Trust Your Vibes

Isn’t it amazing how a book on developing our “extra”-sensory perception advises us to take care of the basic physical needs?! It ALL starts with, as Wayne Dyer says, first being a good animal.

If we want to be plugged in to our Highest Selves, we’ve gotta provide a well rested, fed and cared for temple, eh?!?

Reminds me of Dale Carnegie’s great book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living (see Notes) where he dedicates a chapter to the importance of reducing FATIGUE in order to reduce worry. He says: “So, to prevent fatigue and worry, the first rule is: Rest often. Rest before you get tired.”

And continues with this cool story on the importance of rest: “Your heart pumps enough blood through your body every day to fill a railway tank car. It exerts enough energy every twenty-four hours to shovel twenty tons of coal onto a platform three feet high. It does this incredible amount of work for fifty, seventy, or maybe ninety years. How can it stand it? Dr. Walter B. Cannon, of the Harvard Medical School, explained it. He said ‘Most people have the idea that the heart is working all the time. As a matter of fact, there is a definite rest period after each contraction. When beating at a moderate rate of seventy pulses per minute, the heart is actually working only nine hours out of the twenty-four. In the aggregate its rest periods total a full fifteen hours per day.’”

So, how about you? Can you turn up your “optimum care” a notch or two?

Perhaps giving yourself more rest or eating a little more green stuff or drinking a little more water or going for another walk or… ? Let’s plug in with optimum care! :)

And while we’re on the subject, how about a little more body love?

This is a really Big Idea.

Did you know they’ve actually scientifically studied the effects of exercise on our emotional well-being? And, they’ve also studied the fact that ruminating when you’re in a bad mood is actually totally toxic to your well-being?

Yepperz. Let’s look at some wisdom from another cool “Sonja/Sonia”—Sonja Lyubomirsky, one of the world’s leading positive psychologists who wrote a great book called The How of Happiness (see Notes).

First, the study on exercise as an anti-depressant: “An impressive study of physical activity was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine in 1999. The researchers recruited men and women fifty years old and over, all of them suffering from clinical depression, and divided them randomly into three groups. The first group was assigned to four months of aerobic exercise, the second group to four months of antidepressant medication (Zoloft), and the third group to both. The assigned exercise involved three supervised forty-five-minute sessions per week of cycling or walking/jogging at moderate to high intensity. Remarkably, by the end of the four-month intervention period, all three groups had experienced their depressions lift and reported fewer dysfunctional attitudes and increased happiness and self-esteem. Aerobic exercise was just as effective at treating depression as was Zoloft, or as a combination of exercise and Zoloft. Yet exercise is a lot less expensive, usually with no side effects apart from soreness. Perhaps even more remarkably, six months later, participants who had ‘remitted’ (recovered) from their depressions were less likely to relapse if they had been in the exercise group (six months ago!) than if they had been in the medication group.”

And now Sonja’s words on toxic ruminations: “The combination of rumination and negative mood is toxic. Research shows that people who ruminate while sad or distraught are likely to feel besieged, powerless, self-critical, pessimistic, and generally negatively biased.”And, “If you are someone plagued by ruminations, you are unlikely to become happier before you can break that habit.”

So, there ya go.

Feeling funky?

Get out and break the toxic pull with a nice walk or run or whatever you enjoy! It’s good for you and all six of your senses! :)

Wallace D. Wattles says something very similar in his little book The Science of Being Great (see Notes): “You can never become a great man or woman until you have overcome anxiety, worry, and fear. It is impossible for an anxious person, a worried one, or a fearful one to perceive truth; all things are distorted and thrown out of their proper relations by such mental states, and those who are in them cannot read the thoughts of God.”

Do you find yourself nervous, tense, or anxious often? Sonia tells us that: “Remaining calm no matter what’s going on around you is an incredible challenge, but it will liberate your psychic sense and will probably add a few years to your life as well—after all, getting worked up about things only makes them worse. Life is always full of drama and challenges, but you don’t have to overreact to any of it if you choose not to.”

In this chapter on staying calm called “Easy Does It,” Sonia talks about the fact that staying calm starts with proper breathing. As she says, “…breathing deeply and regularly is not only the key to remaining calm, but also instantly connects us to a higher vibration. When we’re stressed or fearful, we tend to hold our breath, which cuts us off from our Higher Self and our intuitive vibes.”

In his great book The Big Leap (see Notes), my friend and mentor Gay Hendricks says this: “There’s only one way to get through the fog of fear, and that’s to transform it into the clarity of exhilaration. One of the greatest pieces of wisdom I’ve ever heard comes from Fritz Perls, MD, the psychiatrist and founder of Gestalt therapy. He said, ‘Fear is excitement without the breath.’ Here’s what this intriguing statement means: the very same mechanisms that produce excitement also produce fear, and any fear can be transformed into excitement by breathing fully with it. On the other hand, excitement turns into fear quickly if you hold your breath. When scared, most of us have a tendency to try to get rid of the feeling. We think we can get rid of it by denying or ignoring it, and we use holding our breath as a physical tool of denial.”

And here’s Gay’s advice on how to breathe into it: “The best advice I can give you is to take big, easy breaths when you feel fear. Feel the fear instead of pretending it’s not there. Celebrate it with a big breath, just the way you’d celebrate your birthday by taking a big breath and blowing out all the candles on your cake. Do that, and your fear turns into excitement. Do it more, and your excitement turns into exhilaration. I find it very empowering to know that I’m in charge of the exhilaration I feel as I go through life. I bet you will, too.”

So… Let’s BREATHE and turn our fear into excitement as we tune into our vibes! :)

Flexibility. It’s the hallmark of emotional well-being. We talk (fairly) often about the idea of a river of flexibility flowing between the banks of rigidity and chaos. We want to avoid being too chaotic OR too rigid to harmonize with the flow of flexibility.

So, how can you get your flexibility on and loosen up your intuitive muscles?!? :)

This is BIG.

And echoed throughout the great books we discuss here.

Raymond Charles Barker says this in his book The Power of Decision (see Notes): “The decision to let go of that which has completed its course in your experience is even more important than the decision to welcome new ideas. You cannot walk forward by looking backward. New wine cannot be put into old bottles, for the Bible states that the old bottles will break. You intuitively know what should depart from your life.”

And, Esther and Jerry Hicks talk about the need to let go of the past and focus on our ideal a lot in their GREAT books on the law of attraction and how to connect and express our Highest Selves. In Money, and the Law of Attraction (see Notes), they share this great story: “People talk about the reality of their life as if it is important. And we want you to understand, it’s only the temporary indicator. Do you go to the gas station—your gas gauge is on empty—do you go to the gas station and look at your gas gauge in horror? ‘How did this happen? [Fun] Why, why, why did this happen to me?’ Do you lay your head on the steering wheel and just sob? ‘Oh, look what it’s come to. [Fun] I’m finished. I’ve lived all of this life, and look where I am.’ Or, do you just fill up?”

Hah! Love that image. :)

So, what stories are you telling yourself and everyone around you?!?

Is NOW a good time to let them go and let in the Divine?

AMEN!

Two things here: First: Notice how important PRACTICE is.

As Sonia says: “Like everything else that connects us to our Higher Self, prayer is most effective when practiced, meaning that you should pray whenever you think of it until it becomes automatic.”

If we wanna attain the heights of our potential, we’ve gotta PRACTICE (practice, practice!) the stuff we know to be true until the action/consciousness becomes AUTOMATIC! Yah?

George Leonard, in one of my favorite books on the subject (Mastery), encourages us to make our practice both a verb AND a noun. He says: “A practice (as a noun) can be anything you practice on a regular basis as an integral part of your life—not in order to gain something else, but for its own sake… For a master, the rewards gained along the way are fine, but they are not the main reason for the journey. Ultimately, the master and the master’s path are one. And if the traveler is fortunate—that is, if the path is complex and profound enough—the destination is two miles farther away for every mile he or she travels.”

Alright, so we’ve gotta practice. How can you turn your “practices” up a notch? :)

Point #2: Prayer. It’s BIG.

In another section, Sonia tells us: “It’s really quite simple: If you want inspiration, think inspiring thoughts; if you want healing, think healing thoughts; if you want creativity, think creative thoughts; and if you want to live in a higher way, think higher thoughts.”

It’s all about controlling the contents of our consciousness and prayer is a really cool way to help us do that.

And, as we get our prayer on, let’s remember Meister Eckhart’s wisdom on the subject:

“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is ‘thank you,’ it will be enough.”

*tickle tickle*

What have you laughed at lately?!?

If you’re looking for a GREAT chuckle, I think you’ll dig this YouTube clip called “Everything’s Amazing and Nobody’s Happy” (check out the site to watch it!) by comedian Louis CK on Conan O’Brien’s show talking about, among other things, how it should be illegal to complain about anything when sitting in a chair in the air (aka flying)! It’s HILARIOUS and an incredible reminder on how easily we can take life’s gifts for granted. :)

And, here’s one of the 33 “six sensory practice” exercises that concludes the chapter called “Laughing Matters”: “This week, laugh a lot. Look for the humor in things: Sing in the shower, create shampoo sculptures with your hair in the bathtub, make funny faces while brushing your teeth, read humorous books, rent comedies, go to a karaoke club with a friend and join in, call your best pal from grade school and reminisce, goof around with your kids, and play with your dog. In other words, get over your seriousness and let your hair down! Fake it if you have to, but do a good job of it. Don’t worry if you look foolish—the more foolish you are, the more enlightened you’ll feel.”

THAT IS AMAZING!

I love the image of preparing our garden the best we can and letting God take care of the rest. Beautiful image, eh?

It also reminds me of a question Joseph Campbell asks in The Power of Myth (see Notes). He says: “What am I? Am I the bulb that carries the light, or am I the light of which the bulb is a vehicle?”

I love to imagine that my job is to create a powerful bulb so I can flow as much of God’s divine electricity threw me as possible. I don’t wanna to be a 10 watt bulb that flickers and would blow up if 250 watts of energy were pushed through it. I’m committed to doing my part to align with my Highest Self to get my wattage up to 1,000, 10,000, 100,000 (!?! :) range to light up my part of the world. How ‘bout you?

And, of course, as we tend our metaphorical gardens and light bulbs, we’ve gotta trust the divine dance. As Sonia so beautifully says: “The Universe has a pulse and rhythm of its own, and it wants to carry you with it—so if you dance with Spirit, just remember to let it lead.”