Just a few words to say that come October I'm putting on a vision quest retreat at Cochise Stronghold, AZ with a colleague, Matt Walker, of Inner Passage ( www.innerpassage.net )! 

If you are interested in attending, I've posted details at:  www.laurelinman.com/QUEST.html

This should be an amazing and transformative experience.  I personally can't wait!

Laurel

This was written for a close friend having a challenging time navigating life's quandries...

 

You have everything you need.  You have wisdom and heart.  It is when your heart is quiet that your soul can whisper its wisdom into your thoughts. 

You have everything you need to get where you want to go.  You need but define where you want to be and what you want to do and your wisdom will guide you.

You have everything you need to be happy.  You have people who love and adore you.  You have an inner world to cultivate and love.  Who you are is caring, loving, understanding, fun and a healer to those that need solace.

You have everything you need to love and be loved.  Your glow and heart cannot dimmed.  although the ego can get in the way, like the sun, your shine is ever present in this lifetime, even when you can’t see it.

You have everything you need to move forward.  This is true, but first you must rest in

God’s shade before the way becomes apparent.  Nevertheless, it is always there, whenever you need the rest, comfort and security you so deeply seek.  Your Source is within you.

Whenever you are loved, you are loved for who you REALLY are…. A beautiful soul, inward and outward. 

 

I have come to trust my body on this one.  When I am (physically) hungry, I eat.  When I'm emotionally hungry, I search for that which will satify me on emotional levels.  I have learned to distinquish the two. 

Emotional eating is almost unavoidable, until the distinction is made between true (physical) hunger and (emotional) hungers.

I have thus learned to trust my body when it comes to kaloric intake, trust my mind when it comes to emotional needs and trust my emotions when it comes to next steps = how I shall proceed.

Laurel

 

Life or Dearth...

 Scared and lost young boy,

 You've become the ego's toy.

Hiding behind the mask of strength and joy,

With your emotions one must not be coy.

All the games you learned to play,

Never completely slipped away.

Remnants and pains from the past,

Are the first to summons deeply held emotions fast.

You pace the streets of intelligency,

Only to compromise your own inner integrity.

To actually let someone in,

Would do nothing more than give you a spin.

To open up your throbbing heart?

You might as well dodge that dart.

When love in the ideal becomes a dream,

You slowly begin to move upstream.

What is it that lies ahead?

For that you must surely dread.

For the amour that you hold so fast,

Is nothing but remnants of pain from your past.

For all of your cyclical self deception,

You, my love, have to yet experience a spiritual connection.

And so it is that all of life's illusions,

Only lead you down the path of exclusions.

To find what life is truly worth,

For that you'll have to undo your dearth.

For each time you intellectualized your soul to the ground,

There is a seed of potential in you waiting to be found.

Undo the dearth, and unearth new health.

When I am in my Essence Energy. .....
simple answer.  profound results.

Tips for Miraculous Living –
Practical Application of A Course in Miracles
By Laurel Inman

From Clutter to Clarity!

Clarity. Sometimes clarity is evident and other times clarity is nebulous and slips in and out of focus. Let’s take a closer look at how we can experience more clarity and therefore more inner peace.

There are three forms clutter can take. These are:

Physical Clutter: This is the messy desk, the week of unwashed dishes or the closet that is purposefully avoided, etc.

Mental Clutter: Inner peace is never accompanied by fear. The more fear, judgment and the egoic mind is in the driver’s seat, the more excess and non-essential chatter cycles through our thoughts.

Spiritual Clutter: Sound like a paradox? Yes. This is because, in reality your spirit cannot be cluttered. However, if you have clutter in the physical and mental domains, you experience blocks to your Essence just as a cloud blocks the sunlight. Yet, the sun always shines.

We will focus on clearing mental and therefore spiritual clutter because it is here that true transformation takes place. It is here that miracles occur naturally.

How do we move from clutter to clarity?

The Course in Miracles tells us: “Let’s not forget, however, that words are but symbols of symbols. They are thus twice removed reality.”

Symbols of symbols. This is profound. Next time your mind is reeling use it as an indicator that there is a symbol here for you to land on. What are your thoughts symbolizing? What does this symbolize?

TIP (to increase progress): They say curiosity leads to the cure. Curiosity also leads to inner peace and clarity. This week focus on what type of self care is needed to allow your curiosity to come through (time to self, seeking support, a spa day, meditation, etc.)? Once you create the space, you can ask yourself, ‘What do my fear thoughts symbolize?’ ‘What message is in this for me?’

Bottom line

Clutter of any sort is a block in different forms. Clear the clutter and your true essence shines forth! Clear the clutter and watch clarity arise naturally! Clear the clutter and experience the miraculous side of life!

Keep in mind whether you are busy and moving into success quickly, or slowly gravitating towards a path, clarity and inner peace along the way plants the seeds of the miraculous for you and your goals.

Last month I started out confident.  I had a biopsy done to determine if I had cancer.  Two weeks later, the results of the biopsy took longer than they normally do and my mind reeled with fear.  ‘What if they just don’t want to tell me the negative results?’  ‘What if they found some cancer cells never before seen to mankind?’  ‘What if I find out I only have 3 more months to live?’  And so on and so forth.

The physical biopsy reminded me to do an emotional, spiritual and personal biopsy of my life.  I really connected with my reality as a human with a family and as someone
who is passionate to the core about Life.  I was ok with “death”.  However, I found I carried many disappointments about the possibility of missing out on future events.

Interesting.  The moment the possibility of a “death sentence” arose, I became really clear about my next steps in life.  Ex:  How I would live, who I would go out of my way to connect with, how I would handle my coaching practice and what I would eat.  Values and priorities popped up from “taken for granted land” and wrestled fiercely for who gets to go first.  It was equally quite enlightening and grounding.

We are often clearer
about what we would do if we were to die
than if we were to live. 

Finally, the results came back normal.  A huge weight lifted!  Who’s to say I won’t get hit by a bus tomorrow.  Could be.  However, having refocused my energy, I can at least say I’m living aligned with what matters the most to me… living an abundant, fulfilling, deep, meaningful and adventurous life! 

Have you done a biopsy of your life lately? 

 ........

See a real life
account of courage amidst cancer:

http://video.yahoo.com/watch/1370747/4723833

Are there healthy forms of jealousy?  In my opinion no forms of jealously are healthful to anyone’s wellbeing.  I believe there are as many healthy forms of jealously as there are healthy forms of ignorance. 

In reality when we experience jealousy it is because we have forgotten our own power to impact our own lives.  In other words we are feeling like a victim in the relationship. 

The worst impact of jealousy is that it is a very predictable self fulfilling prophesy.  The more jealous someone is, the more likely it becomes that they will help create they very thing they fear.  This is because jealousy has two underlying assumptions holding up the illusion of powerlessness:  1)  I am afraid someone else has something I am somehow missing (or will lose) and 2) I am afraid this will leave me empty handed.

Yes, jealousy can lead to detrimental disconnects.  However, it is best to not fear jealousy!  Instead use it as an indicator if you should notice it arising in you.  Jealousy shows us when we really truly care about someone or something.  Jealousy indicates that we’ve momentarily forgotten what magnitude we do have over our own life.

On the other hand, not being jealous doesn’t guarantee everything will be peachy either.  For example, I had a client that took pride in his lack of jealously to the extreme.  This turned into apathy which had equally detrimental effects in his life (his words). 

It would appear that we should then try and strike a balance between jealousy and apathy.  However, in reality jealousy represents the illusion of not having power and apathy represents the illusion that other people (or situations) don’t matter.  Getting rid of the illusion allows us to grasp the magnitude of who we are and what we contribute while equally allowing one to cherish what is.

Healing the illusion allows the truth to surface naturally.  The truth that remains when jealousy (or apathy) is healed at its source is Love.  It is when true love is present that a person, and relationship, truly prospers.

“There is no fear in perfect love.”  A Course in Miracles

….

If you enjoyed this blog, you may enjoy other articles just like it at www.laurelinman.com  

 

Sound bizarre?  Actually it makes perfect sense once you dig beneath the surface of what Tantra is truly about.

A very wise Tantra expert once noted that in finances it is a well know fact that in order to be financially independent one can cultivate a reserve of money and live off the interest.  This is exactly how Tantra works! 

Tantra helps us cultivate our energy reserve so we are living off of interest and do not have to dip into our reserve (unless we are operating from immediate concerns of course).

Tantra is typically thought of as a purely sexual.  In the western world it has been perverted into lustfulness and stripped of its depth to create and protect our energy supply for ourselves and to extend to helping others. 

The practice and philosophy of Tantra is to actually cultivate creative energy not sexual (although sexual energy is a positive side effect for any couple wishing to focus their creative energy in that direction).  Look at the charka system this creative energy is connected to… the testies (male), ovaries (female) and reproductive area (also:  union of male/female, marriage and child birth).  Of course it is natural to confuse this source of energy (D- orange in the charka charts) with that of a purely sexual nature.  Yet, there is so much more to it because sexual energy is just one form of creative energy!

Cultivating this energy even helps  you organically and spiritually  expand your life...  business, work ethic, family... you name it.  Cultivate your creative energy (with Tantra, Yoga or Tai Chi- it doesn’t matter) and you can experience life in entirely new, healthy and creative ways!  

I love the topic of miracles.  Miracles are SO much fun!  There is nothing deep and intellectual about them.  They simply are by-products of how we are showing up in the world.   And (!) synchronicity is one clue when we are on track.

For example....I had a beautiful synchronicity occur a while back.  At that time, I had just written an article on my blog about the concept of “As Above, So Below”. 

A couple weeks later I had just completed my first coaching internship and had my mentor’s office all to myself when I noticed a book called As Above So Below. 

'How nice,' I thought!  I picked it up and opened randomly to a page about a certain marital issue (which just happens to be what separated my husband and I last year).  I read for a bit- noticing it was synchronistic to 1) find that book and 2) "just happen" to open it to a chapter on a subject I was immensely struggling with. 

After reading some, I went to put it back.  I had trouble putting it back, hmmm…. so I removed the book next to it   This was the Kabala Made Simple.  Curious, I randomly opened this book to the chapter entitled…(drum role please).. As Above So Below and it "just happened" to be on page 111 (all of my close friends know about my seeing ones a lot when I need to pay attention to something profound- very interesting).  Isn’t life so interesting?   There is indeed much more to life than meets the eye and this is just one of many examples!  Truly incredible.

Synchronicities can be used as a compass saying "go there"  "talk to this person" "move forward on this project"... etc.   When  they show up, pay attention.  Just how far down the rabbit hole do you want to go? Enough said!  Here is the article with tips...

Tips for Miraculous Living –

Practical Application of A Course in Miracles

By Laurel Inman

Miracles are Natural!

What inhibits miracles from occurring on a regular basis?  How can we live a deeper more fulfilling life filled with the miraculous personally and professionally?

The Course in Miracles tells us:  “Miracles are natural.  When they do not occur something has gone wrong.” 

Miracles are natural!  Imagine your life with miracles as a part of your everyday living.  Wouldn’t this feel absolutely amazing?

The answer is simple.  The Course in Miracles shares with us the very thing blocking miracles from regularly occurring in this phenomenal world.  This is the four letter word… fear. 

Fear literally blocks miracles.  When we are in fear we are either attempting to protect ourselves or running from the proverbial monster in the dark.  Think fight or flight.  Either way, we are not connecting with our essence.  Our essence is what creates positive outcomes.  In other words being in our essence allows the miraculous to spring forth, no matter how dim the situation appears. 

Seems simple enough, yet there is another component.  Fear also lends to our identification with our egoic mind.  The judgments, the equation of material with success, the source of struggle…

Make way for miracles TIP (to increase progress):  Three ways to turn away from your fears (and egoic) and return to your creative essence!

1. Use your fears as indicators!  The feeling of fear is indicative that a miracle is blocked.  When we are blocked it means we aren’t connected to the solution.  Ask your self, “What do I want to come of this?”  Next, identify, “What do I need to get there?”
2. Remain objective!  Noticing the fear is much different than buying into it.
3. Fear (false evidence appearing real).  Since fear is perceptual and not real, determine what is real and what is really true.  I call these Truth Statements.  (Ex:  Fear = I am afraid I won’t get enough clients to pay the mortgage.  Truth statement = I have what it takes to obtain five new clients)

These exercises help you remain grounded especially when everything seems up in the air.  The above exercises are three examples of ways to cultivate your essence and zip towards success.  Ultimately, anything you do to remain more and more in your essence is what will lend to miraculous experiences!  Enjoy your sacred journey!