you. 

When you're in that place, that is when the things that you want can begin to easily flow into your experience. That is when you get impulses and inspirations that lead you towards how you can more openly allow, or do actions that will further these wanted things coming to you more readily and easily. 

It's amazing that all of this comes down to the thoughts and the feeling state that we create within ourselves, and that we are not the victims of our own thinking, or of anyone or anything. We can make a choice to stop telling ourselves and others any stories about how things aren't working out for us the way we want them to. 

I know it's hard to stop thinking that and telling it to ourselves or to other people.  I deal with this myself, as do all of my clients, and most all of my friends and family. But we can choose instead to begin to tell the story of how we want things to be, and to get excited about the possibility of that emerging in our lives. And the cool part is that when you are in a good mental place with hopeful and expectant thoughts, and the good feelings that come with that, will you attract and allow the things you want to unfold for you.

Every new moment it's a brand-new possibility for how your future might unfold going forward. The past is completely gone. When the future comes, it will always be the present moment. So the present moment is the only thing that we have. We can either fill this moment with doubt and worry and fear and frustration about not having what we want, and thoughts about how things aren't working out the way we want them to, or we can begin to think thoughts about how it's going to feel so good when things work out the way we want them to, and how we have trust and faith that the Universe has got our back!  God, our Higher Power, the Universe, whatever you want to call that Source Love, is orchestrating things in our favor all of the time, if we would just relax and begin to notice how much good there is in every moment.

Get a notebook or create a file on your computer where you write often the things you are appreciating or grateful for in your life.  See how many things you can write down, and how you can begin throughout your day to notice things you appreciate that are already working well in your life.  Make appreciation your dominant thoughts and vibration if you can, and watch the magic it will bring into your life!

Hold yourself gently and kindly if you seem to be backsliding or still struggling or getting overwhelmed.  There is no right or wrong way to do any of this.  You can choose to be your own best friend and dearest lover, and make a decision that you are going to begin to consider giving yourself a break and forgiving yourself no matter what is happening. Be unconditionally kind with yourself if at all possible, and remember that you are unconditionally worthy!  No one else can or is judging your self worth other than you.

Problems can just be seen more and more as temporary “bumps in the road” instead of huge insurmountable mountains.  Feel the difficult or troubling feelings as long as you need to, and don’t repress them, but just know that they are there to point you back to how your Source Self is seeing things, as beautiful, filled with solutions and ease, and working out well.  Just because you may not be seeing and feeling your life the way Source does at any moment, doesn’t mean things can’t change in the next moment.  It also doesn’t mean you are “wrong” for however you are seeing and feeling things in your life.

Life is actually very magical. The only thing stopping you from seeing and feeling that your life is magical, is your very strong belief that things are difficult and a great big struggle, and that because things have been difficult, they will continue to be difficult. It's just an old habit most of us learned growing up.  Sometimes it will take some time to let it all go.

To learn a new habit of believing in and expecting good things to work out for us, and a new habit of choosing to feel good about this moment and each brand-new moment, is where our work and play lies. Focus on a good feeling thought for 17 seconds, and it will automatically attract another good feeling thought. Stay with good feeling thoughts about the possibilities of things working out for you for even one minute, and you will begin to develop the new habit that will bring better and better results into your daily life.  It takes some practice with this a little every day.

Meditate daily if you can because it puts you in that place of openness to the realm of infinite possibility. Write down the story of how you want your life to unfold, and read it every day or often, and visualize it happening for yourself. Visualize yourself enjoying doing the work you most want to be doing and spending the money that you want to make in a joyful way. Visualize yourself in the most wonderful relationship you can dream of, and know that this is going to happen in your life, even if the details aren’t exact.  Go for the essence of what you feel you want your life to be, and the details will take care of themselves.

Be easy about it. Become confident and determined that it will happen, and that life is already unfolding for you the journey towards having what you want. Remember, there are no happy destinations without happy journeys, so look for ways to be happy every day and to have more fun, and know that in enjoying your life, you begin to open the doors to everything that you want coming to you.

I know that sometimes all of this seems impossible in the face of how strong our feelings of frustration or hopelessness may be. But all of this really does work when we relax and trust and do the next best feeling thing that occurs to us. It really is one moment at a time. What feels good right now? And what feels good next, and next, and next?

And if we are feeling bad, we can go ahead and feel that feeling, and it will begin to diminish. Relax, notice your breath going in and out, up-and-down, and find some peace in that. That peace is who you really are. There is a great Love that cares for you. That great Love IS YOU!  Your life is meant to be fun and satisfying. Find ways to enjoy this journey one moment at a time, and those moments will add up to an enjoyable life.

Living From Your Heart

What does it mean to you to get out of your head and live more from your heart?  How do we "open our hearts" to ourselves and others?

“Well… what does your heart say?”

“Your heart knows best.”

“Just listen to your heart.”

“Follow your heart.”

We've all heard people make these statements to us and to others.  Maybe we've even heard ourselves say these things to someone.  I, for one, even find myself often reminding myself to listen to what my heart is telling me.

I have often wondered, for many years, just what exactly does it mean to have an open heart?

What does it really mean to not be “coming from my head”, and instead, to be “coming from my heart”?

It's pretty common to refer to the area of our solar plexus as the location of our “spiritual” heart. It's not exactly our physical heart,(or is it?), but instead, some kind of energy center, (chakra) where our most profound, knowing, intuitive, deeply felt wisdom abides. If we somehow are able to listen from there, to think from there, to feel from there, to act from there, then we are likely to be on the right track in any area of our lives, or so it seems.

In fact, leading-edge biological research is delving into just how this “heart knowing” takes place in a neuro-physiological way.  In an article entitled Thinking From The Heart - Heart Brain Science, Dr. Dominique Surel explains:

“The heart is in a constant two way dialogue with the brain. But… the heart and cardiovascular system are sending far more signals to the brain then the brain is sending to the heart.”

“Recent work in the relatively new field of neuralcardiology has firmly established that the heart is a sensory organ and an information encoding and processing center, with an extensive intrinsic nervous system that's sufficiently sophisticated to qualify as a heart brain. Its circuitry  enables it to learn, remember, and make functional decisions independent of the cranial brain. To everyone's surprise, the findings have demonstrated that the heart’s intrinsic nervous system is a complex, self-organized system; its neuroplasticity, or ability to reorganize itself by  forming new neural connections over both the short and long-term, has been well demonstrated.”

So that’s a bit of the amazing neuralcardiology of it all, but what about how we are affected in our ability to live our lives masterfully day-by-day, based on whether we are able to live “heart-centered” lives or not?

I have often wished that I understood, or knew, how all of this heart stuff worked to affect my happiness, a little better then I seemed to. I was alternately told by various people throughout my adult life that, on the one hand, they could really feel what a heart-centered person I was, while others would say, “Wow, you are such a thinker!  You are so in your head!”

From where I was sitting, I was pretty much also experiencing both things. At times, such as when feeling deeply for the plight of others, or my love for someone close to me, or when deeply immersed in the beauty of nature, or music, or dance, there would be no question that I was feeling something that could be called “my heart”. On the other hand, I was continually noticing how much time I put into reading and listening to all kinds of wisdom teachings and self-help gurus in order to arrive at intellectual understandings of how life works, and specifically, how could I get my life to have less problems, and more ease, fun, and insight.

I especially noticed how intellectual understanding alone, could only take me so far. The real transformations, or shifts in my consciousness, shifts in my actual life experience, seemed to always depend more on how in touch I really was with the realm of the heart. I often observed how there seemed to be a general consensus among those in the know in the spiritual-psychological community, that unless one immersed themselves in “the work of the heart” or, “the healing of the heart” then no true transformation would take place.

Yet I often felt that knowing how to work with myself in the realm of my heart, was virgin territory for me. For the last 45 years, I have relied on doing meditation for approximately one hour per day, as my daily dose of medicine, or nutrition, or “beingness” that hopefully guarantees that my connection to my heart is alive and well. I have come to equate my level of joy and inner peace throughout my day with the degree that I have managed to connect to my heart during my morning meditation, and to the degree that I can relax, feel and trust that inner connection throughout my day.

Still, I have sort of envied the many women in my life (and a few dudes), who seem to so readily and easily “come from their hearts”, or their intuition, in approaching and successfully addressing the various areas of their lives.  I often wondered, “How do they do it?  How can they be so in touch with their tears, or their joy, or their knowing?  How could I ever get in touch with my heart and my intuition to that degree?”

I've done a lot, especially over the last 10 years, to open myself more to my heart and intuition. My divorce set me firmly on that path. Perhaps the most powerful experience was the time I spent journeying into the inner realms of my being, under the influence of the plant medicine, ayahuasca, while spending time with the Achuar Indians in the Ecuadorian rainforest. I also spent a good deal of time training in a heart-body-centered form of life coaching with Gay and Katie Hendricks, called Conscious Living/ Conscious Loving. I have spent hundreds of hours out in nature just sitting in astoundingly beautiful settings, letting myself simply feel whatever would come up within me. Most recently, a dear friend and psychotherapist has trained me in a form of heart meditation she calls Samyama.

I’ve also been doing what is called “Automatic Writing”, as described by author and teacher Tim Kelley and others, as a way to connect to your “Higher Guidance” or “Trusted Sources” that exist in the unseen realm.  This is a practice of asking a question that is concerning me, perhaps around some issue such as relationships, money, right livelihood, health, self-worth, or similar concerns, and then seeing what flows automatically out onto my paper as I allow my pen to write rapidly with little or no interference from my analytical mind.

One of the key ingredients of successful automatic writing is to determine carefully just who or what are your “Trusted Sources” of Higher Guidance that you can fully rely on to communicate with you from the unseen realm.  It took me a while to get clear on just who or what I felt I trusted to communicate with me in my automatic writing.  I had to feel real to me.

Interestingly, I ended up with a list of who I call upon for guidance that goes something like this:  My Heart, My Soul, My Inner Being, My Infinite Source Self, My Loving Ancestors, All-That-Is, Great Mystery.  I trust that all of these Beings, or Quantum Fields, or Entities or whatever they are, are actually there ready to assist me in any moment I call on them, whether via automatic writing insights, or just in asking for, feeling for, or simply trusting their presence to be there for me.

What’s interesting here, in considering what it means to “live from my heart” is that to me, My Heart is synonymous with all those other names of loving forces that I am addressing.  Thus, being in touch with My Heart means the same thing as being in touch with My Soul, My Inner Being, and all the rest of these “Divine Allies” I rely on.  I don’t really know the difference between them all, nor do I care to.  I just want to feel my alignment with them all, just like I want to feel My Heart.

So in terms of the Law of Attraction, which affirms that like vibrations attract like vibrations, when I align myself with being receptive to feeling the blessings and help that are constantly raining down on me from all my loving Divine Allies, I am really just aligning with who and what the greater part of me actually is. I am My Heart, I am My Soul, I am my Infinite Source Self, I am one with my Loving Ancestors, I am one with All-That-Is.  Whew…what a relief!

According to the Law of Attraction, being receptive to my own Well-Being, being receptive to the blessings that are constantly raining down on me, is 100% of my job here on this planet. My work here, which is ironically also my play here, is to listen to the intuitive impulses arriving from My Heart, from my Inner Being. It is to enjoy the journey moment-by-moment, the adventure, the thrill of being alive.

As Abraham (as in Abraham-Hicks) says:" You didn't come here to fix things that are broken, or to know things that you don't know. You came because life on the path of least resistance is a delicious state of being. And you are in love with your life, and you are in love with you, and you are in love with being in love with life.”

When I encounter resistance on my path, when my thoughts are telling me that I am immersed in a challenging or distressful situation, what results are often emotions or vibrations of sadness, grief, despair, anger or any vibration on the lower end of the emotional scale. But those vibrations are there to indicate to me that my Higher Source Self, my Heart that is aligned with my Inner Being, with my Soul, is thinking differently about my situation that is troubling to me. 

Those uncomfortable feelings are there to inform me that there is another way to think about my situation, and to find a way to move up the emotional scale toward hope, possibility, ease, peace, joy.  As I intuitively choose “the next best feeling thing” throughout my day, I am really just choosing to listen to my Heart, rather than the thoughts that are bringing me down.  My  Heart knows the way.  My Inner Being is always loving me unconditionally.

When I search for even a little bit better thought or feeling than the bad feelings I may be having; when I count my blessings and look for things to appreciate in myself, in others, in my situation; when I relax, and chill out, and take my mind completely off my problems and go do something fun or that beings me joy; when I take a nap, or meditate, or create a better feeling story in my mind about the situation that is bothering me; when I choose that I am worthy and loved by me, no matter what;  when I suspend my judgments, or critical attitude; when I trust that my Inner Being has always got my back; all of these things are ways that I call upon My Heart, My Inner Being to care for me. For me, that’s Living From My Heart.

How Good CAN You Actually Feel? - by Tom Wells

Ever wonder just how good you can actually feel?  Is your normal daily consciousness filled with ease and deliciously good feelings for most of your day and night?  If not, would you like to feel that way most of your days?  I know I would.

Today I was realizing for a few moments just what might be possible.  I was feeling so still inside, just sitting in my living room chair, gazing at the light highlighting each slat of the closed wooden blinds, the morning sun penetrating in precise lateral beams surrounding the outline of each slat.  And in that moment I knew such deep fulfillment and happiness, such gratitude to our Grandfather Sun, illuminating my open heart and mind with that old “peace that surpasses all understanding”.

And in those moments I knew that this love, this kindness, this ease is with me, with us, all the time.  It’s so reassuring to know that; so hopeful, so encouraging, so simple, so joyful.  It’s all just up to me, so it seems; my letting go, my relaxation, my stopping all my busyness, my choosing to be still inside, to be home, to not be going anywhere at all, though I suppose the journey is always moving inexorably on, happily on, easily on, like that gentle river of light, flowing there before my eyes, so beautiful, so endless, so full.