The Four Stages Of Affirmation

I love affirmations!  Should I say that again?  I LOVE AFFIRMATIONS!!  Affirmations can change your life, re-program negative patterns, neutralize negative energy and plant deep positive seeds into your subconscious that grow into beautiful manifestations.

Buddha said "what you think, you become." Affirmations are deliberate thoughts that reach the subconscious mind, the 90-95% of your mind that has been programmed since birth.  Much of the subconscious mind contains negative programming, also known as resistance, negative patterns, blocks and habits.  Even if you have a positive conscious mind, 5-10% positive is not enough. To be a master of yourself you need to re-program the subconscious mind.  If you can integrate your conscious and subconscious minds, use them together with intention, focus, clarity and positive emotions, then you will be able to transform your affirmations into reality.  I speak from first hand experience - when integration happens, miracles occur.  Like Buddha says, "what you think", conscious plus subconscious, is what "you become".

Did you know your conscious mind only listens to 30% of what someone says?  And that's only when complete focus is given.  Our conscious mind filters all the time - so we hear what we want or learn to hear.  But the subconscious mind listens to everything.  It's 24/7, never sleeps and continually evaluates sensory inputs.  The subconscious remembers things you long forgot - what your parents said when you were 3, when you were yelled at or believed you weren't good enough, every trauma and negative emotion. The strongest parts of subconscious memory are linked with emotions, and negative emotions are top of the list.

How is that, you ask?  Well, our current brain evolved from three brains.  The oldest, the reptilian brain, developed from millions of years of survivor based evolution.  It has no emotions or advanced thinking.  The reptilian brain is fight or flight, about surviving to live another day.  Negative events, traumatic or dangerous events are stored in its memory so that similar events can be avoided in the future.  The key word is survival, and the reptilian brain takes over when we are faced with an instantaneous life or death situation.

A couple hundred thousand years ago, we added the mammalian brain, designed to take care of offspring.  Instead of laying eggs and walking away, mammals raise their children themselves, developing close ties and energies of protection, care, and nurturing.  The mammalian brain is emotion based and because of the influence of the reptilian brain, store negative emotion events in memory to avoid future similar danger or hurt. Tens of thousands of years ago, man developed the prefrontal cortex, the front part of the brain that allows us to do advanced thinking, reasoning and cognitive functions such as contemplation and analysis.

So as a result of these three minds together with the knowledge that each person averages 64,000 thoughts per day (80% being negative), that much of our daily sensory input is negative (news, criticism, fighting, gossip, drama, looping), and that we unconsciously repeat negative thoughts to ourselves (e.g. - I can't do this, I'm not good enough, I hate this or that, why am I having a bad day), is it any wonder that our subconscious mind becomes the opposite of what we really want?  How can our subconscious and conscious minds work together so we can manifest what we consciously want and is good for us?

One top method is affirmations. These are 100% positive statements that are good for me and good for everyone else (what I say does not cause any other person any hurt, suffering or negative energy).  For instance, "I want to be richer than those guys" is not an affirmation because being richer than someone else implies they are going to be poorer than you. Also, wanting to be richer is not 100%, it implies lack in your current situation.  A better way to say this affirmation would be "I am a happy multimillionaire with 100 million in the bank."  That is a clear, specific, 100% positive feeling statement.

The biggest key to affirmations is total belief.  An affirmation works when it's 100% believable.  If you don't believe it, why should your subconscious?  If there's no belief, there's no feeling, you're just saying it.  And if you're just saying it, how can your subconscious, which is super sensitive to emotions, be able to store it in memory?

The method to help you to create new positive beliefs is the old saying, "fake it until you make it", which means act the part.  You repeat affirmations like an actor who believes, just like how those negative patterns were repeatedly programmed into you since childhood.  Over time, those affirmations sink into the subconscious and become part of you.

Another way to help you is to realize that there are four stages to affirmation belief.  I came up with the four stages after performing thousands of healing sessions, because I usually recommend specific affirmations and hear feedback on whether they are working or not.  By understanding the four stages of affirmation belief, you can figure out how to re-word your affirmation so that it's easier for you to believe.

Let's work with an example.  After a healing session, we both determine that you don't love yourself enough which explains the problems you have with successful loving relationships. To help you, we create an affirmation about love, "I love and accept myself just the way I am."  So you say this out loud several times and I ask what percentage do you believe this to be true.  You reply zero.  So now we are stuck.  But since we know about the four stages, we can reword this affirmation for you.

The four stages of affirmations are 1. I am willing,  2. I can,  3. I am (action in the present tense), 4. Thank you for (action in the past tense).

The first stage is the most important, I am willing.  You might not be able to say I love myself and believe it but saying I am willing to love myself gives you a really high belief percentage.  If that doesn't work, try I am willing to be willing to love myself.   The important thing is that you take an affirmation and change the front wording until you believe it.  So start with stage 1, I am willing, repeat it several times and truthfully answer how much you believe it's true. If it's 100%, move to the next stage.  If it's less than 50%, start with I am willing to consider being willing.  The trick is to work on an affirmation until it becomes greater than 50% believable, repeat and work on it until it becomes 100%, and then and only then move to the next stage. Eventually you'll get to stage 4 and say thank you for all the love and acceptance I have for myself.  When that is 100% the affirmation is finished and you will have achieved your goal.

It's recommended that you do your affirmations at least twice a day, especially in the AM when you first wake up and the PM just before you sleep.  The subconscious is best programmed in alpha and theta brain wave state, which means when you are super relaxed or drowsy (just waking up or just before sleep). Repetition of affirmation is key, since scientific research has shown it takes 30 consecutive days of repetition to fully create a new habit, brain pathway, or pattern.  Consecutive means day after day, so if you skip a day, you go back to day 1, even if you skipped out on the 29th day!  Keep going past 30 days if you haven't hit 100%.

So let's summarize effective affirmations this way.  Affirmations are best for things that are clear, specific, 100% positive, and very useful as180 degree turnarounds from whatever is causing your negative pattern.  Affirmations are best when simple.  If they are complicated break them into multiple simple affirmations so your subconscious can understand.   Affirmations are to be repeated twice a day for at least 30 days straight or until they become 100% believable at all 4 stages. If an affirmation is hard for you to make 100% believable, change the wording of the affirmation according to the four stages of I am willing, I can, I am, and Thank you for that which I have already achieved or received.

If you have an extremely strong resistance to an affirmation, making it hard to get any belief level, try overlaying, which means visualizing something that makes you happy or loving when saying the affirmation.  When you overlay, you bring in strong positive emotions such as joy or love which make affirmations much easier to store in the subconscious.

Also, be aware of your thoughts and feelings as you are state these affirmations out loud - yes, out loud and even better in front of a mirror so you can see your own eyes.  Speaking out loud means you hear your own voice, which makes it more believable.  Looking at your own eyes also makes it more believable. These self actions tell your subconscious that you are taking responsibility and that you really mean it.

You can place affirmations on sticky notes and stick them everywhere, insert them in screen savers, or make them part of your cell phone background.  This action turns them into subliminal messages, programming your subconscious every time you see or use them.   If you are good at music editing,  record yourself speaking your affirmations together with your favorite positive songs and listen to them on your MP3 player.  Keep at it and you will be amazed at how a simple little practice can change your world!

I love and accept myself just the way I am.  I am a happy, healthy, wealthy, strong, successful, fulfilled, loving and peaceful person who helps others to help themselves.  I am one with the universe and I love and thank you all!!!

Finding Your Life Calling - The MPS Method

After reading Happier by Tal Ben-Shahar, based on his popular Harvard course Positive Psychology, I contemplated the nature of true happiness and how to improve my own practice of it.  Happier has many insights but I responded to the chapter Happiness In the Workplace, which gives a great method for finding one's calling in life (getting paid for what one passionately loves to do - what a happy thought!).

The author calls the method MPS, or meaning, pleasure, strength, which can lead us to more happiness and success.  So naturally I did the exercise and found it very useful and insightful. The point of MPS is to find the overlap in three lists: your strengths, things that give you pleasure, and things that bring meaning to your life.
  

Just reflecting and writing down these three lists can open inner truths.  For example, when was the last time you reviewed your own positive strengths?  When you list your own true strengths you are looking at your positive can do path, the one where you are good at things.  Good at things makes a person feel great, especially when there is meaning attached, such as helping myself move forward or helping others.  It's also very revealing to write down as many strengths as possible and to rank them when you are done. And we're not talking about just work stuff, strengths can be anything from being good with children, to meditating deeply, to appreciating nature, to being positive and and loving, etc. 

Even if you have trouble listing your strengths, you learn something valuable, such as the need to get past outside programming and negative looping to find abilities which you and you alone are great at.  Each one of us is great at something(s) and if we affirm this to ourselves we get even better and better at it. As we add things to our strength list, something cool and wonderful happens, a positive loop called the Law of Attraction (like attracts like) which opens the door to better and better possibilities.  Our minds work like Google search so if you search for negative you get more negative and if you search for strengths, unique strengths, then you get a list of thousands of strengths.  And since we become what we repeatably think about, consciously and unconsciously, that list of strengths becomes a road map for happy life creations.  So list your strengths, its great for you!

After strengths come pleasure.  For happiness is pleasurable. Pleasures can be small such as eating our favorite snack food, smelling flowers, holding hands, etc.  But the thing with pleasure is balance, since too much of a good thing can actually decrease pleasure.  How do you know when pleasure is too much?  With trial and error.  For instance, I love movies.  If I sit down and watch a good 2 hour movie, I feel pleasure. But how will I feel if I watch four 2 hr movies in a row?  Will I feel the same pleasure?  It's the difference between a taste of one really great appetizer and visiting the buffet line 16 times to overeat.  Every one of us has a balance of pleasure, of knowing how much and how many times is good for us.  We know because it if its enough we still feel pleasure.  And if its too much, well then we don't feel good, same as too little.  Balance is a big thing in energy work and of course its a big thing in the practice of happiness.  Learning what that balance point is for me is what makes me aware of the truth in myself.

So when we list what gives us pleasure we begin to see all the small things in life that make us happy.  Since happiness is a practice, practice receiving balanced pleasure from the small things in life can make the difference between an ok day and a happy great day.  I know which one I'd rather have!

After we list strengths and pleasures we get to that which makes happiness long lasting for us. Meaningful work, relationships, creations, activities really touch something deep, spiritual and loving within each of us.  Meaning in what we do adds depth, feeling and enthusiasm.  After all, what is the difference between a task that you have to do versus an activity that you like to do?  The difference is what that action means to you.  A have to do task means action for some outside reason - paycheck, favor, obligation, etc.   The meaning is not very deep and there is probably little or no fulfillment.  But something you like or love to do - well that has meaning - you love it, you want to do it, it means something personal to you, something deeper.  Meaning is the key to happiness, for if there is meaning in all that we do, be it love, appreciation, compassion, joy, then that action becomes more positive, easier to do, and flowing.  So a list of what is meaningful to me is very useful.

In writing these three lists we need to be aware of what's going on inside, what is true for me, and what thoughts and feelings come up or are triggered. Are we resistant, do we feel positive or negative emotion, does it make us feel better or worse, and how truthful are the answers?  For me, just writing these three lists caused me to reflect for hours.  I started to ask is this really true, is this my story, what else is inside me?  It brought me to another awareness level.  Parts of me answered with mind, which took long because I had to think about it, and some answers came from the heart, fast and true. My advice is that the meaning list comes from the heart, because when the heart feels happy we feel happy.

As a side comment from all the energy work I do - the fastest answers are usually truth, especially when they come from the heart.  Analysis always takes longer than a feeling, and that delay usually means the answer comes from mind.  If I were to ask you if you loved your child or your lover, your answer would be instantaneous since it comes from the heart.  But if I were to ask if you loved a stranger, you would think about it and that answer would take longer since it came from mind.  On a deeper level, if I were to ask you if you love yourself, how long does it take you to truthfully answer and where is the source of that answer - in the mind (delay) or heart (instant).  The heart always answers before the mind, that's how you know its a true feeling!

In using this MPS method, it's the overlap of the answers on the three lists that lead to work that we love to do and can bring happiness to our lives.  For example, my strengths list is writing, photography, spirituality, teaching, cooking, and energy sensitivity; my pleasure list is good movies, tasty food, sharing happy things, hugs, and massages; and my meaning list is helping others, expressing true self, compassion, and connection to source. So my overlap would be activities that are on all three lists.  So I could facilitate an energy workshop,  which would use my strengths ( teaching, spirituality, energy sensitivity), give me pleasure (sharing happy things, hugs), and provide meaning (helping others, connecting to source).  This would then be work that I love and in real life, this is true, I love to facilitate energy workshops and they make me feel happy when I do so!

For those that are not sure of what they want to do or those that are stuck with work that does not make them happy, then this MPS exercise is very useful.  Even for those that already are happy at work, doing the exercise may give you new insights and direction on making your current work even happier. So try it, and may it lead you to a Happier Life!

Healthy Happy Thoughts Part 2

In the first part, we shared how unconscious thoughts can affect our health and change our body chemistry.

In this second part, we share what we can do about it and the successful methods that worked for two real life examples.

The first example is my wife, ML, who had problems with her current menstrual cycle. So I had her do a great affirmation awareness exercise, one that can be used for many things besides health - it helps you become aware of which thought(s) are causing your present resistance or energy block.  The only requirement is that you are 100% willing to face your own truth and become responsible for it.

I had ML focus on the word "health" by closing her eyes and repeating the sentence "I am healthy, I am healthy" for two minutes without stopping.  During that time I asked her to become aware of how she was feeling and if any thoughts came up.  After a minute, she noticed that she kept thinking about children.  I had her keep going and it turns out she was worried about having children.  That was a key point.  Her subconscious mind could not stay focused on health because it was worried about whether or not she could have kids.  So that became the present physical block.

ML is very practiced on affirmations so she immediately shifted to "I can have kids, I can have kids."  After several minutes of this, she switched back to "I am healthy" and found a definite improvement in her acceptance of this thought.  After one day, her period came natural and full. She had succeeded in identifying the negative thought that was preventing her body from functioning normally.  After all, how could her menstrual cycle become regular if her subconscious mind was worried about the ability to become pregnant?  And notice that she came to the answer herself.  I did not tell her this, she found out her own truth.  And from that, she corrected herself and her body did its natural work.

Affirmations are 100% positive statements that are used to get you to where you want to go, turn negative thoughts into positive ones, and reprogram the subconscious to be in sync with your conscious intention of becoming better.  The trick with affirmations is that you must believe in them and understand that there are different levels.  There is a huge difference between "I am willing to become healthy" and "I am healthy".  From my experience there are at least 4 stages and the most important part is the willing stage.  It's why some people can benefit from certain healing methods and other people cannot.  If the person is not willing,  their subconscious creates resistance to new input and stops the method from being effective.  It doesn't mean the person is negative, just that this method triggers inner resistance in this person. For me its no biggie, I just suggest another method.

That having been said, let's move to the second case.  E is nurse who was really healthy until a few months ago.  After a vacation trip, she developed pain while eating.  Being a health care pro she pursued all available methods.  To make a long story short, her problems got worse, she had lower energy levels, took different drugs, became depressed, had to cut back to part time hours, and finally developed insomnia.  So here was a problem that defied normal health care.  Of course it was internal, it always is, and of course it was unconscious.

I visited E three days ago and listened to her story and how she was getting worse and how she didn't know when this was going to get better and all the problems that she was having.  This is dumping of past negative energy and all of us have done this or experienced it.  It creates a loop of negative thinking and remembrance and of course it causes a brain loop which causes more negative feelings, not only for the person talking but the person listening.  So aware of this, I asked her the question what would she like in her life right now?  Of course you recognize this as a form of the question What Can I Do NOW?

Of course her answer was to sleep better.  So I asked her if she was willing to try a few things and she was open to it.  I started with affirmations, and asked her to say "I am able to sleep at night" over and over. After a few repetitions I asked her if she believed it and she said no.  So there it was, she was not able to sleep at night and any full power affirmation she would use would be in conflict with that unconscious thought.

So I went to stage 1 of affirmations.  Would she would be WILLING to sleep better at night?   The answer I got was yes, the percentage was 100%.  So she passed stage 1.  So then it was off to stage 2.  I CAN sleep better at night - that was not 100% but it was more positive than negative.  So I had her work on that every night before bed until that became 100%.

I also suggested other methods to help her relax at bed time - listening to relaxing music, relaxing all her body parts one by one combined with deep slow breathing - every exhale relaxes a body part, doing her affirmations, and finally an Osho technique called gibberish.  Gibberish is making nonsense sounds out loud and doing it a non rhythmic way.  It may sound stupid and obvious but it does one great thing - it stops the mind from thinking, a HUGE benefit.  Try it, see if you can do it for two minutes without stopping - do it out loud with your eyes closed, just loud enough for you to hear yourself.  For a lot of type A's or overworked people this is a perfect easy way to let your mind drop into a clear space.  It worked for Osho, his followers and it works for ML and me.  When you are empty you easily fall asleep.

Two days ago I called up E to see how she was doing and she told me she was sleeping better, that since we talked, she started using ALL the methods and she was finally able to sleep.   I was amazed that she had used every single method we had discussed and was happy for her.  Having done thousands of crystal sessions, I know when a person has reached a turning point.  It was E's willingness to re-program her subconscious with positive affirmations and thoughts, her work ethic to actually DO these things, and her ability to consciously direct her inner vision to what she wanted that caused her fast turnaround.

Look at these two questions: what's my problem and what do I want right now?  Which question gets you to the solution faster?  Concentrating on your problems and what's wrong (should have, would have, could have) causes you to loop negatively, in your mind and in your body chemistry.  Deciding what you want right now is the way out of that loop.  To get there from a difficult problem requires awareness of what you are unconsciously saying or thinking.  As you become more practiced in awareness, you'll discover that the two questions of What Can I Do Now and How Do I Feel Better Now can be used with everything, even your own health.

So how do you know if you're in a negative loop?  Listen, really listen to what you are saying.  Record yourself, ask someone close to let you know when you say negative things, or put money into a jar every time you say something negative about your self, your body, your life, your environment, your friends, etc.  You'll be surprised how much money goes into that jar!

For unsolvable health problems, repeat the word HEALTH to yourself.  What does it trigger?  Positive or negative thoughts or images?  Become aware of what is negatively repeating, this is the thing you need to  release.  Once you've found a specific negative thought, turn it around.  Create a 180 degree version of that thought.  For example, "I'll never be able to do that" converts to "it's easy for me to do that!"  Work that statement into an affirmation and see if you are WILLING to accept that statement 100%.  If so, train  yourself to say I CAN until you believe it 100%.  Once I CAN is 100% start using I AM.  Use the time before sleep and the time when you wake up (alpha brain time) to state your affirmations out loud.  Repeat these affirmations for 30 consecutive days, the time it takes to burn new patterns and habits in the mind.

The key to Healthy and Happy is AWARENESS.  Awareness of what you are thinking.  Feeling is the result of thinking.  Feeling good means you're headed in the right direction.  Feeling bad means that you are off center, and probably looping.  Use the two questions, what can I do NOW and how can I feel better NOW to direct you to what you want to see, feel, hear, and create!  Do it NOW!

Practice the art of healthy happy thoughts so you can consciously change your brain chemicals and increase your body's ability to heal, regenerate and feel good.  Give yourself the best possible energy space to attract more positive, more happy, more wonderful things into your life.

I am the master of my own life.  I choose my happy and healthy thoughts.  I am aware of what I am saying or thinking. And I get better and better every day.    

Love and Light to ALL!

Healthy Happy Thoughts Part 1

In the past two days I've seen my wife and a friend's wife improve their physical health just by changing their thoughts!  

In both cases, different methods were tried but none worked until certain negative thoughts, unconscious thoughts, were turned around and worked on. To make things interesting, my friend's wife is a senior nurse, who is quite knowledgeable about health care. Yet she could not solve her health problem until she worked on her negative unconscious thoughts.

So before I share the methods used, let's talk about how our brain produces chemicals that affect our immune system.  Every time we think or speak, our neurons, our brain cells, create different chemical messengers that travel our entire body and can affect each cell.   In our Crystal Empowerment classes, I talk about the brain loop, where negative thoughts create certain neurotransmitters, which trigger feelings (e.g. - dopamine for reward, seratonin for mood and behavior, etc.).  Negative thoughts create negative neurotransmitters, which then result in negative feelings.  But now you are in a loop, because negative feelings will trigger more negative thoughts which trigger more negative feelings and the cycle continues over and over.  So since you can't control the production of your neuron chemicals, and you can't control the feelings that result, what can you control?

Yes, that's right, the only thing left is our thoughts.  And here's where it gets interesting.  The average person thinks 64,000 thoughts per day and the majority of them are negative.  Some people say its as high as 80%.  In my own experience, I learned that it depends on the awareness of each person, if this person is aware of their present thought being good or bad and can immediately release or cancel bad or negative thoughts.  People with constant thought awareness are Seekers and WILL become more positive over time.  Its not a miracle thing, its a practice thing.  If one practices thought awareness, one becomes more positive because that's what is good for us!!  And positive thoughts attract more positive thoughts!

Louise Hay, my favorite affirmation author, says "moment by moment, we're consciously or unconsciously choosing healthy thoughts or unhealthy thoughts.  These thoughts affect our bodies."  So now we get to the heart of it.  In both cases, the thoughts that caused my wife and my friend's wife health problems were unconscious thoughts. These are the thoughts that you repeat through habits or patterns or say without thinking.   Things like "I could never do that" or "why is this happening to me"  or "I don't think I will ever get better" or "this will take a long time to work out".  If you think of your mind as a CEO, and these thoughts are work instructions for your subconscious (the intelligence that governs your body) what would your subconscious workers do with these instructions?  Would they do great things? Would they create healthy happy things?

Your subconscious mind is 90% of your mind.  Some spiritual masters say more like 95%.  So that means, at best, using Freud's percentage, that your conscious mind is 10%.  And that 10% is when you are totally focused, in the NOW, present and aware.  Probably focused on only one single thought or less.  Is that our normal mind?

The subconscious is the lower mind, that is 24/7, never rests and never takes off for vacation.  It runs your heart, your blood flow, your digestion, immune system, breathing, and all your body systems. It's also the place where feelings and memories are stored and why your strongest memories are sense or emotion based. So there is definite intelligence there, it knows what to do by itself, and is how the body heals itself when energy conditions are right. 

The subconscious mind takes direction from the conscious mind and here's where the problem lies.  Our conscious minds, especially in this modern world, are seldom focused and aware on what is good for us right NOW.  Our minds are full of internal voices chatting away, the voice of our parents, our relationships, our work, our  past, our future, our friends, etc.  The Seekers meditate to clear these voices, to come to a point of stillness where they can find True Self, for they have made Awareness a part of their daily life practice.  For others, the past chats away, the programs, conditions, memories, patterns of all those who have taught or affected us take turns in running our daily lives. So it becomes confusing, a jumble of thoughts that often include negative thoughts that affect our health.

So in the case of my wife and my friend's wife, both had negative unconscious thoughts about their health.  The point is they were not consciously aware of what they were saying and reinforcing every day.  So their turnaround, their improvement, only came about when they became aware of what they were saying to themselves.  They discovered certain unconscious thoughts as being the cause of their health problems.  And by trying some techniques I suggested, they were able to release whatever was blocking their recovery, produce positive neuron chemicals, give new feeling and direction to their subconscious, and allow the body to heal itself.

This is the first part of a two part article and I will share the method and techniques that worked in the next article. 


Awareness tip of the day: if you are having health problems that seem unsolvable, understand that everything always starts off with a thought, so bring your awareness to what you are saying or thinking during the day, especially when it mentions your health.  Try to catch yourself as you say or think things about your body.  Awareness of unconscious thoughts and patterns is a HUGE step towards happiness and True Self, so take it!

Two Questions For THE PATH

Today I read a Zen Buddhist book that mentioned three great life questions: where did I come from, who am I, where am I going?  If you are doing any kind of spiritual or meditative work, then you recognize these questions as Seeker questions, questions that cause a person to start seeking the answers to her or himself. When a person seeks, he or she begins to walk upon THE PATH, which leads them inwards towards True Self, the one that doesn't die and has always been here. When one finds true self,  the three great questions are answered, and one becomes self realized, or enlightened.

The amazing thing is that no one can do this for you except for yourself, no one can tell you or show you exactly what this ultimate truth is, so you must practice and discover this truth all by yourself!  After all, I can talk all day long about what its like to swim in the ocean but until you do it, you won't experience the truth of ocean swimming. Before actual experience is a lot of talk, borrowed knowledge, and projection, but after actual experience comes self knowledge, which leads to self truth.

For example, one of the pieces to my self truth is what makes me happy, and my answer is certainly not the same for all people - it is my perspective and my truth and even if there are loved ones and close friends, they are NOT me since every person is a unique expression of universal energies.  And if I don't know the answer this piece of my self truth, it certainly would help me to SEEK out that answer by myself!!

So this Seeking takes the form of methods and Paths. I must experience different methods until I find what works for me and then I know I am on The Path.  It doesn't mean that these methods and beliefs and energies are forever, it just means that in the present time, they are my truth.  And as I find out my truths, I begin to go deeper to discover universal truths within myself.  Thus comes self understanding and realization.  And perhaps even enlightenment.

There is always a right path just for YOU.  It is located in the present moment and can be found by asking two simple questions and being aware of where that answer is coming from, mind or heart or both.

These questions are:
1. What can I do NOW?
2.  How can I feel better NOW?

The point of power in life is always the present moment.  That past moment is gone, and you can't change it.
You can sit there for lifetimes repeating the the stories and feeling regret or guilt or something negative, but face it, the unlimited potential of life is NOW!

But the future looks so promising and better!  Maybe I should worry about that, bringing past energy into the future, and maybe I should put all my energy there so that I can miss out on all that is happening now.  And if it takes ten steps to reach that future and if I don't take that first step now, how can I progress forward in life?  The present is NOW, the opportunity is NOW, the miracle of life is NOW!

So ask WHAT CAN I DO NOW?   Memorize, practice, repeat this in your mind - for this is how you move up The Path.  Even if the answer is nothing, accept it and move on.   If you know that the best you can do now is nothing then so be it, let go and let your energy move towards the answer to the second question.  When you are NOW, you escape the blame and negative energies from the past and let go of  worry and concern about the future.  You become aware and focused on NOW, which means you might actually manifest a miracle!

The second question is directed towards your heart: How can I feel better NOW?  All of our suffering comes from our mind.  Suffering is looping energy, continually replaying or arguing about negative stuff that happened in the past, and creating stress chemicals in the body. Worry is also looping energy, casting our negative patterns towards the future and becoming paralyzed or indecisive.  The key to escaping negative loops and negative patterns is to FEEL GOOD RIGHT NOW!

By asking the question, how can I feel better NOW, we open the google search engine of the mind and start listing more positive options.  And once we begin to focus on those positive options, we drop negativity and move to higher energies.  And then when we FEEL GOOD, we bring ourselves into NOW, the loop is broken and we are one step further on The Path, giving ourselves an opportunity to attract better and better energies and options.  We are feeling from the heart, too busy experiencing NOW to analyze, and thus we open the door to unlimited possibility, even Divine Truth.

These two simple questions CAN change your life and move you higher up The PATH!

So start practicing and applying these questions to your daily life 24/7.   After a month or so, it will become a new habit, a new pattern, a new belief, a new method.  And when it is so, then you will be happier and at a higher state of being!