HJ: Emotional and spiritual health can be had when we are able to shift our perception of events in our lives to a perspective which embraces the wisdom and beauty of consciousness and existence as is. This is both simple to do and profoundly powerful. We only suffer when we view events from a ‘distorted’ perspective — that they should be something other than what they are — and when we resist, repress or fight the natural flow of things.
This is why many spiritual teachers refer to the concept of ‘flow’ — being in the ‘flow’ is what it takes to master your emotional and spiritual health. Think of a river, how it flows… it does not resist anything. Whatever is in its way, be it a rock, a tree trunk, even a dam, it simply finds a way to move around it, over it, or under it, at the same time letting the object/obstruction be. It does not fight or resist it, it simply keeps flowing and wandering. We can learn a lot from this analogy.
Humans have a tendency to resist or even fight those obstacles that appear in their life instead of simply acknowledging them and continuing to flow around them like the river. The key here is to understand that everything that occurs in our life does so in order to teach us a lesson — to give us an opportunity to grow and evolve to a new level of awareness or consciousness. No matter how difficult or tragic, life is a learning experience. Seen from this perspective, obstacles, like a boulder in a river, take on new significance. We must learn to flow around them. When you can do this, you then hold the keys to lasting emotional and spiritual health.
The 5 steps below will help you to understand your own emotions and reactions and ultimately get a handle on them and diffuse those which cause you to step out of the flow. In moving through these you will be able to understand your reactions to various situations as you navigate the sometimes turbulent waters of life and therefore decide how you want to react rather than be stuck in habitual patterns of response.
– Truth
The Five Steps to Health
By David Markowitz | Dave Markowitz
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Step 1: Awareness
We already know that awareness is absolutely crucial to healing and more importantly, preventing, pain and illness. If we were aware that anger, for example, can cause serious chronic pain or worse, we would do anything to avoid being angry, right? So how do we avoid becoming angry? We don’t!
Life isn’t about not getting angry. Until you’re enlightened, you will get angry. Avoiding it is pretty tough, but by practicing proactive/conscious behavior as opposed to reactive/unconscious behavior, it can certainly be minimized. To maintain health and prevent illness, it is imperative to recognize the anger as soon as possible and either release it physically in a safe environment or reprocess the situation. The former can even be done by beating a pillow with a plastic bat. The energy must be moved somehow; the worst thing you can do is to repress it.
All emotions are based on thoughts and perceptions. Change those and you minimize reactions. Take for example the understanding in some societies that death is a release from suffering. Those people, who we think would typically mourn, don’t suffer with nearly the same levels of grief as we do in the West. Though they may miss the person, incidences of ailments related to grief repression such as asthma or obesity in those cultures are few and far between. However it’s a tricky distinction between thinking yourself out of feeling a certain way and truly not feeling that way. Ego will want you to think you’re above grieving, when in reality you’re not 100 percent sure that death is a release. The emotion and the corresponding energy that’s created ends up stagnating in your body—that’s not what we’re looking for here. It takes an honest introspection that may be extremely difficult for even an advanced practitioner of the healing arts. We highly recommend an intuitive and compassionate practitioner to guide you.
When emotions are repressed, it creates an energetic weakness, meaning that energy does not flow but rather is blocked. People with energetic blockages are now more susceptible to physical injury than others. Indeed, uncountable numbers of people have played tennis or worked a keyboard, and have experienced pain. And there are uncountable others who did the exact same motions with the exact same amount of exertion who were not diagnosed with tennis elbow or carpal tunnel syndrome. If it was only the physical force that injured people, everyone who experienced these movements would be hurt in the same way. That is obviously not the case. So, does tennis cause tennis elbow? Does working at a computer cause carpal tunnel syndrome? Does lifting something heavy always cause back pain? What do you think.
Awareness, although highly atypical, is a state of mind that consistently and eventually quite naturally involves keen perception of all possible perspectives around and within any persons or situation. Awareness means mindfulness of who and what is around us, how they or it are affecting us, and how we are affecting them.
Step 2: Acceptance
Because thoughts are creative, complaining about what shouldn’t be is further re-creating what already is. The creative forces of the Universe that are put into motion by your thoughts do not differentiate between should be’s and shouldn’t be’s; they simply re-create the subject matter of the sentence. Your thoughts—and, therefore, your energy toward the subject of what you feel shouldn’t be—actually re-creates what you feel shouldn’t be! I know that concept sounds dumb, but when you talk to the Creator you can tell Her to do it differently next time; for now we need to play by Her rules!
Those who live in the land of should be and shouldn’t be tend to resist what is, and often complain a lot. And anyone who consistently complains about their ill health takes forever to heal because they are re-feeding the causative energy! Resistance is the exact opposite of acceptance. Yet, many of these same people will also not tell others of upcoming good news in fear of jinxing it!
Step 3: Opportunity
Once you are fully aware of what caused your pain or illness and have accepted it, you will have an opportunity to look into an emotional aspect of yourself in need of healing. We already know that complaining about a thing you don’t really want will just keep it in place; continued complaining manifests into chronic pain or more serious illness.
If your pain is a result of repressed anger, look at it as an opportunity to investigate that anger and understand why it is there, and then figure out what to do about it. Ask yourself, “How can I be with this anger in a way that is more creative than destructive to my health and to my life?” This simple step can heal old relationships and clear unfinished business, which will alleviate your symptoms with no negative side effects!
Seeing pain or illness as an opportunity and not a burden is a key to spiritual growth and improving physical health. Two persons might view the same task from different perspectives: one will see it as a challenge and, therefore, love it; and the other will be miserable. Guess which one will have better health! When you can view things—even an illness—as an opportunity, that alone can decrease some of your symptoms. Now you are more able to feel the ever-present healing love that always is there.
Step 4: Gratitude
Complaining about what you do not have creates distance between you and your perceived missing piece. Conversely, simply being thankful for those things we already have has the effect of attracting more and better-quality things to us! It could be a lot worse. If you can read this book, be thankful you are among those who can read. If you can afford to buy nice clothing, be thankful that you have a job that probably makes you more money in a day than most of the world’s population earns in a year. There is always something to be thankful for.
As we increase the loving feelings generated by the inward or outward expression of gratitude, our vibration increases. And that calls forth more of the positive!
Step 5: Forgiveness
Steps 1 through 4 lead to forgiveness, one of the most powerful healing forces in the universe! This concept brings up a lot of questions about blame, vengeance, and justice. How can we forgive even the most grievous of crimes? How can we forgive when all we’ve been taught about any wrongdoing is to seek justice, or even vengeance? It begins by altering the parameters around the definition of forgiveness itself!
Take steps to become aware of why someone did something to you that you perceive as harmful, and fully understand that no one does anything they think is wrong. All actions are justified, or they are left undone. As difficult as this is to believe, it has to be true. You would not, ever, do what you feel is wrong. If you did something while thinking it was wrong, you would have to justify it to make it okay, thereby making it right, even if only temporarily. Your perpetrator was taught their reality. He had to have justified his actions based on what he’d been taught. Another possibility is that his Ego self got too powerful and began to override his heart. For you to heal it is imperative to see the situation from beyond your filtered, hurt point of view.
You don’t forgive by letting someone off the hook; that does nothing but repress your emotions further. You forgive by altering the definition of forgiveness, from “letting someone off the hook” to “canceling their effects on you.” You claim to yourself and the Universe that you have learned not to repress anger—that you have learned from this opportunity that no one is perfect and everyone makes mistakes.
You don’t have to experience every wrongdoing, mistake, or resultant anger on your own. You can learn from the actions of others. You can decide to forgive, or cancel, the perception of an alleged perpetrator’s mistakes because not forgiving is too painful to your own self. You forgive because you realize through your own awareness that an assumed perpetrator is really a gift (in the larger picture) in disguise. You forgive because you love yourself too much not to do so. You forgive by utilizing the most powerful force in the Universe—Love.
Dave Markowitz is a Medical Intuitive, Author/Humorist, and channel of Source energy and information. Sign up for his highly-acclaimed, free newsletter at www.DaveMarkowitz.com
