Affirmations And Giving Thanks Each Day

November in the United States is a month of giving thanks that was started by the pilgrims at Jamestown, Virginia.  It is a tradition that continues today.  Thanks giving or giving gratitude shouldn't be related to just one day.  Some of the best years of my life were the years that I kept a gratitude journal in which I would write down at least 5-10 things each day that I was grateful for.  If you start the day by writing down what you are grateful for, your day seems to start out on a positive note.  If you like to write in your gratitude journal the last thing at night, then you go to bed with positive thoughts which can make sleeping better without taking the worries of the day to bed with you to create nightmares.

Over the years I have used affirmations to change my thoughts from being negative to being positive.  Just before starting this post, I went to the right hand column on my blog page and changed the affirmations from October to November Affirmations.  Each month I get these affirmations for the month from my copy of "Daily Word" magazine.  The "Daily Word" is a Unity Publication that you can find information about at the following website if you are interested.

http://www.unity.org/

I love the daily affirmations that are written for each day of the month in "Daily Word" magazine.  I started going to a small Unity church about 1996 or 1997 and learning their teachings.  Unity beliefs have an openness that many religions do not have for me on the spiritual level.  It was through this church that I first began to meditate.  Meditation gives me a deeper connection to myself and to God.  I do believe in the interconnectedness of everything and everybody.  I believe that we are One with God and One with each other.

In each copy of "Daily Word", here is what it says under Monthly Affirmations:
     "Affirmations are positive statements of Truth.  By affirming Truth, we are lifted out of false thinking into the consciousness of Spirit.  Each time we pray positively and faithfully, we are calling forth the divine activity that is always within us."

Now to my questions to you:  Do you ever take the time to come to my blog and read the monthly affirmations that I post here each month?  If you do, do these positive thoughts encourage you or lift your spirits?  Do you miss them by not coming to my blog and just reading what the emailed subscriptions send to you?

For those of you who have email subscriptions and receive my posts that way, you can click on the title of the article or you can go to the bottom of the page and click on the blog name Spiritual Journey Of A Lightworker and that will take you to my blog.  Then look at the right hand column and find the words "NOVEMBER  AFFIRMATIONS" and read the affirmations that are written below those words.

Here is what you are missing if you don't click and go to my blog for this month:

NOVEMBER  AFFIRMATIONS:

Inner Peace:
In the Silence, I find peace.

Guidance:
I rest in the awareness of God, and I am guided in right ways.

Healing:
With gratitude, I accept health and wholeness.

Prosperity:
I behold unlimited possibilities, and my prosperity grows.

World Peace:
I contribute to a world where peace prevails.

The affirmations will change again at the beginning of each month.  What else are you missing by not going to my blog's page on Blogger.com ?
Patricia

Related Articles:

The Secret---Affirmations Change Your Life
@ http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2007/08/secret-affirmations-change-your-life.html

Meditations To Heal Your Life
@ http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2007/08/meditations-to-heal-your-life.html

You Had It All The Time
@ http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2008/08/you-had-it-all-time.html

The Secret---Manifesting---Creating What You Want With Your Thoughts And Words
@ http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2007/07/secret-manifesting-create-what-you-want.html

Denial, FEAR's Companion And BFF

Sometimes denial can help us to survive an unbearable situation. Sometimes denial can keep us trapped in that unbearable situation. How do you know the difference?

Denial can be FEAR's closest companion and helper in keeping you trapped in its tight-fisted hold. Denial keeps you from seeing FEAR for what it is. Denial might be considered FEAR's BFF---today's slang meaning "Best Friends Forever". That is how close denial and fear can be to each other. Denial can help fear to become the monster FEAR. A friend recently said that his serenity comes from accepting that "what is is." Denial doesn't let you do that. Denial doesn't want you to do acceptance of your circumstances because if you do denial dies. Denial's death is the beginning of letting go of your fears. When you face your fears, then FEAR is on his way out of your life. Letting go of denial is when you can finally start chipping away at your fears one at a time. FEAR can't live if you do away with its BFF denial and all of its little fears.


Whether you know it or not, you have the courage to face down FEAR. Breaking it down to all of its parts makes FEAR go away. FEAR can't exist in the same room with awareness and acceptance. Have you made your list of fears that I invited you to do in my previous article? I hope that you have because that is the beginning of taming FEAR and running him out of your life. Once you do that don't leave a vacuum around you where FEAR used to reside because he can slip back in. Fill that space with hobbies that you love, people that you love. Fill that space with Love, joy and contentment. "Let Go and Let God" is one of the slogans from Al-Anon that I use to let go of a lot of my fears over the years. Letting God, your Higher Power (whatever that means to you), your Higher Self, a recovery group, your counselor or therapist, your best friend, your spouse, whatever support system that you have be there to help you face your fears and release them from your life. Ask for help when you need it. Asking for help can be one of your fears---fear of rejection, fear of being judged. Face that fear. Reach out to someone who loves you. You don't have to do this work by yourself.

Below you will find links to other articles that I have posted about fear. I invite you to click on the links for more information on the topic of fear.

Gifts Of Facing Your Fears:
http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2008/06/gifts-of-facing-your-fears.html

Tools Of The Ego:
http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2008/04/tools-of-ego.html

Fear Expressed:
http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2008/08/fear-expressed.html

Fear Is My Friend:
http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2009/01/fear-is-my-friend.html

Let me know how you are dealing with facing your fears? Is your fear still the monster FEAR or have you chopped him down to a manageable size? What has worked for you? What didn't work? Remember, you don't have to go through your fears alone.
Patricia

Movies, Dreams, Grieving, Books and Feelings

I haven't written a post since the end of January. I have been processing some of my stuff. For that, I needed to be quiet and feel what all of that means to me before I can voice it to you or anybody else.

I have been reading about homeopathy for the past several weeks and experimenting on myself with a few remedies that I thought might be helpful to me physically and emotionally. I started out by going online and doing a Google Search. Then I visited the two health food stores in Hot Springs. My reason for doing this is that regular medicines haven't been working for me for awhile so I need to find something that will work.

I found a remedy called ignatia amara which on the bottle says it is for "nervousness, due to everyday stress." In several of the books on homeopathy that I have read, it says that ignatia amara is for unresolved grief. For that reason, I bought it and have been taking it several times a day for the past week. I was not aware of any unresolved grief but wanted to find out if I had any that I was still carrying around.


I think I have mentioned that several months ago, I started going to a Grieving Class that an old friend of mine is teaching. Most of the information so far is not new to me. I learned it over 20 years ago from this same friend when I was in the middle of working on my incest issues and the grieving that work brought up. So far what I have discovered is how much I have changed and grown. Thank you, Jack. I feel like I am beginning to open up in this class. Feelings are beginning to come up. I keep going to the class because it feels like this is the place for me to be.


This past Wednesday night a friend and I went to the movies to see "The Lovely Bones." It was my friend's choice. She had read the book and wanted to see the movie. I wasn't so sure but went along with her choice.

I knew from the advertisements that a 14-year-old girl gets kidnapped and killed by a neighbor. The story is also about the struggles of the family to accept her death. The mother deals with her death by running away and the father and younger sister go after the killer and finally figure out who he is. In the meantime, the 14-year-old hangs around and watches them. There is more to the movie that I won't tell you.

It is a really good movie to watch. Still, because of the feelings that came up for me, I can't say that it was a movie that I liked. I will not watch it again. It was difficult for me, because of my incest issues, to sit and watch the movie. You don't actually see the violence of the young girl's death or sexual abuse. They are both implied by all of the blood and the secrecy of the scene. In some ways being implied is worse because it causes you to use your imagination. As an incest survivor, I can imagine plenty. I cried throughout the movie. The movie brought up feelings from my own childhood incest.


I went home still disturbed by the movie and my feelings that had come up. I went to bed and before morning had the following dream:

I was in a car by myself. Other people were around. I drove up a hill and stopped. Suddenly the car was rolling backwards down the hill. I knew, without seeing it, that a lake was behind me. As I rolled down the hill, I turned the steering wheel of the car until the car was turned around and facing the lake which I still couldn't see but knew was there. For an instance, I was sitting in the back seat with no one driving the car. Then I was back in the driver's seat still rolling toward the lake. I woke up as the car hit the water but continued the dream. I realized that the driver's side window was down. I had to choose to get out of the car now or wait for the water to start coming in. I decided to get out through the window instead of waiting. I used my feet to push off from the car. Then I realized that I still couldn't swim. That is when I stopped the dream.

I have had many car in the water dreams before but not one recently. I have even written on my blog about them. I knew that this dream was about the movie and my feelings about the movie. As a friend pointed out to me, in this dream, I turned and faced the water this time. That says that I am willing to face my emotions this time. Another first was the open window. I gave myself a way to escape from the car before it was completely submerged. For a brief moment I was in the back seat instead of driving the car. A part of me still feels out of control of the situation. Many times in the past, I have been in the back seat instead of being the driver. In the past, I would have waken up and stopped the dream the second I hit the water if not before I hit the water. For years, I would come to the edge of the water and wake up. It took years before I would allow myself to go into the water. I have had dreams in which I actually swam in the water. I haven't learned to swim in this lifetime and that sometimes carries over into my dreams but not always. In this dream, I remembered that I couldn't swim and didn't know who was going to rescue me so some part of me is still waiting for someone else to rescue me from the feelings which is what the water represents in my dreams.


On Thursday night, I went to the Grieving Class. We were all laughing about something that someone said and I started to cry. I did not know that I was going to cry. I did so silently not wanting anyone to see and at the same time hoping that someone would ask. There is a child inside of me that is still wanting someone to ask so that she can tell about the hurting. Why can't I just come out and say that I am hurting? Why is it still so hard to do? After the class, I stated that the house where the class is held is a safe place for me to cry. But I didn't stay and talk and cry. I went back to another friend's house with the intention of talking to her and crying but when we got to her house a friend was there so I turned off the feelings and the tears.


As my husband picked me up, my friend gave me a book to read. The book is called The Shack written by William Paul Young, In collaboration with Wayne Jacobsen and Brad Cummings, windblown Media, Los Angeles, California, 2007. I started reading the book shortly after getting home. I read it and cried over the next three days. It is a novel that starts out with the kidnapping and murder of a six and a half year old little girl. The book is about her father and his struggles with her death. In his struggle, he gets a letter from Papa and an invitation to meet him at the shack where his daughter's bloody clothes were found. Papa is what his wife calls God. I won't tell you the rest of the story because you really need to read it for yourself. The subtitle of the book is "Where Tragedy Confronts Eternity."

The book is about how Papa (God) uses our tragedies to bring us back to our relationship with Him/Her. Papa actually starts out as a big black woman who is so full of humor and love that She is almost overwhelming (to me). This is a wonderful book about our relationship to God. It was a wonderful, very emotional end to my week's journey through feelings.

I still haven't figured out everything that is going on with me because of the movie and the book. I will continue to take the homeopathic remedy as well to see what else comes up. I just love the way the Universe works to bring up the stuff that I need to work with in a time that I am willing to look at it. This story isn't ended yet. I still have more to look at.
Patricia

Related Posts:
Dream Interpretation found at http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2008/10/dream-interpretation.html

As A Survivor, I Had To Learn To Take Care Of Myself found at http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2009/06/as-survivor-i-had-to-learn-to-take-care.html

Inspiration, Denial And Incest

This post is the result of a comment that I received on my last post "What Childhood Incest Taught Me". You will find the words from the comment here in italics when I quote it.

Warning this comment and post may be triggering.

I came through here looking for something inspirational to read and this is what I've found. I am feeling overwhelmingly sad for whoever this is. That life is one noone would choose to bare or even wish on the worst of people.

For inspirational, you picked the wrong post. And for "whoever this is", that is me. These were the lessons that I learned. I know from other comments and friends that these were also lessons that they learned from their own childhoods of abuse.

For anyone who has read my blog for very long, you know that some of my blog posts are inspirational. Some of my blog posts are about the very real facts, feelings, memories and stages of living with and dealing with the effects of incest. There is nothing inspirational about those posts. Yes, I know that some of them are difficult to read. They are also difficult for me to write even though I am in a better place in my life today. Sometimes I still feel the pain, sadness, anger and hurt of that abuse. Those blog posts I write are for other abuse survivors to let them know what my own experiences have been and to let them know that they are not alone. I have been there. I know it for the hell that it can be, especially when you feel so alone and so sad that you wonder if life is even worth living. I have always managed to take the next step. Sometimes it is two steps forward and one step back. That is the road to recovery. There is nothing easy about it.


For your experiences, all of you, I am truly heartbroken.

Thank you for your compassion and empathy. They are appreciated.


But there is something you each must realize. You each have suffered, in your own time, some of you maybe once or twice, others for years. But those times are not here, those years are not these years.

Part of my comment reply to this comment fits here: My question to you is, "Have you experienced any major trauma or abuse in your life?" It doesn't sound like it. If you haven't, you have no idea what it is like or how difficult it is to get over it.


You have to realize that sometimes life hands us so much... and all the while the world is so cruel. We start to feel like that is all that is ever to be dealt us. But it just isn't. You must each move on. I know you may think that this is impossible. But I know that as you read this those encounters are distant, very real, experiences. Key word being distant.

You have probably never had flashbacks or nightmares or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Soldiers aren't the only ones who get PTSD. Survivors of child abuse and survivors of sexual abuse do too. When those symptoms happen, you are not in control of your feelings or actions. You can be thrown back into "those years". Nobody wants that to happen but it does, sometimes on a daily basis. It takes years of therapy to recover from these. "Key word being distant." There is nothing distant about those years when you are in the middle of a flashback or nightmare. You can tell me they aren't real but when you are in the middle of it, they are very real. Have you ever had a flashback? If not, you don't know what you are talking about.


You are each holding so closely to something that with every single thought of it your heart breaks inside. Why are you choosing to hold on?

Why would anyone choose to hold on to the kind of emotional pain that most people can't even imagine, if they had a choice? Just choosing to be happy sounds like a really good reality but it is very often the road to denial. I did that road for a lot of years. That road that says, "I don't feel anything about the incest. I don't hate my abusers. I don't hate myself. I don't feel anything so I can't be affected by the incest. It doesn't affect my life, my decisions, my children, me. Life is fine. Life is great." The road to denial is a road of lies. I was disconnected from my feelings, from myself. I did hate myself. I did hate my abusers. I was so full of rage, sadness and hurt that I couldn't feel anything else. If you deny any feelings, you deny them all. I had a volcano of fire inside of me that caused headaches, stomach aches and other physical symptoms that shows what I was holding in rather than dealing with. I was taught all of this denial as a child. The denial didn't stop until I got sick and realized that denial didn't work. That is the real world of an incest survivor.

Just letting go of all of the pain isn't really an option until you have worked through all of your issues. Then the letting go is possible. Is it an instant possibility, just in the case of a miracle. I do believe in miracles. I also know that denial is alive and well until I choose to let go of it and face the reality of incest.


You have to realize that you are something amazing on the inside. That the real true parts of us are ones that NO ONE can touch but you.

I can agree with the above statement. On the spiritual level, my Higher Self is untouchable by what happens to my body. The truth is that each of us is a Light to the world. Sometimes that Light does get hidden by the struggles of Life. This isn't something that a child who is being abused or an adult who is still suffering from the abuse is even aware of. On a spiritual level, I can even say that "Yes, I chose this lifetime to learn the lessons that incest teaches me. My parents chose to help teach me those lessons." It has taken me years to reach the level of acceptance that this requires. Most abuse survivors aren't there yet. Do I condemn them as stupid or not whole or anything else derogatory because they aren't at this level of understanding yet? No, not at all. There are still some days that I question the validity of those beliefs and they are my own. Do I expect everyone else to accept and live by those "spiritual" beliefs? Again, no, not at all. Is it ok if you disagree with me? Yes, absolutely. Do I want to hear how you disagree with me? Only if it is offered in a respectful manner.


What happened to you, happened to your body. And you each, understandably, allowed it to alter more than just your body. You let your spirits still feel the pain.

I don't know about you but, yes, I live in a physical world which affects my mental and emotional world. I believe that my spiritual world encompasses all of the others and uses those others to teach its lessons. I eventually see the blessings that come from going through the pain but not until I have worked through the pain.

Again you used the word "let" as if the victim of abuse knows that they have choices. Victims don't know that they have choices. Choices didn't exist for me for many, many years because I believed the lies of the abuser who told me he was in control and that I had to do what he told me to do. I had no choices until I got into a recovery program and learned what choices meant. That is when I learned that I was responsible for my own life and my own choices. That is a very big lesson for survivors. Not everyone learns that lesson.


Just imagine yourself as a light inside a dark cave. No matter how dark it is on the outside, no matter how it may storm, it doesn't change that there is light on the inside. You are safe because you are that light.

As an incest survivor, I didn't learn that the world was a safe place. Yes, I have always been aware of that inner Light. That inner Light is probably the only thing that kept me from splitting into different personalities as some childhood abuse survivors do. My Spirit has always been and will always be safe. My physical world has never felt safe.


You are you at the happiest moments in your life, not the you that always returns home to your pain.

You live in a world of duality---Light and Dark, Love and Fear, Good and Evil, Day and Night, Sad and Happy, Calm and Chaos. You can't have one without the other. Without Sad how would you know what Happy is? Without Evil how would you know what Good is? Without Fear how would you know what Safe is or Love is? Hate isn't the opposite of Love, Fear is. Lack of Love equals Fear. You can't know what the "happiest moments in your life" are unless you know what the worst moments of your life are.


Let it go now. Move on. Decide you have this one life, and no matter what the world will ever throw at you will never matter.

I have discovered that those people who tell me to "Let it go now. Move on." are usually one of two types. They either have never experienced what I have and therefore know nothing about the process that it takes to heal. Or, they have their own abuse issues that they want to stay in denial of. If you see me going through my issues and haven't dealt with your own, then my struggle threatens your denial. That is why you tell me to let it go and to move on so that you don't have to become aware of your own unresolved issues.

I feel sad for those who are still in denial of their own issues. I have little sympathy for those who don't know what they are talking about because they have never experienced what I have. If you haven't been there, you have no idea of what it takes to live my life and to struggle to get better. Don't tell me to get over it. If you have been where I am and were able to let go of your issues by healing them, then tell me how you did it. Share your experiences and what worked. Don't share your denial of your issues. I don't need that. I did that, on my own, years ago and I know that denial just helps you continue to live in the pain. Denial heals nothing. When you are in denial, you aren't happy. You aren't free. The only way to freedom is through the pain, not around it.


You are stronger now than anyone will ever know. You can take this world on and actually live free from your past.

Yes, I am stronger than even I knew that I would ever be. I am more courageous than I ever thought I could be. I am more compassionate that I ever thought possible. I am proud to be the woman that I am today. I am the best parent that I know how to be to my inner child.

I don't live completely free from my past. I don't believe that that is totally possible. I don't know that I would want it to be. My past has formed who I am today. Without that past I would not be stronger, more courageous, compassionate, proud of who I am today. Without my past, I would not be aware of the blessings of my life today. Yes, today, I can take on whatever the world throws at me. This is true because of my past.


Some of you maybe have already found a church. But some of you may feel like there are far too many questions. But all I can say is...you can walk make the decision to just say goodbye to all that stuff you can't bring back or change. And never have to think about it again. The person that hurt you had their free will, and they chose to storm boldly away from what was right, and you suffered. That makes it the fault of no one but them, not you and definitely not God. Choose to forget and start living your life in the light. Remember these bodies die, but we will never die. Where are you headed, and lets make it great! "Love your neighbor as yourself" said someone very special. It's great advice. Good Luck.

The comment about finding a church can be a future post all of its own. I "found a church", but many others, not just survivors, choose differently. I am happy with my church. That is my choice.

I don't blame God for what happened to me. I never have. I know that some survivors do. I did turn my back on God for a few years because I thought He did nothing to stop the abuse. A part of me always felt His presence in my life. That presence is what gave me the strength to survive when many others didn't.

I know that some don't believe in a God who could allow such abuses to happen to a child. Others look to God for grace and love. I believe in free will and that you are each responsible for your own actions. I know that some of the abused go on to abuse the next generation. Most of you don't. Many choose to stop the abuse rather than pass it on to future generations.

Some of you choose to share your own experiences, as I do, by blogging about them online. Others choose to write in private journals. Some of you still continue in the silence because you haven't found your voice yet. It is for other incest and childhood abuse survivors that I write of my experiences. Any time that someone survives abuse in any form and can write about that journey, that is inspirational. It isn't light, funny inspiration. It is sad, thoughtful, sometimes tearful. It is always heartfelt. Sometimes it comes from a deep well of hurt. It is always healing to be able to bring these thoughts and feelings to the surface and share them with others. It can be educational to share with others who have never experienced abuse in their own lives. Without awareness, you can stop nothing.

If you come here looking for happy and joyful and light, sometimes you will find it here. Other times you won't. I won't apologize for my words. This is my life. I share it to give strength and hope to other survivors. I also share it to spread awareness of the evil disease of abuse that lives in this world. I look forward to hearing what you think about this post and any other post that you want to comment on. I reserve the right to agree or disagree with your comments.
Patricia

Spiritual Instead Of Religious

I just looked outside my house to the street to see a bus from one of the area churches dropping off about 5-6 teenagers in the neighborhood to go walking door-to-door to do what that particular church calls soul-saving. I live in the Bible Belt of the South (USA) so this happens quite often. Sometimes it is teenagers. Sometimes it is adults. This is a practice that I have never been comfortable with, no matter what church I was attending at the time.

To me, my spirituality is personal, between God and me. If someone asks, I will talk about it but I don't feel the need to try to "save" someone else. If I want to influence others, I think my actions---how I live my life---is a better way to do that than talking to change someone's mind and beliefs.

I have never felt right telling someone that my religion is better than theirs. I believe how you live your life is more important.

We are all on our own journey back to God. How we get there is up to each individual.

Most of the time that someone comes to my door to discuss religion, unless they were invited by me, gets politely turned away. I don't feel the need to be convinced by them that my beliefs are wrong and I don't feel the need to convince them that their beliefs are wrong. We are each exactly where we need to be in our spiritual journeys.

Someone asked me once why I read and used the information from so many books rather than just following the original 12-Step information that I was given. I think that my answer could also apply to why the world has so many different religions. Not everyone learns the same way. What appeals to me and helps me learn and remember may be different than what you need to learn and remember the same subject. I think that is why we have so many different religions in the world. Different ways of processing need different ways for information to be presented to the people of the world. Does that make sense to you? You may process information, religious or otherwise, differently than I process that same information, therefore, you and I may need the information to be presented in different ways to each of us.

Also, we aren't all on the same page at the same time. That can further complicate things. Different page, different time, doesn't mean that I am any more or less spiritual than you are.
Patricia

Related Articles:
What Is God --- http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2008/03/what-is-god.html

Are You Judging Others As Less Spiritual Than You? --- http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2007/12/are-you-juding-others-as-less.html

Ego-centered selfishness vs. Spirit-centered Selfishness --- http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2008/03/ego-centered-selfishness-vs-spirit.html

Tools Of The Ego --- http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2008/04/tools-of-ego.html

True Independence Comes From In-dependence

True independence comes from in-dependence. This thought went through my mind today. We are not truly independent until we learn to turn inward and become dependent upon our inner self---that part of us that comes from Divine Source. For a few years now, my guidance has been telling me that instead of an outer teacher that I should pay attention to my inner teacher. We all have a connection to the Divine Source of all knowledge and wisdom. It is from that Divine Source that is inside of each of us that our answers come. I don't think I am going to say any more about this. I want you to think about what this means to you individually. Please share your thoughts with me.

Gifts Of Facing Your Fears

A few days ago I read an article called "Cash in on the Hidden Gold Beneath Your Fears" written by Tom Volkar at Delightful Work. You will find the article at this link: http://www.delightfulwork.com/2008/06/24/cash-in-on-the-hidden-gold-beneath-your-fear/ .

Click on the link above and go read Tom's article, then come back here and read mine. I'll be here when you get back. In the mean time, I will go fix myself a cup of coffee.

People keep telling me that I am courageous to write about incest. I am not any more brave than anyone else. I have just reached the grand age of 56 years old where I don't care as much what other people think about me as I once did. I do care. At 56, my opinion of me is the most important. Doing what is right for me has become more important than your opinion of me.

The praise does feel good so if you want to keep it coming, I won't object. I will even admit that I love it when you tell me how good, nice, courageous, outspoken I am. My ego is still in tact and even still in control at times. So thank you for your words of encouragement. They are appreciated.

I need to set the record straight. I am just as fearful as the rest of you, probably even more so than some of you. Yes, writing down my thoughts on this blog for the world to see is scarey business but the rewards have been well worth facing my fears to do this. Facing my fears has been so rewarding. I can so relate to Tom's article and see that when we face our fears, there is gold hidden beneath the fears.

In one of my recent articles, "Quit Playing Small And Insignificant" ( http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2008/06/quit-playing-small-and-insignificant.html ), I faced a major fear of mine---the fear that I might be "powerful beyond measure" (Marianne Williamson in "A Return to Love"). I was fearful of letting my light shine to its full strength because you might think I felt superior to you. My ego might even try to convince me that I am superior to you. As it says in my article, I was fearful of accepting that I am responsible for my life and what I do with that life.

What have been the immediate gold that I found hidden beneath those fears?
1. I have found a new level of self-confidence that I didn't have before. I acted as if I were confident but it was only an act. Now, it is real. I am powerful beyond all measure and so are you. Each of us is powerful as magnificient reflections of the God in each of us.

2. My creativity with my writing for this blog has gone through the roof. I have never written as many articles as I have in the past week. I am not posting them all at once so you will continue to see these articles come out over the next few weeks. I wrote 5 articles last week, three of which have already been posted. This article is the second one in two days that I have written this week.

3. Tools such as Tom's article and the information that I posted from Paula Kawal that you will find in my article "Shame, The Abuser's Friend" found at http://patriciasingleton.blogspot.com/2008/06/shame-abusers-friend.html have come my way to be shared on this blog. Helping others has to come second after helping myself to grow since I choose to help others through sharing my own journey. These tools will give me and you more ways to heal ourselves. This is a lesson I learned about 20 years ago. I can't help others heal until I have done the work of healing myself.

4. Michelle Vandepas and CK Reyes at Divine Purpose Unleashed ( http://divinepurposeunleashed.com/ ) have helped me to look more clearly at what my divine purpose is. This blog is the tool for me to accomplish my divine purpose of reaching out to others who wish to move beyond victim and survivor to become who they really are as Divine Beings.

5. Slade Roberson ( http://sladeroberson.com/ ) and Andrea Hess ( http://www.empoweredsoul.com/ ) have both opened the door for me to learn to communicate more with my Spirit Guides. Hey guys, that voice in your head or your ear doesn't necessarily mean you are going crazy. It could be your guides communicating with you.

6. Michelle Vandepas introduced me to the new Debbie Ford book called "The Secret of the Shadow, The Power of Owning Your Whole Story." You will be hearing more from me about this book. It is the missing piece I have been searching for.

7. As I release more fears, more joy and contentment come into my life.

Next time I find myself faced with my fears, I intend to use Tom's four statements to look at my fears and his four questions to find out exactly what I am afraid of and what actions I can take to release the fears. Thank you Tom for sharing this article with the rest of us. I love it when I find tools that do what they are supposed to. With tools, we are better equipped to deal with life. Life can be beautiful. Life is beautiful. Live it to the fullest. Be as powerful as you truly are.

Your life can be glorious when you choose for it to be.
Patricia

Quit Playing Small And Insignificant

I am blessed to be able to participate in the "Communicating with Our Spirit Guides---Workshop" that Slade Roberson is hosting for the month of June. Thank you Slade for putting yourself out there to do this workshop. As usual, when you and I communicate, I learn about myself.

For awhile, I have been butting my head up against a wall of my own resistance to growth and searching out new terrritory in my spiritual journey. I recently told Slade that I was being a rebel and rebelling against structure in all forms. The little kid in me (the two-year-old) is in full tantrum mode and has been for awhile. She is always afraid of moving forward, especially spiritually. She is the one who still feels shame and worthlessness. Sometimes, I ignore her tantrums and sometimes, I face them head on and move forward anyway. Sometimes, like the past few months, I just let her throw her tantrum and wait for it to be over. She has strong lungs, like most two-year-olds.

I have waited and waited and waited. Now it is time to move forward again after reassuring her that her fears are unfounded. They are just leftovers from my childhood that need to be let go of. No one is going to hurt her. No one is going to make her life nearly impossible. I will protect her.

In Slade's class, we are learning different ways to get in touch with our spirit guides and to use the information that we get from them. We all get this information in various ways. Most of us ignore the majority of the information and if we do admit to receiving it, we blow it off to imagination or wishful thinking. Slade is teaching us how to know the difference between wishful thinking and the real thing---intuition. Most of the time, our guides use our intuition to speak to us.

Last week's assignment from Slade was to tell us to ask a question of our guides, out loud, and then follow that with the statement, "And my guides say _________." My rebellious two-year-old doesn't like being told what or how to do things. She was afraid.

One of the ways that I have learned to face my fears is to voice it so I did that in an email to the workshop group. Here is part of email that I sent them:

"Slade, I haven't played with the assignment of talking out loud to my guides and asking questions and then saying, 'And then my guides say . . .' I think that I haven't because of the answers that I might get. Am I ready for those answers? Am I ready to accept that much responsibility for my own life and actions and moving forward. Are any of the others in the group feeling what I am or am I just being a coward? . . ."

I got back several wonderful responses from group members that just added to the information that started coming to me from my guides almost immediately after sending the email on its way. Thanks to those who responded, if you are reading this. It made a big difference. Almost as soon as the email hit the air waves, my fear was gone. I have discovered, as I said above, that sometimes just voicing my fears is enough to make them disappear. I have also learned that voicing our own emotions can sometimes be a spur for someone else who may be feeling the same way to voice their feelings as well. We do all like company when we are feeling fear, anger, sadness or happiness.

About two days after sending out the above email, I received a message that loudly said, "Quit playing small and insignificant. It isn't you." I received the message and very quietly to myself say, "Oh, ok, is that way I am doing, again."

Then the articles started coming in from other bloggers telling me the same thing, just in a different format. The first of several came from my daily "Today's Heartfelt Blessing" which you can find at http://www.bettertobless.com/ . I love the messages that I receive daily from Kate. They are always uplifting and full of wisdom given out with humility.

The next article that came to me was from Albert of "Personal Development - The Urban Monk." Albert's article is entitled "The Power of Being You" which you will find at http://www.urbanmonk.net/318/the-power-of-being-yourself/ which starts out with saying, "Each individual brings a uniques light into the world, however, often that light remains buried below the surface of the person others see in us. Discovering that light and letting it shine is one of the fundamental steps each individual must take to become a more whole person." This was an article written by a guest author---Alexander De Foe. Thank you Alexander and Albert for this article.

At this point in my week, I started to realize how determined my guides were that I get the meaning of their information. Then I got the following article from the blog "6 WEEKS" written by Brett and found at http://6weeks.ca/?p=215 . What Brett told me came to him from Battlestar Galactica and was that "God loves you because you are perfect, just the way that you are." Then Brett went on to quote my favorite Marianne Williamson saying:

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." - Marianne Williamson

By the time that I finished reading Brett's article, I was laughing and told my guides, out loud so they would know I was serious, "Ok, I get the message." I do love what Marianne says and I guess I needed to be reminded of it. So, okay, people, quit playing small and insignificant. It isn't you and it doesn't suit you or anyone else for you to do it. Let your Light shine for all of the world to see. You never know who may be watching and learning from you about how to let their Light shine too. Isn't this world and time a glorious place to be? Can you tell that "glorious" is my favorite word. It has such a wonderful feel. One of these days, my two-year-old inner child might just reach out and grab onto that glory herself.

Patricia

What Is God?

This week in reading some articles written by Lyman Reed from his blog "Creating a Better Life," I ran across two videos of information by the creators of http://www.abraham-hicks.com. As I told Lyman in a comment, I bought one of the Abraham books sometime in the past six months. When it came in the mail, I immediately misplaced the book. I wasn't ready to receive the information that was in it. I had some internal resistance to the Abraham material. Maybe the timing was off.

After seeing the two videos, one of which is the reason that I am writing this article, I have changed my mind and intend to find the book. I am interested in the material after watching the video "Abraham-Hicks Video: What is God?" You will find this video at Lyman's "Creating a Better Life" at http://creatingabetterlife.net/2008/01/09/abraham-hicks-video-what-is-god/ .

Esther Hicks is the one presenting the video. Below you will find the notes that I took while watching the video "What is God?". These are the words that Esther said that resonated with me.

God is so much more than man's image of God, man's image of who God is.

In seeing himself as inferior to God, man has further separated himself from God.

In reaching for God, we push Him away by making him out there separate from ourselves.

Who am I? You are good.

How am I doing? Exceptionally well.

Being the God that you are in the physical form, you are the God that is the creator of your reality.

Thank you Lyman for sharing these videos. I invite you all to go to Lyman site and watch these wonderful videos if you haven't seen them already.

About ten years ago, I was sitting in a Unity church class trying to describe my image of God. I remember the "ah-ha" moment that I had when I realized that in trying to describe God, that image had changed. I made a huge leap forward in my understanding of God and my relationship to God in that moment. I still can't describe God to you. I doubt that anyone can. Like Lyman said in his article, God is so far beyond our understanding. Can you truly imagine what being omnipotent, omnipresent, and omnicient means? I can't. My little mind just can't imagine that big. That night I realized as I grew spiritually, so did my idea of what God is truly like. Have a glorious day.
Patricia

Limiting Beliefs May Be Holding You Back or How Incest Is Still Affecting My Life

From Your Hands Can Heal You written by Stephen Co and Eric B. Robins, M. D. with John Merryman, page 37,

"Limiting beliefs are mental judgments that we've made about ourselves, the way the world works, or the way we interact in the world based on faulty, incomplete, or improperly understood information we have received, typically in the formative years of childhood. The information can come from primary authority figures (parents, teachers, clergy) or peers (classmates, friends), or indirectly from other sources in the world (books, television, movies, advertising). This information may be true on some level. Perhaps your parents' marriage wasn't very good and loving, or you really didn't have the ability to be a dancer. The information may even be well-intended. Your father may have honestly believed he was trying to motivate you to settle for nothing less than your best efforts. The mind of a child lacks the ability to discriminate and sort through these messages, however, so these unfiltered messages impinge upon your unconscious mind and lead you to form untrue assumptions about yourself and the world. These gross generalizations become limiting beliefs, which, in some ways, are the toughest types of unconscious programming to dislodge or bypass."

Along these same lines, yesterday I read an article written by Alex Blackwell on his blog Personal Development for The Next 45 Years entitled 10 Things You Wish You Had Never Learned found at http://www.thenext45years.com/2007/11/10-things-you-wish-you-had-never.html .

Well, here is my list of limiting beliefs, some of which I am still struggling to change:

1. I learned that I didn't have value as a woman except to be a sexual object.

2. I learned not to expect anything from anybody.

3. I learned that the world was a dangerous place.

4. I learned to not trust anyone, including myself.

5. I learned that God didn't care about me.

6. I learned that I could never be good enough.

7. I learned that there was no one to protect me.

8. I learned that the dark was a scary place.

9. I learned to sleep lightly.

10. I learned to pretend that I was asleep sometimes when I wasn't.

11. I learned to be afraid of sounds in the night.

12. I learned that a child's no wasn't important.

13. I learned to be quiet, to hold in the screams of pain and rage.

14. I learned that to cry was to be weak.

15. I learned to not feel.

16. I learned that what I wanted wasn't important.

17. I learned to pretend that everything was normal.

18. I learned how to escape into my mind, books and movies.

19. I learned how to disconnect from my feelings and my body in order to survive.

20. I learned to be the family hero.

21. I learned to protect my mom at all costs.

22. I learned how to be a parent to both of my parents, rather than being a child.

23. I learned that people and life will disappoint you.

24. I learned that my body wasn't mine to control.

25. I learned to lie when all that I wanted was to tell the truth.

Some of these I have worked on and healed. Some of them, I still struggle with. Can you come up with your own list? Give yourself credit for those that are no longer a problem. Look at the remaining ones and see if there are any that you want to change. Can you imagine the ways that your life will improve by dealing with your own limiting beliefs? Yes, change can be fearful, but isn't peace and happiness worth the change?

Expectations---India trip

A friend asked me to talk about my India trip to her library group on Wednesday, October 24. I told her that it was too soon to talk about my trip in front of a group yet. I am still processing everything that happened and all of the lessons that I learned, most of which came about because of my illness. I am still not ready to face a crowd of people yet either. The few times that I have gotten out this week have really drained my energy. I feel like I am still on India time. I have been in bed between 9:00-10:00 p.m. every night since I have been home and I wake up between 4:30-6:00 a.m. just like I did in India. Rather than get out of bed that early, I will usually turn on one of my meditation tapes and listen to that until at least 7:00 a.m. before I get up. Before this trip, I would go to bed between midnight and 2:00 a.m. and get up between 10:00-11:00 a.m. every day. I am over jet lag and have been emailing and talking to friends about my India experiences so I decided it is time to start writing about all of those experiences.

Before I started writing, I went back and reread my articles that I wrote about my previous India trips to make sure that I don't repeat what I have already written. So here goes.

From my journal entry on Monday, September 24, 2007, somewhere flying over the Atlantic Ocean. (I don't know how many time zones we have gone through, so it may be early Tuesday, September 25 already.)

"What do I expect from this trip to visit Sai Baba? I feel a bubble of joy go through me when I realize we are really doing this. I want to meditate more and write more while we are in India. (I took extra ink pens, paper and notebooks to have on hand to be able to do all of this extra writing, none of which happened. I did get one article written that I will post at a future date but I was too sick to do any other writing than in my journal each day.)

I want to hear the Universal OM that I experienced on my last trip to Puttaparthi where when I listened even the heavy construction machinery seemed to be saying OM. I want to hear and feel that Universal vibration of creation again. (I didn't hear the OM that I heard my last trip, no matter how much I tried. What I did hear was almost constant chanting. I couldn't tell you the words but I knew it was chanting.)

I want to feel and know that I am God, that we all are God united as One. I want to come home with that inner glow that Ric says I came home with after my first trip. (No one has told me that I am glowing but I "KNOW" that I am different than when I left home on this trip. I also came home at least 10 pounds lighter because of being so sick and not eating much.)

I want to give cheerfully of myself in service at the food cantina helping to dry dishes after meals. (We were too busy doing other things and learning other lessons to do much of this on our first trip to Puttaparthi. I told Swami that when I came back to India on my next trip that I would do more service in the kitchen after meals.) During our first trip to India, when we were working in the kitchens at the Brindavin ashram in Whitefield, I was given the honor of drying Swami's dishes after one of the meals. I wanted to keep it to myself and I wanted to share it with Sherryl and Ki and the rest of the world that I was chosen for that honor from a whole room of women. (Swami had other plans for us this trip too. We only ate in the cantina 3 times and the only time we helped dry dishes, Sherryl's fingers started to bleed from being in the hot water. This wasn't the form of service that Swami had in mind for us.)

I want to experience the joy of meeting new friends from all corners of the planet. In KodaiKanal in 1998, we sang bhajans (songs of worship to God) with ladies from Russia who had beautiful voices but didn't speak any English and we didn't speak any Russian.

On a roadside in the middle of nowhere, I sang bhajans with a black man from Jamaica who was my teacher at the time and a beautiful spirit of a lady from Romania who spoke more with her heart and her beautiful, loving eyes than she did with her broken English. We sang while we watched the sun rise and everyone else was asleep in our broken down, rented van while we waited to be rescued. That was an experience that I will always cherish because we were three hearts touching and becoming One heart beat as we watched the beauty of Nature unfold for us in the quiet of an early morning."

These were my expectations of what I thought would happen on this trip to India. These were the things that I wanted to happen this trip. As you can tell from my added comments, Swami often had other plans for us.

Happy Father's Day, Daddy

When I left to go to church this morning, I had no idea that I would be writing a Happy Father's Day to my dad. This was inspired by what I heard my minister say in his sermon. Thanks, Rev. Joe. I hope you had a wonderful Father's Day.

Jesus tells His Father to "Forgive them, for they know not what they do." We can all apply this to ourselves and to our parents. I have heard for years in Al-Anon and ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholics), that our parents did the best that they could. I used to get very angry when someone would say that. Finally, someone added the following words to that sentence, "and it wasn't good enough." Those few words added made all the difference to me. My feelings were being validated. Rev. Joe today said "They did the best that they could with the tools that they had from their level of consciousness. I like that statement too. I feel that I have a higher level of consciousness than my parents had and I still make mistakes with my children.

I read somewhere a few years ago, that we see God as having the same attributes as the father that raised us. What fatherly attributes have you given your God, the Father?

I need my God to be a loving, forgiving, and compassionate Father. I don't need Him to be the physically and emotionally abusive father that I grew up with. Nor is He an angry, raging Father. My God is not a punishing, nonforgiving Father.

My God understands my needs and desires. He knows why I think the way that I do. He knows why I feel the way that I do. He is perfectly ok with me getting angry at Him. With my dad, I was never allowed to feel that I was angry with him. I often wondered if I would survive the wrath of my dad.

"Happy Father's Day, Daddy." I can finally say, "I love you." and not feel the rage that you acted out and I suppressed in myself. Daddy, I now know that I chose you as my dad before I was born. I also know that you were my husband in a past life so maybe I chose you as my dad so that we could both end the karma that we both attracted to us in that past life time. It has taken a long time and a lot of hard work to get here. I am grateful for the opportunity to grow that this lifetime has given me.

My dad died on January 6, 2001, alone and probably frightened and angry at himself and God. He was alone because of the life style that he chose. He was probably frightened and angry because dying was out of his control. My dad was a dictator. I was able to make my peace with my dad a year and a half before he died. I am thankful that I was able to face him and say "I forgive you."

As my consciousness grows and expands so could my idea of who God is. This is a God of my understanding and nobody else has to agree with me. I want to end with saying,
"Happy Father's Day, God, my Father." Hope you had a nice one.