What’s All the Fuss About the Dalai Lama?

#truelove #allowing #dating

GPS for the Soul – The Huffington Post

I called every day for two weeks leading up to my trip, trying to get an extra night at my boutique hotel. Every day, they kindly told me no, in fact they were overbooked. As my trip drew closer, I began calling other hotels in San Francisco, and then in the San Francisco area, with the same sad result. The answer was “no room.” I was planning to help out with my favorite spiritual teacher’s taping of talks for his website, eckharttolletv. I do it every year, and I feel like it recharges me somehow. His talks are always sold out and eagerly attended by truth seekers from all over the world. But Eckhart couldn’t have sold out all of San Francisco! The soundstage simply wasn’t that big.

It was then that my friend Nancy told me enthusiastically that she and her girlfriend were coming to Eckhart’s talk, and the day before, they had scored tickets to see the Dalai Lama! Her excitement was not unwarranted: I later learned the Dalai Lama was talking three days in a row in the San Francisco area to huge audiences, and every single one was sold out. I was both impressed and mystified at our human appetite for spiritual wisdom. Is spiritual guidance that urgently needed? Yes, I realized, it is.

“Can’t you just read a book?” my partner asks me as I pack my bag for my trip. “These teachers aren’t saying anything that hasn’t been said before. It’s all written down.” I’m folding my favorite clothes, I realize, comfortable but in lively colors.

“I’ve read the books,” I reply. “But the deepest realizations I’ve had spiritually have come from being in the presence of and under the guidance of living spiritual masters. They’re walking the earth with us. They’re dealing with our political issues. They feel global warming. They’re watching our lives unfold. They take our questions to heart. And they can guide us through these times. There’s an urgency to being alive, and living masters can reflect and guide us through life. It’s different. There’s also something sacred about being with people who feel the same need for peace, evolution, contemplation.”

“Why?” he asks me. “What’s the difference? Pick up a telephone, send an email.”

“No, you have to be there,” I explain. I know I’m right, and I’m not alone. All of San Francisco is sold out. “Even if no words are shared, there’s a great feeling to know we’re all in this together, we’re there together. There’s an energetic frequency that I can feel. These masters have a contagious loving, peaceful energy. And like a radio, I feel I tune into making peace a priority energetically.”

Now more than ever as we grapple with dire realities such as severe weather changes, political meltdowns, and technological revolutions, there is an urgent need for spiritual guidance. Because no matter how little or great your personal fortune might be, no matter how famous or unknown your name might be, no matter how healthy or close to death you or your loved ones discover yourselves to be, there is always a deep desire for peace, and the happiness peace can unveil. It is human to seek a living spiritual guide, and to find one. To me, it’s the best part of being a human being. Without it, aren’t we just beasts fighting for survival?

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3 Powerful Lessons We Can Learn From The Olympics

By Cheryl Maloney for YourTango.com

There is something universally inspiring about the Olympics: It brings us together as a country to cheer for our team, and as a world community to celebrate our best athletes. We celebrate those who step onto the podium and our hearts break with those who don’t.

Our own lives mimic the events played out in Sochi. Whether it’s pulling together at work, celebrating when we achieve our goal or feeling the agony of a lost love, we are living the Olympic experience every day. All too often, though, we focus on what went wrong and we forget what went right. All too often, we beat ourselves up for “just” receiving a bronze medal — when that’s really something to cheer about.

When was the last time you celebrated feeling good when you crawled out of bed in the morning? Have you given thanks for having a job or finishing a task you’d been dreading? We view these everyday activities as part of life and not worthy of our time or attention; instead, we wait around for the big promotion, the grand love or the acquisition of the big symbol as proof of our value. In the meantime we feel less than our best and happiness seems to elude us.

I gained monumental inspiration from watching the Olympic athletes — not in their performances (which were, of course, amazing) but in their attitude about their performance. It is through these role models we can learn to raise our spirits right now regardless of our results. Here’s how:

Acknowledge your personal best. Every step and every event in your life, regardless of the size, includes a lesson you can use to do better next time. If you aren’t happy with where you are then celebrate how far you’ve come, and use your progress as motivation to persevere.

Pick yourself back up. When your best doesn’t work out the way you hoped, take a lesson from Shaun White and be happy for the success of someone else. Anytime you genuinely celebrate the success of another you elevate your own energy along with the spirits of everyone who is a witness to your kindness.

Be grateful for your role even if you weren’t the winner. Channel Lindsey Van and Jessica Jerome who fought hard to make Women’s Ski Jumping an Olympic sport and, though not medal winners, they are responsible for enabling Sarah Hendrickson taking that monumental first jump into the history books.

As long as we have expectations, of ourselves and of others, we’re going to experience disappointment. That’s a good thing. We can use it to defeat us or empower us to keep reaching for our dreams. Whether your dream is to be on the podium in 2016, to find your forever love or publish your first novel, harness the power of your experience and celebrate your personal best! What Olympic stories have you found the most inspiring? Leave a comment below!

For more positive inspiration check out Simple Steps Real Change Magazine at simplestepsrealchangemagazine.com. When you subscribe you receive Cheryl’s #1 Bestselling e-book Simple Steps for Real Life for free.

Starting over in your relationship or some other aspect of your life? Check out Cheryl’s complementary “Surfing the Emotional Waves of Starting Over” Webinar.

Keep in touch! Check out HuffPost Divorce on Facebook and Twitter.

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Feel Your Feelings and Improve Your Health, Happiness and Relationships

The car in front of me was — in my opinion — not moving fast enough. I was in a hurry and was running dangerously close to being late for my class. I could not believe that the Toyota Camry in front of me thought that 20 miles per hour in a 30 miles per hour zone was acceptable at 8:30 a.m. on a Monday. The anger within me mounted as I contemplated laying on my horn to let the driver in front of me know exactly what I thought of his poor driving skills. But then suddenly, it hit me.

I wasn’t angry about a driver going “too slow.”

I was just plain angry.

And this driving scenario was simply an opportunity for that anger within me to rise to the surface.

Ever had this experience? Ever witnessed yourself having a strong emotional reaction to something that some deeper part of you knew was totally out of proportion to the situation? The truth is no emotion surfaces from something outside of us — it can only come up if it is already within us. People, places and situations don’t make us feel anything; we choose to feel through our perceptions and through our conditioned filters.

Many of us were never taught how to let ourselves feel our feelings or that repressing our feelings over time would create physical, emotional and mental disease, injuries, and accidents. We were never taught that emotions need healthy release because if they don’t, they will have to find other, often painful — or unhealthy like my minor case of road rage — ways to be expressed. Unexpressed emotions over time will eat away at your body’s connective tissue, disable your immune system’s proper functioning and will leave your body-mind susceptible to a variety of mishaps.

However, lashing out at everyone and everything is not a healthy way to release these repressed emotions either. When we react in this emotionally unhealthy fashion, we not only re-toxify our body-mind-spirit, we also toxify our environment and those around us with what Don Miguel Ruiz calls in his bestselling book The Four Agreements “our emotional poison.”

Sadly, you may have experienced this from someone around you at various points in your life. You may also take in others emotional poison through what you read on Facebook, other social media sites and blogs. We’ve all seen the “pardon the vent” posts with people using social media as yet another vehicle to lash out. But whether it’s at another driver or a social media post, venting our feelings is not the same as feeling our feelings and allowing them to release from our body in a healthy way that does not re-toxify ourselves or toxify the people around us.

So what do you do when you know you’ve got emotions that need release and you want to release them in a healthy good-for-you-and-good-for-everyone-else manner? Below is a focus and release process that you can use to release emotions healthily — even if you don’t know exactly what emotions you’re feeling. In fact, this is an exceptional practice that you can use on a daily basis to care for your health.

• Sit in a meditative position with your eyes closed. Make sure you’re somewhere you will not be disturbed.
• Tap Cortices, taking deep breaths as you tap, with a focused intention on connecting to any emotions that want to be released in that moment.
• Take 4-7 deep inhales through your nose, exhale through your mouth and as you do scan your body with your focus. Which area has the most tension?
• Breathe into the area of tension that catches your attention, placing your hand there to increase your focus.
• Silently ask the tension in your body what it wants to tell you. Take a few more deep inhales through the nose, exhales through the mouth and listen for the response. You may hear it or experience tears or waves of anger rising within you. Whatever happens, be present with the emotion and let it move through your body. Use your breath to move the emotions through until you feel the tension in that area of your body release.
• Sit quietly and scan your body again, if there is another area of tension or pain that has your attention, go to that area and repeat the process.
• Once you are complete with the process, tap Cortices again with the intention of grounding your body and centering yourself,

You will notice that these feelings often don’t have to be felt for long, they just need our attention and focus and then they can release.

Use this practice daily and watch as you feel lighter, your body’s health improves and you feel happier (and as an extra bonus no one has to read another “vent” post from you ever again). You deserve to feel, and you deserve to feel good — make this practice one of your go-to tools and experience more emotional freedom in your day-to-day life!

For more from Heather Strang, click here.

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