By Darren Weissman

Good to Great! Why Settle for Less

History teaches us that unless we’re challenged, human nature has a tendency to settle for good. Good jobs, good relationships, good health, and simply a good time. However, as Jim Collins stated quite succinctly in his New York Times best-selling book, Good to Great, “Good is the enemy of great.” And on a certain level, just below the surface of the experience of good, exists a churning feeling of being unfulfilled and a mysterious longing for something more. Yes it’s nice to feel good, however there’s a part of you that knows that greatness exists in the very same moment.

Why is it then that so many people settle for jobs, partners, health, and the status quo of life’s circumstances? Some people use excuses of not having enough money, family support, or social privileges to explain or justify living in the mediocrity of good. Yes, there can be blessings of being born into money that holds the potential to have a wider range of opportunities, however as the Beatles sang in the year 1964 and still rings true today: Money can’t buy me love. Fulfillment and owning one’s power is an inside job and is the tethering vibration between good and great.

Within each and every one of us exists the same opportunity and potential for self-realization. Helen Keller is an extraordinary example of this. Helen Keller was the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. Anne Sullivan – Helen Keller’s teacher – helped Helen bridge the gap and sprout her seed of greatness. Helen Keller is quoted saying, “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature.” Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure. The transformation from good to greatness is a journey whose power is discovered along the way.

In my experience the perspective you have about your present, past, or future holds the key to awakening your inner greatness. As Wayne Dyer so eloquently says, “When you change the way you view things, the things that you view change.”

So what is it that keeps people viewing through the same lens of good again and again rather than upgrading and changing their perceptual prescription to greatness? The answer resides within the subconscious mind.

In 1999 – all within a month’s time – my grandmother died in my arms, my fiancé chose to end our relationship and get engaged right after ending ours, my business almost went completely bankrupt, and I ruptured my left Achilles tendon twice. Little did I know that at the moment of complete darkness my light was just beginning to shine. These experiences were priming my spiritual engine to upgrade from living a good life to living a great life.

Fast forward two years to 2001 and I’m at the tipping point between faith and fear. I could settle and continue to live in fear – reacting to reactions – or awaken with faith to possibilities that only my imagination could conjure up. The shift for me occurred in an instant like a scene from Star Trek. One moment I’m pacing the floor in my home with fearful hamster wheel—like thoughts looping through my mind and in the next second I’m beamed up into a space of clarity and Divine vision. In a single moment – actually a swing from good to great – I was now able to perceive the blueprint or roadmap to helping others awaken to their own power.

Here’s a powerful exercise to begin your journey of transforming your perception of good into great!

1. Connect to something or someone that causes you to feel stress. Regardless of what or who it is, simply observe where your mind and heart takes you. Acknowledge the stress by appreciating the emotion that it brings up in you. Write this emotion down on a piece of paper.
2. Rating this emotion on a scale of 0 to 10 with 0 being nothing at all and 10 being off the charts will help you to appreciate the level of stress you’re currently under. Now ask yourself this question pertaining to the stressful circumstance. Given the opportunity would you ever choose to create your life, a day, or a single moment feeling or attracting this emotional stress? (The answer to this question is universally and discernibly no!)
3. Knowing you would never consciously choose this stress helps you to appreciate that the source of its origination is reactive in nature. Only the conscious mind chooses and if you wouldn’t choose the stress then its source is the subconscious mind.
4. Now we’re going to guide and influence your subconscious mind into the land of greatness by focusing on what you do choose. From a place of love and the desire of your heart, imagine that you have a menu of infinite possibilities to choose from. What do you choose to feel? Remember, we’re going for greatness! Write this feeling down on a piece of paper.
5. Now put the words I Am _______ in front of this feeling and say it out loud 3 times. Put a smile on your face for extra credit and feel it send ripples all through your body as you declare it to the world!
6. I encourage you to make a daily commitment to yourself by looking in the mirror deeply into your beautiful eyes while declaring your I Am ______ statement. Perform this exercise 10 times in the morning and 10 times in the evening. Writing your statement on a sticky note and placing it on the mirror will help you to remember this important act of self-love each and every day. Go for it NOW, your destiny of greatness awaits you!

 Check out Darren Weissman’s new online course called The Now Program
  The NOW Program: A Professional Certification Course by Darren Weissman

Dr. Darren R. Weissman is the developer of The LifeLine Technique, an advanced holistic system that discovers, releases, and interprets the root cause of physical symptoms and stress—emotions trapped within the subconscious mind. His mission is world peace through inner peace. Darren is an internationally renowned lecturer and has helped thousands of people awaken to their infinite potential and The Power of Infinite Love & Gratitude. Website: www.infiniteloveandgratitude.com

by David R. Hamilton, Ph.D.

Every thought and feeling changes something in the body. Ever been embarrassed? Did your face go red at the thought of people looking at you or knowing something private about you? Of course it did. Your thoughts are affecting your biology!

On the positive side, our thoughts can have far reaching health-giving consequences. For example, scientific studies have shown that thinking and feeling care or compassion for another person can bring coherence to the rhythms of the heart. One study even found an increase in key immune chemicals after 5 minutes of such loving thoughts.

Thoughts and emotions even bring about changes at the level of the DNA. Our genes continually switch on and off as the body goes about it’s basic house-keeping. However, our thinking influences the process.

Take a simple example. Say you fall and scrape your knee. As the body begins to repair itself, genes switch on to provide the materials needed for repair, like hormones, clotting factors, even new skin. But if you were focusing your attention on stuff that made you sad, or even believing that you would take ages to heal, then genes would switch on that would interfere with the healing process.

On the other hand, if you imagined that the wound was healed and believed that your thoughts would help, then genes would switch on and you would heal faster.

Additionally, strong emotions like fascination, wonder, awe, excitement, and enthusiasm, as well as spiritual states of consciousness, are so powerful that they even switch on genes that cause brain cells to grow in adults – something that, up until a few years ago, was believed to be impossible. The key is the interaction of emotions with DNA.

This all happens inside the body. Where it gets really interesting is when our thoughts affect things outside of the body.

Some scientists placed organisms in test tubes and found that people could influence them just by intending for them to change. For instance, people could either mentally speed up or slow down the mutation of E-coli on command.

Some university research has also shown that a thought about a person is registered in their body. While hooked up to devices measuring electrical resistance in the skin, scientists measured changes in people depending on the thoughts held about them by people in another room.

These things are able to occur because all life is interconnected at the quantum level. A thought not only affects your body, but it ripples throughout the invisible web that interconnects all of life. Each of us affects the whole.

Therefore it is possible for us to make a real positive difference in the word by changing our attitudes and behaviours towards each other. In a very real way an act of kindness in your own home or workplace will ripple throughout the interconnectedness of life and make a difference in the lives of people on the other side of the world. And ultimately, it’s not so much the act, but the space of love it came from that it most important. It’s the thought that counts.

So if you want to see a world you dream of then start with yourself. Each of us can make a real difference, regardless of our status in life. Everyone is important. And that means You!

A simple formula is to show love for self, love for others, and love for nature.

www.drdavidhamilton.com

by David Hamilton Ph.D.

If you ask someone for help, more often or not they will. When you visualise something happening in your life, it is like sending out a call for help that is picked up unconsciously by people. Then, people who can help you are unconsciously drawn to you. Have you ever noticed that someone new has come into your life after you started hoping, praying, or visualising for something in particular to happen, or that someone you knew gave you new information or assistance. You also attract intuitions and suddenly get inspired with new ideas.

Quantum physics has revealed an interconnectedness to all things. And Carl Jung suggested that we share a collective unconscious mind. It has parallels with the Internet. Computers are separate from each other as they sit on our desks, but they are connected via the Internet, which is a shared repository of information. Similarly, the collective unconscious mind is a shared hive of information that all of us are connected to. When you hope, pray, or dream of something you want, your intention is felt by people at an unconscious level. Then the people who can help are drawn to be in the same place at the same time as you.

I often describe it using the metaphor of a spider’s web. How does a spider know that a fly is trapped in its web? It feels the vibrations. So in the same way, people feel the vibrations (at deep unconscious and quantum levels) of your hopes, prayers, dreams, and intentions, as you do theirs.

So when you want something in your life, imagine it clearly. And imagine it as if it is happening now. Your thoughts will attract it, either as intuitions and ideas or as people showing up in your life.

Most of us are experts at what I call the law of repulsion. I was a master of it for years. Whenever I wanted something, I must have invoked the law because I always seemed to get the opposite. Things got worse. It led me, when I was growing up, to conclude that if I wanted something there was no chance I could have it. I could only have the things I didn’t want, which was a bit of a bummer.

But the law of repulsion is really the law of attraction in disguise. We sometimes repel our goals because we spend more time complaining about how bad things are at the moment or that ‘ it’s not happened yet ‘, than we do actually imagining what we want. And just as energy flows to where attention goes inside the body, so reality flows in the direction of what you put your attention on in your life too.

The key is to keep your intention, periodically, on what you want instead of the opposite, which is what is happening now. When faced with current reality, just affirm that it is changing. What you want is coming to you. Play pretend, like a child does, every day or so for a couple of minutes.

For some people, change is rapid when they do this. For others, it’s a more gradual process and it takes discipline. But it’s worth it.

You can even wish the best for other people. I have noticed that good stuff happens in their life when I do this. People often show up in their life too, or little miracles happen in their life. All you are doing is giving them a little unconscious mental assistance, like you’re an angel I suppose.

I am a great believer in using the power of intention to make a positive difference in the lives of others, and in the world. I believe that we are far more powerful than we have ever believed ourselves to be. I believe that we have the ability to change the world. All we need to do is try.

Every act with a genuine heartfelt intent behind it sends out vibrations throughout the web that attracts new realities. So it’s not so much what you do, it’s the heartfelt intention behind it that’s matters. In other words, it’s the Thought that Counts!

www.drdavidhamilton.com

David Hamilton is one of the experts featured in the documentary Beyond Belief. Get the DVD:  www.beyondbeliefthemovie.com

by David Hamilton Ph.D.

Every thought and feeling changes something in your body. Think of a time when you got embarrassed. Your face went red didn’t it? This is the power of your mind to affect your body. It is your thoughts about yourself or about what people might be thinking of you that do it.

The placebo effect is another example of this. If a person is given a fake medicine but believes that it’s a real medicine then he or she will usually get better.

Some studies have shown the benefits of positive states of mind. It has been shown that thinking thoughts and feeling the feelings of gratitude or compassion, for instance, can make heart rhythms more coherent and boost the body’s immune system.

In other words, if you intend for your immune system to get a little boost, just spend five or ten minutes thinking nice thoughts about someone.

The mind even affects DNA. Our 25,000 or so genes are in a continual state of switching on and off, like light bulbs, as the body grows and repairs itself. But scientists now know that many of these genes respond to their environment. In other words, to what you eat, how much exercise you take, what you are thinking about, and how you feel. There is now a clearly defined link between emotions and biology. Thoughts and feelings change the chemical balance all throughout the body, producing chemicals and hormones called neuropeptides, which switch our internal systems, and our genes, on and off. So the body is hardwired to respond to your mind.

Ever since Dr Bernard Grad in the 1960′s showed that a healer could speed up the rate of healing of skin wounds on mice, there has been a lot of research into our ability to mentally intend positive changes in our bodies, and in the bodies of others. One explanation for how it works, in addition to the production of neuropeptides, is that mental intention sets direction for the flow of qi (chee, prana) around the body.

For thousands of years, eastern doctors have taught that qi travels around the body, following the acupuncture meridian system. If you have an injury somewhere in your body then the key to healing is to imagine it healed, or being healed. Qi will flow there, providing energy sustenance as well as vital nutrients for the tissue. And neuropeptides will also be produced that will boost the body’s healing capacity.

There’s a well-known story of a man who damaged his liver beyond repair in an accident. After spending a while in hospital he was sent home with tubes connected to his body. This was for life. But after learning about visualisation he spent hours visualising his damaged liver cells being repaired.

At first he saw the cells in his mind as black and shrivelled, but he imagined cleaning them, one by one, with an imaginary toothbrush, watching each turn a healthy pink colour.

After three months of visualisation he had an accident at home and one of the tubes was torn out of his body. He was rushed to hospital and x-rayed to survey the damage prior to an operation, where the doctors discovered that his liver was completely renewed.

Some scientists have taken the research even further. Recognising that a healer can affect a person’s body without touching it, they have taken biological material from inside the body and tested the power of intention to affect it.

In 2004, for instance, scientists from the California Pacific Medical Centre, the Institute of Noetic Sciences and MD Anderson Cancer Centre at the University of Texas found that practitioners of qigong could influence the growth of cultured human brain cells. Each practitioner, for a period of 20 minutes, directed healing intentions towards the cells and was able to increase their rate of growth.

Where it gets really interesting is when our thoughts affect things much further outside of the body.

Some research has shown that a thought about a person registers in their body. While hooked up to devices measuring electrical resistance in the skin, scientists measured changes in people depending on the thoughts held about them by people in another room.

In a few other experiments, the brainwaves of two people were monitored. When the scientists startled one of them, the brainwaves showed a peak, but so did the brainwaves of the other person. This is why we often have a sense of who is on the other end of the phone, even before we answer. Through over 60 separate scientific studies on this and related phenomena, the success rate of ‘guessing’ was 54.5%, when chance said it should be 50%. This doesn’t sound much, but considering it involved 33,357 individual trials, the odds of this just being chance are 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1. That’s a 2 with 59 zero’s after it (202 octodecillion to 1!). People really do sense what others are thinking. I believe that this is why the law of attraction works. It is the law that says you attract what you focus on.

www.drdavidhamilton.com

END of Part One of Two;

David Hamilton is one of the experts featured in the documentary Beyond Belief.  Get the DVD at:  www.beyondbeliefthemovie.com

by Dr. David Hamilton

I love to meditate and have made it a daily practice. Being quite scientifically minded I love to monitor how it benefits me. Among other methods I often use the Heartmath FreezeFramer (see http://www.heartmath.com ) so that I can see how my meditations affect the rhythms of my heart.

Doing this helps me to stay in a meditative state for the duration of my meditations (usually 30 – 45 minutes). Any loss of concentration usually shows up quickly on the screen of my laptop as my rhythms lose their coherence. By periodically glancing at the screen, I am reminded to keep my focus.

Meditation has been shown to have many positive effects on the body. It is believed that around 80% of all health problems are either negatively affected by stress, or that stress had a hand in their creation. Meditation is a well-known antidote to stress and so has a positive effect on many health complaints.

Since the widespread use of MRI scanners, scientists have been able to explore the effects of meditation on the growth of the brain. In one recent study (published in the journal, ‘Neurobiology of Ageing’), scientists Giuseppe Pagoni and Milos Cekic, from the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences at Emory University in Atlanta, looked at the grey matter volume of the brain to measure the effects of Zen meditation.

Cerebral grey matter volume usually decreases with age, so the study compared the grey matter volume of 13 people performing Zen meditations against that of 13 control people who weren’t meditators.

What they found was that grey matter volume decreased as expected in the control group but not so with the meditators. In other words, meditation had a ‘neuroprotective’ effect: It slowed down the rate of ageing.

Many studies have shown similar anti ageing effects. It has been found also, for instance, that meditation can slow down the decline in levels of the hormone DHEA, which also usually declines with age.

David Hamilton is one of the experts in the documentary Beyond Belief: www.beyondbeliefthemovie.com

by Jonathan Ellerby Ph.D. (part two)

Of all the things that people have in common around the world, stress and suffering rank at the top of the list. Regardless of how much you make, your age, looks, culture, or job, you likely do not escape frustration and aggravation with ease – it’s a part of being on planet earth. Fortunately, we also share the ability to rise above these things, and in many cases we can even learn to heal the stress and suffering in our lives. Spiritual traditions have long been the refuge from stress with simple techniques and philosophies that can transform daily life.

It is easy to feel that stress and suffering are unavoidable or that somehow you are doomed to face them again and again. This helpless feeling stems from the mistaken assumption that our emotions need to drive our decisions and our lives. The strong emotions that create suffering are rooted in either hurts of the past or unfulfilled expectations of the present.

A spouse, friend, or boss that talks to you the way a parent did while in a cruel or impatient mood will trigger the same old feelings, as if you were a child encountering the hurt again. If you have an expectation that people should always be polite or that airplanes should always be on time or that traffic should not be heavy when you are late, then you will consistently encounter the stress of that disappointment.

A spiritual perspective says that emotions like anger, anxiety, and sadness are normal and need to be felt, but when it comes to making decisions and taking action, we need to look deeper. It is possible to be less driven by old hurts and release the tight grip on unrealistic expectations. Learning about the power of perception and the mind-body connection can turn everything around. Here are six timeless techniques for managing or ending stress and suffering.

(continued from part one..)

FOUR:  Learn from Everything

Another common spiritual perspective that transforms hard times is to look for the lesson in each situation life presents. Even the most unpleasant and unexpected situations can offer you a great chance to learn what to do better next time or what to avoid or heal in your life. This is about the power of optimism and the ability to take a disappointment and turn it into something that makes you a better person.

Failed relationships can teach you things like the importance of having clear boundaries, the importance of good communication, the importance of trust, or how to let go of self-doubt. A loss of work can open a door to find new opportunities, refine your focus on what gives you joy, or show you where you have things to improve.

People who learn from each situation are always bettering themselves and bettering their chances at not running into a wall again. They understand that you will always be happier and less stressed if you learn to define your situations, instead of letting your situations define you.

FIVE: Set Inner Intentions

One of the biggest hooks that catches most people in life is attachment to outer goals and desires. Spiritual  traditions have long been warning people about how dangerous it is to place all your hopes and intentions on wealth, sex, beauty, a dream house, and clothing. These things come and go and are based on things we cannot always control. Even the most wealthy find that possessions can be taken away at a moment’s notice, and the desires of life often go unfulfilled.

An inner intention is a goal that is based on the type of person you want to be. It is about growing your character. It is about being more balanced and mature. The desires to be peaceful, loving, kind, or patient are all examples of inner intentions. If my goal is to love myself or be kind, then, no matter what happens, I can practice working toward that goal. In contrast, if my goal is never to be alone, I might fall apart every time a relationship ends. Inner intentions are goals we can take responsibility for and influence through choice. Outer intentions are like traps waiting to go off in our lives. Learn to let go of expectations about things that are beyond your control! Commit to one inner intention for the week. Try being grateful, non-judgmental, or kind.

SIX: Commit to a Spiritual Practice

A spiritual practice is a regular time out from life to do something that helps you to feel at peace, learn about yourself, and connect to a sense of what is important. It is a time apart from stress and helps put pain and loss in perspective. It could be taking a daily walk in nature (without cell phone), meditation before work, prayer before bed, yoga, Tai Chi, bible study, volunteering at the hospital, or working in a garden. The key is to make it regular, intentional, and a non-competitive, non-work related activity. It should last long enough that you get a real break from the rush and demands of life.

=====================================

About the Author: Jonathan Ellerby, Ph.D., Spiritual Program Director for the highly acclaimed Canyon Ranch Health Resorts, has a doctoral degree in Comparative Religions and has traveled throughout the world, studying with spiritual teachers from more than 40 cultural traditions. He is the author of a new book published by Hay House, Return to the Sacred: Ancient Pathways to Spiritual Awakening. Jonathan Ellerby is also an interfaith minister and leads workshops, retreats, guided travel journeys, and trainings.

Jonathan Ellerby is one of the experts featured in the documentary Beyond Belief: www.beyondbeliefthemovie.com

by Jonathan Ellerby, Ph.D.

Of all the things that people have in common around the world, stress and suffering rank at the top of the list. Regardless of how much you make, your age, looks, culture, or job, you likely do not escape frustration and aggravation with ease – it’s a part of being on planet earth. Fortunately, we also share the ability to rise above these things, and in many cases we can even learn to heal the stress and suffering in our lives. Spiritual traditions have long been the refuge from stress with simple techniques and philosophies that can transform daily life.

It is easy to feel that stress and suffering are unavoidable or that somehow you are doomed to face them again and again. This helpless feeling stems from the mistaken assumption that our emotions need to drive our decisions and our lives. The strong emotions that create suffering are rooted in either hurts of the past or unfulfilled expectations of the present.

A spouse, friend, or boss that talks to you the way a parent did while in a cruel or impatient mood will trigger the same old feelings, as if you were a child encountering the hurt again. If you have an expectation that people should always be polite or that airplanes should always be on time or that traffic should not be heavy when you are late, then you will consistently encounter the stress of that disappointment.

A spiritual perspective says that emotions like anger, anxiety, and sadness are normal and need to be felt, but when it comes to making decisions and taking action, we need to look deeper. It is possible to be less driven by old hurts and release the tight grip on unrealistic expectations. Learning about the power of perception and the mind-body connection can turn everything around. Here are six timeless techniques for managing or ending stress and suffering.

ONE: Breathe

When stress rises, the body moves in to a reaction mode: the body tightens, the mind races, and it is hard to gain a better perspective. Try taking some deep breaths. Breathe in through the nose, and instead of puffing your chest out, try imagining that you are sending the breath into your belly – push your stomach muscles out.  Then, notice where you are tense or tight, and imagine you are breathing it all out your mouth, slowly and easily. When you are in a difficult moment, take at least 2 full minutes to be with your breath.

TWO: Stick to the Facts

One way we create our experience of stress and suffering is through emotional ideas like worry and regret. Instead of keeping our attention in the present moment and focusing on the limited truth we know for certain, too often we spend our energy on worrying about things that haven’t happened, or we dwell on the past we regret. Remember, “sticking to the facts” doesn’t include judgments like “she’s wrong” or “he’s a fool” or “what if I lose my job?” Those are emotional ideas, not facts.

A fact sounds like this “all I know is that he is late, but I don’t know why.” An emotional idea sounds like “he is late because he is selfish and doesn’t care. I must be a pushover.” A fact sounds like this “lots of people are losing their jobs these days, and some fall on hard times, and some find new work.” An emotional idea sounds like this “I am so worried every day I go into work. What if I lose my job and then cannot pay my bills and car payment – I cannot concentrate.” Learn to limit those thoughts, and stick to the facts.

THREE: Forgive

The cornerstone of most spiritual philosophies lies in learning to forgive. Forgiveness does not mean that you pretend you are not hurt by someone or something, nor does it mean you condone a cruel or harmful act. Forgiveness does mean that you are committed to letting go of the energy, stories, and actions you have become caught up in.  Forgiveness means that you are committed to letting go and moving on. It doesn’t start with a feeling; it starts with a decision. Start by changing the way you act and think, and then, eventually, the feelings will follow.

For example, if you have been hurt by a coworker or a romantic partner, you can invest a lot of time in complaining to friends, gossiping, and reviewing the offense in your head. Or you can say that being hurt once is enough, see that each time you replay it you are only hurting yourself again, and learn to change the topic.

Each time we encounter stress or hurt there is a small chance to practice forgiveness. The quicker we forgive a situation and accept it for what it is, the quicker we end our suffering and move on to better things.

TO BE CONTINUED in Part Two…

Jonathan Ellerby is one of the experts featured in the documentary Beyond Belief: www.beyondbeliefthemovie.com

by Dr. Darren Weissman

Your symptoms will tell you the truth . . .

Every symptom in your body or challenge in your life is like a mosaic:  When standing close to it, the picture is blurry and has no meaning; however, as you move back, you’re able to appreciate how all the colors and pieces merge together to form a beautiful work of art. Every thought, feeling, and belief you have is a piece of your own personal artwork. Each color in the mosaic has meaning, as does every symptom or uncomfortable feeling through which your body speaks. The language it uses to communicate with you is an opportunity for you to heal and create abundance in all areas of your life.

Whether you have emotional or physical symptoms, they are your body’s way of saying, “I’m not happy with how you are treating me.”

Author Louise L. Hay, who popularized the connection between mind/body and healing, wrote the following in an essay in Handbook for the Heart: Original Writings on Love. “Many people contact me for help with health issues, even very serious ones. All I do is teach them how to love themselves. They learn to look at what has gotten in the way of their love and health . . . I have people look into a mirror, just look into their own eyes, and say, ‘I love you.’”

Healing begins when you love yourself unconditionally. Symptoms are an expression of your denial of the need for self-love. The first step of healing is to completely embrace who you are right now. When you neglect self-love, it’s reflected in your relationship with others, your health, your work, and every other aspect of your life. The LifeLine healing process helps you see how, when, where, and why you’ve neglected your need for self-love. It allows you to appreciate the journey that you’ve already traveled on and prepares you for the road ahead.

I was in the middle of a treatment with a woman named Suzie. I noticed that she seemed distracted, and I asked her to get in touch with the conversation going on in her head. “Right now, I’m feeling bad that you’re running an hour behind and there are several people sitting in the waiting room,” she replied. I asked her to focus on her feelings about the people who were waiting to see me. As she did, Suzie began to recognize that she always put other people’s needs and concerns ahead of her own. She started to cry when she realized that she believed no one would love her unless she put them first.

To heal, you must accept where and who you are and love yourself unconditionally for being a perfect creation. Here are a couple of analogies:

1. You have to deposit money in a bank before you can withdraw it.

When flight attendants recite safety presentations before a plane takes off, what do they say about the oxygen mask? “Put on your own mask first before assisting others.”

2. Self-love isn’t self-indulgence, selfishness, or self-centeredness.

Self-love requires that you own who you are at this moment, without judgment. True happiness is discovered during the healing process; it’s a by-product of the journey, not the end result.

Healing is about balance. By using the frequency of Infinite Love & Gratitude, The LifeLine Technique balances the body so that it will be able to accept and harmonize the emotions that you’ve subconsciously denied. Once harmony is restored, the body’s natural ability to heal itself is unleashed. Balance, and therefore healing, begins with self-love.

Begin the action steps of essential acts of self-love:

Your thoughts create your reality.

If your reality is other than what you’d choose then you can be sure that you’re living a life of reaction and as a result your subconscious mind is helping you to awaken your destiny to a whole new you.

Go for it!

Remember when excitement and fear meet at a crossroads you know that you’re on the precipice of a life transformation.

Self-love is the only answer.

Dr. Darren Weissman is the developer of The LifeLine Technique, an advanced holistic system that discovers, releases, and interprets the root cause of physical symptoms and stress—emotions trapped within the subconscious mind. His mission is world peace through inner peace. Awakening to the Secret Code of Your Mind, Darren’s second book, is now available wherever books are sold. For more information about Darren’s work, visit www.infiniteloveandgratitude.com.

Darren Weissman is one of twenty four experts in the documentary Beyond Belief: www.beyondbeliefthemovie.com

By Judith Orloff MD

Adapted from Second Sight  (Three Rivers Press, 2010) PART TWO of TWO

….but then I had a heart-wrenching wake-up call that changed everything. It was an intuition that a patient, on antidepressants, was going to make a suicide attempt. Because she was doing so well–nothing supported my hunch–I dismissed it. Within a week she overdosed on the antidepressants I’d prescribed and ended up in a coma for nearly a month. (Had she not survived I would’ve been devastated.) The hardest part, though, was that I thought I’d harmed her by not utilizing a vital piece of intuitive information. This was intolerable for me. From then on, I knew, as a responsible physician, I had to integrate my intuitions into my work.

After this episode, my journey to bring intuition into my medical practice began. I didn’t know how I’d do it, but I put out a silent prayer to the universe to help me. Soon, I began meeting people, more angels, who showed me the way. Gradually I grew comfortable with my intuition, set out to write “Second Sight.” This took me seven years to complete because I had so much fear about coming out of the closet as an intuitive. I was afraid of what my physician-peers would think, that they’d mock me or blackball me from the profession. My mother warned, “They’ll think you’re weird. It’ll jeopardize your medical career.” Ah Mother: I loved her, but thank god I didn’t listen. Finding my voice as a psychiatrist and intuitive has been my path to freedom.

Sure, there’s a risk when you stretch yourself, but the rewards are enormous. Now, I’m blessed to travel around the country giving workshops on intuition to auditoriums full of extraordinary people–health care professionals and general audiences–who long to embrace their inner voice. I’m heartened to see that many physicians are eager to deal with patients in the new way I offer.  I gave an intuitive healing workshop at the American Psychiatric Association convention, a annual gathering of the most conservative psychiatrists in the world. I’m pleased to report the response was wonderful.

I’m sad to report that my mother didn’t live long enough to see this. In 1993 she died of a lymphoma. But, on her deathbed, she decided to tell me our “family secrets.” She told me, “I want to pass the power onto you.” I was astounded to learn that I came from a lineage of intuitive healers on her side of the family–my Jewish grandmother who did laying on of hands in a shed behind the pharmacy she and Grandpop ran in Philadelphia. East coast aunts and cousins I’d never met since I grew up in California. Also, my mother, herself, had a strong inner voice which told her how to treat patients for over forty years. She’d listened to this voice and secretly used her innate healing powers to keep her lymphoma in remission for many years. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked her. She said simply, “I wanted you to lead a normal, happy life, not to be thought of as weird like your grandmother was.” Oh Mother… I’ll always be grateful for what she shared, but, still… she’d waited so long. Even so, I believe in the wisdom of the paths we’ve been given. Mine has been to fight for what I believed in despite what my parents or anyone said. An invaluable but rugged lesson in empowerment.

These days, no matter what I’m going through, especially when my heart is torn in a million pieces my intuition has sustained me. I hope that my journey in my book “Second Sight” can help you. One thing I’m certain of: if you follow your intuitive voice, you can’t go wrong. Stay true to it. Intuition is about empowerment, not having to conform to someone else’s notion of who you should be. It’s about being true to yourself, and all the goodness that comes from that.

Judith Orloff, M.D is author of the new bestseller SECOND SIGHT, an inspiring and controversial memoir about coming to terms with her intuitive gifts, upon which this article is based. Her other books are Emotional Freedom, Guide to Intuitive Healing, and Positive Energy. She is assistant clinical professor of Psychiatry at UCLA and an international workshop leader. For more information about new updated edition of Second Sight and Dr. Orloff’s books and workshops visit:

http://www.drjudithorloff.com/second-sight-promotion/

Please visit Judith at www.drjudithorloff.com

Judith Orloff is one of twenty four experts featured in the documentary Beyond Belief: www.beyondbeliefthemovie.com

By Judith Orloff MD

Adapted from Second Sight  (Three Rivers Press, 2010) PART ONE of TWO:

I’m a psychiatrist and intuitive in Los Angeles. What I do isn’t my job. It’s my life’s passion. With patients and in workshops, I listen with my intellect and my intuition, a potent inner wisdom that goes beyond the literal. I experience it as a flash of insight, a gut feeling, a hunch, a dream. By blending intuition with orthodox medical knowledge I can offer my patients and workshop participants the best of both worlds. Now, listening to intuition is sacred to me, but learning to trust it has taken years. I’ve described the details in my memoir Second Sight which is meant to assure anyone whoever thought they were weird or crazy for having intuitive experiences, that they are not! This brief synopsis gives you a good sense of the book.

I grew up in Beverly Hills the only daughter of two-physician parents with twenty-five physicians in my family. From age nine, I had dreams and intuitions that would come true. I could predicts illness, earthquakes, even the suicide of one of my parent’s friends. This confused and alarmed me, as it did my parents who were entrenched in the hard-core rational world of science. At first they tried to write my intuitions off as coincidence. Finally, though, after I dreamed my mother’s mentor would loose a political election–which to my horror, came true–she took me aside and told me, “Never mention another dream or intuition in our house again!” I’ll never forget the look in my dear mother’s exasperated, frightened eyes, nothing I ever wanted to see again. So from that day on, I kept my intuitions to myself. I grew up ashamed of my abilities, sure there was something wrong with me.

Luckily, I’ve had many angels in human form who’ve pointed me to my true calling as physician. In the sixties I got heavily involved with drugs in an attempt to block my intuitions out—not something I’m recommending to you! Following a nearly fatal car accident at age sixteen when I tumbled over a treacherous 1500 foot cliff in Malibu Canyon, my parents forced me to see a psychiatrist. This man was the first person who ever “saw” me–not who he wanted me to be, but who I was. He taught me to begin to value the gift of intuition, and referred me to Dr. Thelma Moss, an intuition researcher at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. She was to become my mentor and guide to developing my intuitive side.

While working in Thelma’s lab I had an amazingly specific dream which announced, “You’re going to become an MD, a psychiatrist, to help legitimize intuition in medicine.” When I awoke, I felt like someone was playing a practical joke on me. I’d never liked science, and I was bored around all my parent’s doctor-friends. I was a hippie living in an old converted brick Laundromat with my artist-boyfriend in Venice Beach, working in the May Company’s towel department. (I’ve had a great love of towels and sheets since!) The last thing I envisioned doing was medicine. But because I was beginning to trust my intuition, I enrolled in a junior college just to see how it would go. So one course became two, became fourteen years of medical training–USC medical school and a UCLA psychiatric internship and residency.

The irony was, that during my medical training I strayed far from the intuitive world again. Traditional psychiatry equates visions with psychosis. Working in the UCLA emergency room, I’d keep seeing psychotics who were wheeled in screaming, strapped to gurneys, accompanied by cops with billy clubs. These patients professed to hear God and to be able predict things. They also felt their food was poisoned, and that the FBI was on their tail. No one tried to sort through this mishmash of claims. Typically, patients were shot up with with Thorazine, hospitalized on lock-down inpatient units until their “symptoms” subsided. Seeing this so many times I doubted whether it was safe or appropriate to integrate my intuitions in medicine.

When I opened my Los Angeles psychiatric practice in 1983, I had every intention of it being traditional; I’d use medications, psychotherapy, but I didn’t intend for intuition to play a role. My practice was extremely successful. Since I was a workaholic and also loved helping people, I had twelve hour days, though very little personal life. But then I had a heart-wrenching wake-up call that changed everything. It was an intuition that a patient, on antidepressants, was going to make a suicide attempt. Because she was doing so well–nothing supported my hunch–I dismissed it. Within a week she overdosed on the antidepressants I’d prescribed and ended up in a coma for nearly a month. (Had she not survived I would’ve been devastated.) The hardest part, though, was that I thought I’d harmed her by not utilizing a vital piece of intuitive information. This was intolerable for me. From then on, I knew, as a responsible physician, I had to integrate my intuitions into my work.

CONTINUED IN PART TWO….

Judith Orloff, M.D is author of the new bestseller SECOND SIGHT, an inspiring and controversial memoir about coming to terms with her intuitive gifts, upon which this article is based. Her other books are Emotional Freedom, Guide to Intuitive Healing, and Positive Energy. She is assistant clinical professor of Psychiatry at UCLA and an international workshop leader. For more information about new updated edition of Second Sight and Dr. Orloff’s books and workshops visit www.drjudithorloff.com

Judith Orloff is one of twenty four experts featured in the documentary Beyond Belief: www.beyondbeliefthemovie.com