inner healing, physical healing, spirituality
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There are so many ways to use energy to heal, materialize what we want in life, and feel happier. What you may not be aware of is that using affirmations is yet another way to use energy, or prana, to heal and improve our lives. However, some of us have been using affirmations for years with little result. There is a likely reason for that! Cont’d….
I have read a loooooot of New Age and self-help books. More than enough for one lifetime. I generally appreciate and agree with the overall sentiments expressed in many of them, especially when it comes to taking responsibility for one’s life and realizing one’s empowerment to improve it in areas from health to spirituality to finances.
But I have to tell you honestly that when such books (or Facebook memes, or inspirational quotes, et al) tell me that happiness is a choice, I tune out.
I don’t believe that one’s decisions have no bearing on that person’s mood, but saying happiness is a choice basically says that happiness is nothing but a choice, and being happy is as simple as making the right choice.
This is, in my view, invalidating, unfair, and a vast oversimplification of human emotions, not to mention powerful barriers various individuals may have toward experiencing happiness, as well as love, joy, and other positive emotions and states of being.
I didn’t like that advice before I found Pranic Healing, but after I learned MCKS’ Pranic Psychotherapy, I realized in a concrete way why whittling down one’s emotions to a choice was an even grosser oversimplification of the complex factors at play.
Let’s take sadness as an example. It doesn’t matter what the reason is for a person’s sadness, whether it is sensible to you or me. If a person feels sad, there is a buildup of this type of energy in their system, and it is therefore nearly impossible not to feel it!
In case that statement sounds vague, let me specify that emotional energies are specific and concrete types of energies. With experience in energy healing, most any healer will come to recognize them when they are working on someone. First of all, you start to feel the emotion of the other person you are working on. The healer starts off feeling calm and peaceful and then has moments of being hit with a wave of a certain emotion. This is the energy coming off the other person as it is being expelled during the healing process. (In Pranic Healing, we have specific methods for disposing of it so it does not just get absorbed in our systems.)
Next, the healer can simply scan the energies present. Sadness, when scanned (felt with the hands) has a distinct feeling–it is very heavy. For a person who can see energy, they will observe that the energy of sadness, while variable based on other emotions present, will generally look like an irregular, clumpy, or asymmetrical cloud of grayish energy. Positive emotions look and feel completely different.
Once negative emotions have clouded the energy system and gotten stuck in the chakras (energy centers) and meridians, simply choosing a different state of being, while possible, is unrealistic and certainly unfair to expect of someone. The best hope for most of us is a distraction to get our mind off of our negative emotions and switch to different ones. However, this is not a long-term solution, as it doesn’t get rid of the negativity (aka negative energy), and only distracts us from it until it just gets stirred up again, as it is bound to do.
The better option by far would be to extract the negative emotional energies from the person’s system. As I hope you are concluding by now, it is not possible to feel sad without sadness energy in your system. It is not possible to feel anger without anger energy in your system. You won’t feel depressed without depression energy in your system. Or anxiety. Or anything else.
Most people think that when bad things happen, they feel a negative emotion in response to it. A much more accurate way to put it for those of us who habitually feel certain things like anger, anxiety, fear, depression, and other emotions, is that certain situations trigger what is already there. What is already there might have been created or generated decades ago–or last week. In any case, old emotions have to be released if we are to feel peaceful and go through life without quite a bit of turmoil.
Your options are “letting go,” either subconsciously or consciously (lots of us do this with small things naturally anyway, but it’s pretty hard with big stuff), therapy, Pranic Healing, or another healing technique.
In Pranic Healing, we can pluck the things that we don’t want out with the flick of a hand (or a crystal)! We can even implant positive energies in their place. I know this because I have seen it work countless times, on countless people–not to mention myself.
Will the person feel that negativity again? In other words, is the healing permanent? Will doing Pranic Healing mean I won’t feel stress anymore?
Habitual, long-term negative emotions are highly likely to be caused by a huge buildup of them over time, or resulting from a traumatic experience that continues to get triggered. By getting Pranic Healing on those emotions, the person will be substantially or completely healed of them. They won’t get triggered at the drop of a hat anymore. And this is huge. Frankly, most people never even get that relief.
When years of old stuff is cleared away, it is simply far easier to be calm, even when stressful situations arise. We still feel stress and negative emotions, but as I have said in other posts–it is extremely common for us that we aren’t feeling the stress of that day– rather, the stress of the day stirred up the stress of a couple of decades that has been sitting in our system for years. So small things FEEL massively stressful!
Once years of negative emotional energies are extracted, our thoughts are free to go in a new, positive direction, and it is extremely easy for them to do so! This is when it could be fair to say happiness is a choice… But by then it is so easy to feel happy, choosing it would be redundant!
One exception to this: anger toward someone who has hurt you. Healing this is very difficult until the person forgives the “wrongdoer”. The energy system holds on tight to this anger and hurt and a healer will have a very hard time extracting it unless the person has either consciously or subconsciously let go of the situation and any anger toward the other. Even if the healer was able to extract the energies of anger and resentment, the person would re-create them soon enough until they have let the person and situation go. In this case, you need to do Master Co’s Forgiveness Meditation video. For difficult or traumatic hurts, you may need to do the exercise for 30-60 days.
After a healing, you may notice in a few days you are feeling that negative emotion again. Has it “come back”? No. There was simply more stuff buried deeper in your system that has come to the surface. In Pranic Healing, we strongly suggest follow up sessions until the negative thoughts and emotions are healed.
So while we can say happiness is partly a choice, and refusing to take responsibility for one’s life certainly is, I strongly dislike statements that make it sound like happiness is nothing more than a choice. I strongly feel we all need much more help in life than hearing we just need to change our mind about our emotions.
Information on sessions here
I was so excited to read an article at the gym last week from Shape magazine called How to Melt Iceberg Stress. I had never heard the term “iceberg stress” before but was more than aware of its existence!
The sub-heading of the article reads, “Some tension is so buried, you don’t even know it’s there. But that kind of stress and anxiety is hurting your health and stealing your happiness.” You can read their article here.
They’re not exaggerating. Like an iceberg, this kind of stress is huge but below the surface and hidden. This type of stress–not the daily or weekly irritations–is what really drags us down–and can even cause serious health problems later in life.
Like background noise, long-term stress, whatever it may be about, eventually goes unnoticed-and therefore unaddressed. Yet this stress has a powerful effect on our physical health as well as our ability to experience peace, happiness, and even simple relaxation.
Iceberg stress is present for so long, and we are so used to it, that the way we feel with it is our baseline for contentment. We say and think we feel good only when there is no other stress on top of this baseline.
An example of iceberg stress can be long-held anger. Just because you haven’t thought of the person you feel anger toward in 6 months does not mean you do not still harbor anger toward them. You might believe you feel fine when you are actually a bit agitated or unsettled on a constant basis. You don’t know that letting go of and healing from this anger would allow you a new level of peace and happiness on a day-to-day basis.
This subconscious but still present anger manifests in a very real way in your energy system. It is, quite literally, negative energy which sits in your energy field–in your aura, and in the related chakras. In this example, old anger manifests as congested energy in the back solar plexus chakra (among other areas). The chakra will be clogged with dirty, clumpy, grayish energy. And this energetic blockage has many negative side effects!
We will feel dragged down–without knowing it. It will take more for us to feel happy than it would if that old anger wasn’t there. We might feel agitated most of the time in general, and also get angry more easily than otherwise. This kind of person will naturally blame their daily angers on the small annoyances of life, but is unaware of the important factor of the long-standing anger already present. This long-standing anger makes it easy to explode over very little.
Since these blockages hinder the flow of prana, or energy, throughout the system, they eventually hurt our physical health as well. This is because each chakra is in charge of pumping energy to certain organs as well as throughout the entire body.
Let’s take another example: say someone is a perfectionist. Naturally, they don’t consider this habitual way of thinking about themselves to be stressful or a cause of stress. This person’s view is that they simply have a certain standard for their work or whatever they do. However, perfectionism may easily impact a person by them being subconsciously and constantly hard on themselves: negative thoughts and emotions are created and directed to themselves.
The person is unknowingly blocking much potential inner peace, relaxation, happiness, and possibly self-love. Negative self-talk and negative emotions directed at oneself will manifest as congestion in multiple energy centers.
Anxiety is a common side-effect of perfectionism, and this specific kind of energy becomes a block in the throat chakra. Over time, it can cause the throat chakra to malfunction, as well as block the flow of energy to the organs connected to it. This congestion can potentially lead to health conditions related to the throat over time.
Stress and tension of any kind inhibits the flow of prana throughout the system.
Ironically and unfortunately, the biggest stress we have is very often the most hidden and subconscious. And the biggest stress we have is going to be the most likely to cause health problems!
Daily things like getting stuck in traffic, a tiff with a co-worker, an approaching deadline at work, we naturally let go of within 15 minutes of getting home–at most, a couple of weeks. The negative energy of stress and frustration are released. What we don’t release within 15 min is the fear of losing one’s job over years of bad economic conditions, the guilt of lying to someone we care about, constant hatred or negativity directed toward others or the world, betrayal, old trauma, and much more.
How can you identify iceberg stress?
One thing to notice about yourself is if you have a hard time being happy even when things are going fine. If you easily get into a bad mood or just aren’t cheerful even when nothing really happened to cause it–or something really trivial caused it–you most likely have some more deep-seated stress of some kind. If most of your words are negative, then most of your thoughts are–and your emotions will be too. Your words can be an indicator of iceberg stress.
Some of the stresses stuck in our energy systems are things we genuinely don’t even care about anymore! But the congested energy gets stuck in our channels and we feel it anyway! It causes us irritability, depression, a bad mood, emotional fatigue, and just takes the fun out of life.
Take time to analyze your habitual thought patterns. Question every single thought you have for several days. Is it yours or someone else’s? Is it something so old you don’t even agree with it or care about it anymore? Is it a bad habit you picked up? Is it a repetitive negative mental or emotional loop you need to drop? Do you have an old grudge? You lose out on happiness and inner peace every day you hold onto this old stuff.
If you are still not sure what your thoughts are like, do 15 minutes of writing every morning or evening. Just write every thought that you think down on the paper. It may surprise you to take this look inside your head. Don’t over-think it, but just blurt it all out with the pen. This is always a good way to blow off steam as well.
Stop negative thoughts in their tracks! Think positive thoughts contrary to them. The negative thoughts and negative energy will eventually dry up and evaporate from your system.
Much faster and easier though…. You guessed it!! Pranic Healing can wipe your slate clean in a jiffy. What would take you a couple of months can probably be done in a session or two. Imagine what an 8-session package will do to your thoughts, your mood, and your energy level!
You clean your body in the shower every day. Don’t you think you should clean your mind and emotions even once in a while so you can start fresh??
Sessions with me are available (see Services page), but even better, why not learn to do it yourself?
Pranic Healing Level I is scheduled for February 26-27 in Bellevue! Taught by Gayle Nelson.
Ultimately, you will want to take Pranic Psychotherapy (for which Level I is a prerequisite). But Level I will teach you some techniques you can use for stress as well.
Come to a Free Introduction to Pranic Healing! Find out what Pranic Healing is all about and learn a technique or two before committing to the full weekend class! The Intro is just two hours. I have three scheduled at the moment, and you can check this page regularly for updates and additional free introductions as they are scheduled.
When I think of Pranic Healing (PH) and being a mother, the first word that comes to mind is “indispensable.”
Every time I use it for my 3-year-old son Aryan–or myself–I automatically think, “I can’t believe most people don’t know these techniques and can’t have the same help for themselves and their loved ones!” I shudder to think how I would have survived the last three years as a parent without these tools to heal physically as well as mentally/emotionally.
Not a day goes by that I don’t think how lucky I am to have effective tools that solve problems with little more than the snap of a finger. I wish I could magically heal all the other babies and toddlers out there who are going through stuff that might take only a few minutes to solve permanently! Until then, I have this blog and my Free Introductions to Pranic Healing to get the word out…
The best way I could think to share how I use PH in my life and what a miraculous blessing it is is to simply tell you the stories! I hope they inspire you to learn more. If there is one message I hope to impress it’s that you have the power to heal. You are not solely at the mercy of people with 8 years of medical education (though we all need occasional trips to the naturopath for checkups and some extra help). And emotional stuff does not require years of therapy to release!
(Pranic Healing was created by Master Choa Kok Sui. Click here to learn what Pranic Healing is!)
There are countless more stories than are here. I have surely forgotten most of them, as this is all an entirely routine part of my life. But as a small sample, here you go….
Also, you have a chance to take the class coming up! You will come away with techniques and tools to keep and use for life. Gayle Nelson teaches the class July 23-24. For details, click here, and click here to register! Note: You save $25 when you register by July 8th, Friday!
Physical Healing:
Aryan got a fever once when he was two. I didn’t take his temperature because once I felt he was burning up, and his skin (even on his tummy) was red, I was so startled, I ran off to do PH! I put on some Thomas the Train to keep him out of my way, and immediately went to our small healing room and did the PH protocol for fever. It took 40 minutes. I went back to the living room, and his skin was normal color again, felt the right temperature, and he never got sick.
Aryan has only been to the doctor because he was sick once. I thought it was a diaper rash that wouldn’t go away. It was all over his bottom and looked really nasty. I keep putting diaper cream on it which normally worked in less than a day, but it wasn’t doing anything. The doctor said it was something called Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease which is a virus they can’t give you any treatment for. I went home and found a Pranic Healing protocol and applied it 1-2 times a day. It cleared up in no time and he never acted sick–no crabbiness, decreased energy, or other symptoms which can ensue from this virus.
Aryan used to get runny noses and coughs. He never acted run-down or “sick” but just got those symptoms a few times a year. One of his earliest runny noses lasted almost 3 weeks. I kept applying physical PH healing but it didn’t seem to do much. Finally, I scanned for mental/emotional congestion, and there was a lot in the lungs. As soon as I cleared that out, the runny nose healed quickly. For his next runny nose, I started with the mental/emotional healing and it cleared up fast. Now, he rarely gets them at all and when he does, they are short-lived (a day or two) and easy to heal!
Overactivity:
I got a healing session for myself several months ago, and in the course of conversation mentioned what a handful Aryan is, how active, non-stop motion, plus talking and requests, all day long. Also, his nap seemed to be going away, much to my disappointment. This healer mentioned cleaning all the lower chakras and doing a technique mentioned in Master Choa Kok Sui’s book Pranic Psychotherapy which I won’t take the time to describe here. It was like someone had slipped him a pill. After just a couple of days, not only was he napping again–with little protest–but playing quietly, alone, at many points throughout the day! I had never seen him behave like this his entire life, I was simply astounded. One of the first miracles was me cooking dinner, without my husband helping to restrain or entertain Aryan because he was away on a business trip. He just sat on the kitchen floor and played with some pots and spoons for a full 45 minutes. This, from a kid who couldn’t stay with one activity for much more than 25 seconds. To this day, when he starts getting hard to handle, I remember to do healing and it still works! Six months later, he was still napping almost every day–though that just ended a few weeks ago.
Fear:
I work out at the YMCA which has great childcare. Aryan loved it–until he turned 3 and had to move to the big kid area which was a HUGE gymnasium. For some reason, the gymnasium freaked him out and he screamed and cried to not go in there. At home, if I even mentioned going to the gym, he completely panicked, screamed, cried, and wouldn’t go. It was so heartbreaking, I stopped going to the gym for several months, hoping he would mature a little and be comfortable again. At one point, we drove as far as the gym, but he went so crazy when I tried to get him out of the car, I couldn’t go through with it. I would have had to carry him in full-on tantrum mode to the front desk where I wouldn’t have even been able to get my gym card out of my wallet. Finally, I thought to try PH on his fear. Less than 10 minutes of healing, and I suggested going to the gym. “Ok,” he said. I was amazed…. Partway there in the car, he started fussing a little. I did more healing in the car after arriving, suggested we go in, and he was fine! I think I did one more 5-10 minute session on him later, and that was it. He has enjoyed the gym ever since!
Resistance to Potty Training:
If I had known he would still be in diapers through his 3rd birthday, I would never have switched him out of cloth, which I did when he was close to a year old. Every disposable diaper I threw away made me feel terrible. (They take ages to decompose and sit in landfills for a loooooong time.) Everyone said to wait till he was “ready.” Well, he refused to even try on underwear–screamed at the suggestion of it. He mostly refused to even sit on the potty, though would occasionally–just not go in it. Most of the time, though, when I suggested it, he screamed, “NO POTTY!!!!!!!” I felt annoyed because it’s not like he wasn’t old enough, smart enough, or mature enough. He certainly had no shame, discomfort, or embarrassment associated with the bathroom or doing his business. It was just plain old toddler resistance or contrarianism. Mom wants it, so I’m gonna say no. To me, this is not a “not ready for potty training” sign. It’s just a way to assert his own will and willpower which is fun for a 2- and 3-year-old.
At last, I thought of PH. I scanned for energies of “resistance”–meaning, resistance to potty training, as well as resistance to wearing underwear. No joke, after 10 minutes of healing, I said, “Want to try on your new underwear?” And he stepped right into it and loved wearing it. After SIX MONTHS of him refusing to even try it on to see if it fit! He willingly tried the potty and went in it. Right after, I tried the infamous 3-day potty training process (if you have small kids, you’ve probably heard of it), and it worked perfectly. He only had one accident on the sofa and one on the floor. He went to “preschool camp” the next week which entailed 3 hours a day without me around for 3 days. No accident, just asked an adult to take him to the toilet. Weeks later, still not one accident. Done and done!
Stress:
Instead of letting one meltdown turn into 3 an hour later, which will turn into 9 by evening, I do healing after a tantrum. He’s often calmer than he was before the tantrum. Just like in adults, negative emotions, stress, fatigue, anger, frustration, and everything else add up and accumulate. Without PH, how are you going to start fresh with a clean slate the next day?
I can’t say if this is the cause or not, but when he started preschool last January, he never once cried when I left. I had to get his attention to even get a hug goodbye. Meanwhile, older kids were still having trouble. Of course, there is NOTHING wrong with that and it is 100% natural. It could absolutely just be Aryan’s personality. However, I believe the regular healing helps in more ways that I can guess or quantify.
I hope these stories were interesting to read and help expand on what PH can do and what it looks like to have it in your life on a regular basis! As you can see, as a parent, it has made an absolutely massive difference in my life. I fervently hope and wish more parents would learn it because, for crying out loud, parenting is hard enough. And this is such a simple way to make it so much easier.
If you have any questions about PH classes, don’t hesitate to contact me! Meghan@pranichealing.com.
Register for Pranic Healing Level I here.
Originally Published December 2014
If you are like me, falling to sleep at night is not necessarily easy. I seem to have an active mind, and unfortunately, it doesn’t have an on/off switch. It used to take me anywhere from 15-60 minutes to fall to sleep. Lately, I don’t even remember laying in bed the night before when I try to remember it the next day!
The vast majority of the time, there’s nothing in particular on my mind. It just takes me a certain length of time to relax. Well, sort of. That’s how I would always describe it. However, when I started implementing certain Pranic Healing* techniques, I learned more about sleep and relaxation. Because when I do anything that heals stress or negative energy, it invariably causes me to fall asleep faster and to sleep better.
Based on my current understanding, you don’t have to have something “on your mind” to be affected by stress energy which is in your (and pretty much everyone’s) system. So daily practices to heal and maintain your energy system very powerful to help us sleep. Not to mention the benefits in waking life as well!
First of all, what is “stress energy”?
When we experience a negative emotion, it changes the energy, or prana, flowing through our system. Rather than flowing freely and uninhibited, delivering necessary life force to our energy centers and organs, it is altered to a clumped and even sticky state so it does not flow as freely. Severely congested energy blocks important meridians and chakras which are critical for delivering prana which keeps us alive.
I use the term “stress energy” to encompass the energies created when we experience any negative emotion: depression, anger, resentment, sadness, frustration, anxiety, fear, trauma, and all the others.
When these negative energies are stuck in our system, it is much harder, if not impossible, (depending on severity) to relax. Naturally, our ability to relax affects our ability to fall asleep!
The rather tricky thing about these negative energies is that they can be caused by something that happened an hour ago or 25 years ago. If they are not released and let go, either by changing one’s mind about the situation, therapy, Pranic Healing, or another technique, they are likely to remain in our bodies, keeping us unsettled even if we haven’t thought of the event or situation for a long time. This is why it can be confusing–we think, well, life is going fine, and I am not upset about anything right now. Therefore negative emotional energies are not impacting me or causing any hardship. Yet they are so powerful, they can cause even severe physical ailments after enough years of not being released!
Based on this principle of releasing stress energy to help us fall asleep, and of course also feel more relaxed when we are awake, here are my tips for a great night’s sleep. Now, if you have sleep difficulties due to a health condition, these tips might still help, but be sure to consult your naturopathic doctor for help as well.
Exercise: I know, BOR-ING! Well, the thing is, it works. Exercise helps us sleep for many reasons, but my favorite on is that when we exercise, it powerfully pushes dirty energy of all varieties out of our systems, from mental/emotional stuff to more physicalized buildup. Doesn’t your mind feel quiet after a long sweaty workout?
Salt Bath with Lavender: A couple of hours or less before bed, soak in a bath with 2-3 pounds of salt (table salt!) and 15 drops of lavender oil for a maximum of 20 minutes. Lavender oil has lots of lavender prana which is especially good at disintegrating negative mental/emotional energies.
Cut Cords Right Before Bed: You can see my video on this here (http://www.bodyspirithealth.com/blog/Video-How-to-De-Stress-in-Seconds). Cords are energetic tubes of varying widths connecting you to what’s going on in your life. Negative cords carry negative energy back and forth and cause you to stay connected to things and events causing you stress. By cutting these cords (whether before bed or any other time), you disconnect from these situations and people and notice you stop thinking about the situation or just feel more detached about it. This is instantly calming.
Imagine that these lines or tubes are connected to your body and extending out perpendicularly. Grab them all in a bundle like you are holding a bunch of ropes in your fist with one hand. Pull slightly and with the other hand, make a chopping motion to cut them. Many people feel immediately lighter when doing this! If you want to be really thorough, you can do each chakra (see Miracles Through Pranic Healing by Master Choa Kok Sui for an illustration of where the chakras are). Or you can also do the bundle technique plus cut cords just on your solar plexus area in addition, which is where we frequently connect to stressful issues.
Get some Pranic Healing: It works wonders!
Meditate: Doing Master Choa’s Meditation on Twin Hearts is incredibly powerful and effective at flushing out stress energy. That is one of the primary things it was designed to do, in fact. If you do this meditation for 7 days in a row and don’t sleep better, I will seriously eat my hat. (Just don’t do it right before bed because it is also energizing. Start two hours before bed or more.) Do a shorter version for free here and even see an animation of what is happening to your energy system while you do it! (http://www.pranichealing.com/meditation-twin-hearts)
Say Your Prayers: Truly, there is a reason to pray right before bed. When you express gratitude, you are changing your mindset to one of calmness and happiness. When you ask for healing, you are furthering this process of letting go before going to sleep and releasing unwanted thoughts and emotions. If you had a clairvoyant look at someone praying, especially praying for healing, you would see brilliant light descending through the top of their head. Negative cords would be dissolving, negative grayish energies would be disintegrating and be expelleing out of the person’s system. The aura becomes bigger and brighter. Not unlike what happens when you receive a Pranic Healing treatment!
Always, always pray for healing when you pray! In Pranic Healing, we ask for Diving guidance, Divine love, Diving healing, and Divine protection, among other things–but these are the essentials.
Try This Trick: I tried this a few nights ago and have done it every time I go to sleep since. I was absolutely amazed at the effectiveness. Of course, I thought, I don’t have anxiety, and I’m not really stressed about anything. But if there’s anything Pranic Healers love, it’s experiments. This is what I did, while I was lying in bed. I asked God (or the Supreme Being, or the Divine Mother/Father, however you like to say it):
Thank you for healing my crown chakra from all stress, tension, and anxiety.
Thank you for healing my forehead chakra from all stress, tension, and anxiety.
I did it for all the upper chakras (most significant in mental/emotional stress compared to the lower chakras).
It felt like my body was melting! I was fast asleep in no time, and it was soooooo relaxing.
If you want to try it, here are the chakras/areas I listed. You can pair some up to make it a little faster:
Crown/Forehead
Ajna (located between the eyebrows)
Throat and Back of the neck
Back Heart
Front and Back Solar Plexus
If this is a mouthful for you, just say,
To the Divine Supreme God,
Thank you for healing all the energy centers in my head area from all stress, tension, and anxiety.
Thank you for healing my throat and neck areas from all stress, tension, and anxiety.
Thank you for healing my back and chest areas from all stress, tension, and anxiety.
I hope some of these work for you! There is really nothing more delicious than a fantastic night’s sleep!
I don’t want to be a one-person experiment–let me know how it goes! I can tell you I notice a massive difference in the way I sleep when I slack on exercising and meditation. It snaps me back into my habits quick!
Blessings of Rest,
Meghan
Originally Published December 2014
As I contemplate school for my son (far-off as it may be since he is only 2), I can’t help but analyze the messages we were sent there growing up.
While no one comes out and says it, the underlying message taught in science, math, history, and the rest is: you need to learn this so you can get a good job. Do poorly, and no good job. No good job–no money, no survival, and no happiness. Plus some shame.
Of course, we need income! I’m definitely not disputing that. In this modern world, we need stuff (houses, clothes, cars), and we buy these with money; we get money through jobs. (Inheritance, trust funds, and lottery do the trick but are a little harder to come by.)
So I am not suggesting learning, education, and jobs are not important. My question is: Is a good job the only thing that’s important?
‘Cause we spent 7 hours a day at school, and while there was recess and P.E. (Which are disappearing in some schools), it was a lot of hours of the day and week, ages 5-18, to prepare just for getting a good job.
Some of us honestly draw a blank at that question. Uhhhh, what else would we do in school? What else are we supposed to be concerned with?
To start with, and at the risk of sounding preachy… what about the way we treat each other?
Stay with me.
Right now, in our culture, earning a living and reaching the highest place possible in one’s career is paramount. The rich, famous, and successful are practically worshipped. They are definitely the ones who are envied.
Doing well in one’s career is not just for survival–but also the route to respect and praise from others.
We have lost something unfathomably important by ignoring a person’s character in favor of his or her career success.
As we look at the world today, what would you say we are lacking?
It’s not stuff to buy or cubicles to work in.
As I briefly edit this post in January 2016, we have Donald Trump running for Republican nomination for president. I don’t think I need to elaborate.
An emphasis toward character-building–yes, taught in schools–would be immeasurably valuable in creating the society we are always hoping will one day exist. And that we have plenty of wiggle room to fit that into a school day.
From what I remember in school, the extent of character-development consisted of simple discipline when someone did something wrong. If you hit another kid, you were reprimanded or put in time-out. There was absolutely no time spent in class learning about what it means to be a good person and how and why to do it.
Yet when we look at the world today, can you think of anything more needed or more important?
What we teach our kids is completely disproportionate to what our society needs. It’s also completely lacking in anything they personally need to be emotionally mature, mentally healthy, physically healthy, to have good relationships, to resolve conflict, to live harmoniously with all kinds of people and situations….I could go on.
Readers who are 18 or older: Can you think of a few pretty big things you had to learn the hard way but could have been prepared to handle with some classes and discussion growing up?
Oh, parents are supposed to do that? And when will they get to that with kids already in school 7 hours a day, then doing extracurriculars, and then homework? And also… Where and when did the parents get to learn all that good stuff? Yeah, they (we) didn’t either.
Self-awareness, self-development, mental/emotional health, conflict resolution are–if you are lucky–hobbies you can take up if you have the initiative, the time, and are lucky enough to be aware of them.
Let’s look at the world today. Are we lacking in commerce, in industry? Hmm, I don’t think so. Are we lacking in kindness, fairness, generosity, maturity, and harmony? (Ya think?) ESPECIALLY in the world of business.
What would business (not to mention politics) look like if every single child spent 30% of their classroom time learning how to be mentally/emotionally healthy by handling stress as well as how to just get along with others? Not to mention simple ethics whether in the workplace or in one’s personal life.
Honesty
Responsibility
Conflict Resolution
Non-Violent Communication
Fairness
Compromise
Relationship Skills–even romantic relationships (yeah, teenagers are in them)
How to Create Life balance–including work, health, social life, recreation
Spirituality (gasp!)
What would happen if we learned about history through the perspective of humans and characters, rather than simply facts, chronology, and date memorization?
Who are we sending out into the world to rule corporations and countries when they have never, ever even thought about these things?
In my opinion, learning facts and figures and reading is relatively simple. Assuming the person is of average health and intelligence, it is a straightforward process. But answering the really tough questions that the newly adult-ed and independent 18-year-old now deals with daily is a different matter.
What is the difference between right and wrong? Is this relationship healthy or toxic? Am I normal or do I need help? Now that’s messy! That’s difficult.
Without kids and young people understanding the real complexity of life and what they can powerfully contribute to society by upholding high personal standards–and just taking care of their health on all levels, we are NOT sending them into the world prepared. And we are not building our future and culture for a better tomorrow in the least!
The purpose of life is not to get a good job, but may involve one. You will need a source of income, and that has to be planned out worked toward. Career success is awesome. It’s fun, it’s fulfilling, it’s good for us. But goodness, it’s not everything.
What do you think? Is our education balanced appropriately between character and career success? Leave your comments below!
Originally Published July 12, 2013
“Miracles do not happen in contradiction to nature, but to that which we know about nature.”
–St. Augustine
“Science and Religion”–a headline that implies opposition and contradiction. The media, and perhaps people as well, speak of these two camps or schools of thought as though they are irreconcilable.
Are they? At a glance and from our limited perspective, it can certainly seem so.
For the most part, modern (western) humans have put their faith (interesting choice of words…) in science as the decider of truth and reality. Religion and spirituality, on the other hand, look to other sources such as individual, first-hand experience (sometimes of scientifically inexplicable phenomena), certain spiritual teachers, and ancient written works.
Spirituality often portrays truths that don’t fit into our current science-discovered laws of nature and belief systems. Strictly speaking, science does not believe in God or the existence of life after death, two of the biggest teachings of spirituality and religion. If you are a strict, hard-core “scientist,” life after death is a contradiction in terms.
Despite this, my answer to the question posed in the title of this post is No.
My reason is contained in the above quote by the founder of Pranic Healing, Master Choa Kok Sui. What he is saying is that we don’t know everything about nature.
Scientists will individually say we don’t know everything, but science overall portrays itself as having all the fundamentals figured out. It definitely portrays itself to be the only way to decide if something is true and valid or not. Most people agree that the scientific method and scientific instruments are the only legitimate way to determine the existence of anything, the laws of nature, what is real, etc.
A few hundred years ago, we had no reliable way to test the legitimacy of ideas. We were at the mercy of superstition, ancient tradition passed on (most likely with errors of interpretation), political leaders, and anyone else in power. We desperately needed SOME semblance of objectivity and common basis of truth or facts to work from.
The scientific method and development of simple laws of nature provided this for us and gave us a framework to work with. It made it possible, or at least easier, to look at and explain the world in some kind of grounded, logical, and stable way.
It was a huge step forward in our development. It also allowed for the conveniences, entertainment, and life-saving advances we enjoy today.
Our enthusiasm over our successes in the physical world, however, has turned into a distorted view of our knowledge and abilities.
As Conversations with God by Neale Donald Walsch says, “The first sign of a primitive culture is that it thinks itself advanced.”
Our scientific discoveries, including technology, are certainly impressive. We are proud of our accomplishments, as we should be. But to think we have all the answers is not only silly but, naturally, prevents us from learning all we could. How much can we learn if we think we pretty much have it all figured out?
Science tells us to throw out anything that it can’t prove to us, implying that anything true or legitimate is provable by science right now. We had the exact same level, if not more, of self-assuredness when we thought the sun revolved around the earth, or that washing our hands before surgery was a waste of time.
Phenomena we can’t explain gets thrown into the category of mystical or spiritual. Then it is frequently laughed at or described as a delusion. Yet it is not any less scientific an occurrence simply because it fits outside our current paradigms. Such a situation should thrill us to learn about how it happened, but instead we get uncomfortable so ignore them instead.
Is it really so far-fetched to think that things happen that current science cannot measure and explain?
If we instead accept that so-called spiritual/mystical phenomena are just regular occurrences we don’t understand the mechanism behind, then spirituality is not anti-science in the least.
Ever hear of those accounts of people leaving their bodies in the operation room? They were unconscious, either under anesthesia or even pronounced dead. They later relay conversations they heard, numbers on charts and monitors they couldn’t otherwise have possibly seen. And still, still, we say, “Oh! They imagined it.” We sometimes have trouble with truth even when it is staring us in the face. Isn’t that funny?
Excitement about mystery, the unknown, and the infinite possibilities out there should not just be experiences and attitudes for children. We grown-ups could discover and enjoy so very much more with a simple open mind and curiosity, rather than strict adherence to a certain set of principles laid down by the so-called experts.
Energy healing is, of course, a perfect example. Certain people will say that since science says it’s impossible to heal someone you aren’t physically touching, many won’t even go near it. Well, I for one am not patient enough to wait for the scientific method! I agree with the Pranic Healing principle mentioned in every class: Evaluate with an open but discerning mind, experiment, and make your own conclusion! Ultimately, be open to new ideas but use your head. Don’t be closed off to trying new things or you will miss out! And I will add: Trust yourself and go with your gut, don’t give all the authority to others, despite impressive credentials, but consider all relevant facts and opinions.
