Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Are There Monsters Under Your Bed?


Do you have monsters under your bed? Are there emotions and events you are not dealing with? Do you repress certain overwhelming feelings, emotions and events? The energies we deny amplify, leaving us feeling out of control, powerless, blocked and stuck. They become monsters or ghosts in our psyche.

Our frightening experiences need to be processed and digested by our system for us to glean the wisdom that lies at the heart of them. When we ignore or repress a traumatic event, it develops into a generalized and often irrational fear like being afraid of people, animals, heights or traveling to name a few examples.

Emotions like fear, anger, sorrow, hatred and shame are often triggered by our frightening emotional experiences. When we run from or deny those experiences they are trapped within us and form the foundation for negative behaviors and personality structures.

Within each energy, emotion and sensation we experience is the ability to overcome it. As you know, within yin there is yang and within light there is darkness. The same is true for our challenging emotions and experiences. If we are patient and dedicated these experiences will show us many beautiful qualities within ourselves like our ability to love, forgive, accept, be resilient and much more. When we stay with our overwhelming experiences, instead of running away, our indestructible nature and truest essence--boundless love--will be revealed. No emotion or event can ever destroy that.

Yes, the root and truest nature of these powerful energies are simply love. We have become ignorant of this truth. When we run from our experience or identify with it we miss the chance to learn the lessons it has to teach us. If, instead, we turn toward, examine and look with our inner light of awareness on what we perceive as “monsters” and "ghosts," we will discover that they lose their power and disappear over time.

When we identify with our experiences and emotions we often feel powerless, like a leaf in the wind blown around by our internal experiences. We are constantly swayed by our internal tides cyclically happy, sad or angry depending on what our egoic mind tells us. To experience your wholeness, you must release your attachments and discover the most precious internal jewel and liberator, which is awareness. Awareness is the ground of all experiences. Awareness allows everything to express and transform itself effortlessly. You can free yourself from the internal voices and interpretations and know yourself as the luminous, ecstatic ground of awareness.

Is there an event or some emotions that need your attention? In denying them they become "monsters" in your consciousness. I encourage you to "look under your bed," "open your closets," turn on the light of your awareness, reach out for help and let yourself discover your power, strength, courage, fearlessness as well as many more immeasurable qualities. Countless gems and treasures lie within each challenge we face when we choose to "turn on the lights" in the dark places inside and transform our "monsters" into allies.

As Thich Nhat Hanh so eloquently says, “Within the lotus is the mud, for the lotus could not come into being without the mud." The reality of life is interdependence. We forget this truth when we live from our dualistic mind. The dualistic mind's habit is to perceive a self as separate from everything, an inner and an outer, and to process life through that lens. This creates disempowerment. This is the deepest root of our separation from all energies and experiences as well as from our innate healing power.

Within each one of us is the internal power and strength to transform our suffering, painful memories and destructive patterns into gold. You will never know this truth, wisdom and victory unless you summon the courage to take this journey. Embrace the places you fear or have hidden from yourself. Know that you have what you need inside yourself to overcome your emotional blocks as well as the external resources to help you. It may seem daunting, but freedom awaits you.

Be your own hero. Free your internal monsters and ghosts and reclaim the energy you pushed away. Know light in your dark places. Discover the lotus within your internal mud.

Love,

Lisa

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Thursday, April 19, 2012

Two Healing Events in April


"Wellness Styling For Your Life"

Please join us for an evening dedicated to wellness and community. The evening benefits LIFT; a non-profit organization established to promote youth and family wellness in low-income communities. Exciting demonstrations, speakers and 10% off your purchase that night. Lisa will be discussing how you can activate your inner healing power through gentle touch and intuitive guidance as well as offering sessions.

Thursday April 26th
from 6pm to 9pm
At Liquid Marin
709 5th Avenue, San Rafael, CA

$10 advance tickets can be purchased at Liquidmaring.com or in the store.
There will be raffles for AMAZING prizes and complimentary healthy snacks and drinks.

For more information on all the presenters, booths, demonstration time & advance tickets, go to Liquid Marin or call 415.258.9320


"New Living Expo"












Animals speak. Do you listen?

Come hear Lisa
at the New Living Expo
Friday night April 27th
from 8-9pm in room 1

accompanied by Healing Harpist Christine Tulis
Discover your innate abilities to communicate with animals. The rational mind takes a back seat while your natural sensitivities lead. Learn to respect your animal companions and have a mutual relationship.

Animals are wonderful opportunities to experience unconditional love; they are also our teachers and mirrors.

Opening to this world you experience more intimacy with your animals and life. Welcome to life beyond only the rational mind and to being a fuller human.

I will also have a booth (#729) offering
Network Chiropractic combined
with Intuitive and Energy Healing.

Sessions will be $20 for 15 minutes
or $40 for a half an hour.

Dr. Christopher Powell will be there as well offering
Network Spinal Analysis and
Linda Benn will be offering
Massage and Energy Healing.
They both practice out of
Fulfilled Living Wellness Center.

Christine Tulis will offer Reiki, Acutonics and Sound Healing with her Harp

Monday, March 19, 2012

Identification and Bypass, Spiritual Pitfalls

We are raised and shown by example to know ourselves by identifying with what we are experiencing and by what is happening inside of ourselves. We are taught to believe that who we are is a solid, fixed "I" based on our experiences, history and personality. This habit is ingrained, unconscious and automatic. It occludes who we ultimately are and creates great suffering because we no longer have perspective on what we are experiencing. Therefore, we take it too seriously and at times this can feel unbearable.


Who we truly are is a unified field of oneness or love. It pervades and is everything. This fundamental ground of who we are is usually lost sight of, but it still exists, and through training, dedication and commitment we can realign and remember this truth and live it.

In Tibetan Buddhism who we ultimately are is emptiness/bliss or awareness/emptiness or clear light. Emptiness means that one is empty of a separate self. You are that which never dies. Rather than being the content you experience, which is impermanent, you actually are everything and the ground of all existence.

I find this helps give perspective, acceptance and ease to what I am experiencing. Through time and commitment you can learn to perceive and experience this awareness, realizing as well that the fundamental ground of who you are is also the true nature of all the content you experience. What freedom.

Anger, hatred, sorrow, shame, guilt, as well as happiness are no longer "you". This does not mean you no longer experience emotions, thoughts, certain states, or patterns sometimes that is true. Rather, it means that you are no longer swept away by the sea of your experience. Instead, you have a true ground to hold everything having remembered your connection and awareness of your essential nature.

This does not mean that you ignore or bypass the content of your experience either. It means that you embrace everything knowing ultimately you are awareness/emptiness or love and so is what you are experiencing. From this view, you feel and experience the fluidity of phenomenon. All our experiences are constantly changing and liberating themselves in each moment. This is the true nature of reality. This awareness gives you the capacity to be with everything as it is. The trap and pitfall is that as you learn your true self you can go to the opposite extreme of nihilism. You might start rejecting phenomenon rather than being the ground which frees all experience. You are nothing and everything.

In embracing everything with awareness you are able to be present with that which may seem intolerable and the content will reveal itself in its wisdom aspect. For example, at face value anger may arise and as you are present with it rather than creating an "I" from it, anger will transform into wisdom and reveal a broader, more inclusive perspective resulting in wise action and speech. Often we react and act from an emotion. This creates suffering for ourselves and others. Sitting with our emotions and being present with them allows them to reveal themselves as wisdom, generating wise effort and action.

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

A Special Gift for YOU!

Happy Holidays and may your New Year be filled with love, joy and many blessings.

Thank you for the opportunities to serve and help you and the fulfillment you have brought into my life through our relationship.

For the new year the newsletter will be quarterly rather than monthly. I am grateful for the changes in my life and no longer have the time to write articles monthly. Thank you for all your feedback and support. I have enjoyed writing the articles and hearing the differences they have made in your life and that many of you have forwarded the newsletter to your friends. Thank you for sharing. I look forward to serving you.

And here's my special gift to you:

Now you can give the gift of health and healing this holiday season.

Give someone you love a session at Fulfilled Living Wellness Center for the holidays. One can receive their first visit which includes a comprehensive history, exam and their first Network Chiropractic and Intuitive and Energy Healing session or an Animal Communication and Healing session.

I look forward to serving and helping those your love.

Love,

Lisa

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Have you ever met someone who has changed the course of your life and deepened you as a human being? For me Thich Nhat Hanh is one of those people. His impact continues to ripple through me forever altering my life. Yes, this monk through the humble simplicity of his being and by witnessing his actions and his teachings has shown me the path of love.


Love often has felt vague and empty to me, like ways one should be, mere words. Nothing in all my learning as truly settled in. Being with Thich Nhat Hanh I felt love embodied, flowing through his words, his being and his actions in ways that awe struck and moved me. He felt like a mountain solid with unwavering integrity and presence and vast and clear like the open, blue sky. The balance, groundedness, presence and love he is is forever etched in my being and will beneficially direct my life.


His ability to love and embrace all human beings and situations is the exalted expression of love. It touched me so deeply to be with him. I sat riveted hearing his responses to people and the stories he shared. What struck me powerfully was his loving, unbiased receptivity to horrific experiences people had committed. He would receive and hear another calmly, without reaction and respond with practical, heartfelt insight and wisdom. At times I found myself in tears, moved by the depth of his compassion and ability to love.


You know that quick that happens automatically to most of us where we judge, categorize and energetically either reject or like something or someone? How beautiful, spacious and refreshing it is to experience this automatic response not operating in Thich Nhat Hanh. His openness engenders trust and safety. His presence creates a whole other atmosphere and reality where love flourishes. I drank that in deeply and found myself feeling nurtured, healed, restored, opened and inspired by who he is.


I pray to be that open hearted and to truly know and live the reality that we are all one, that one persons suffering is our own. I know life is a mirror and to shut down to another's pain is to shut down to and fear my own. What I witnessed in Thich Nhat Hanh was an intimacy and presence with each person and the true ability to hear from love, compassion and equanimity, rather than taking on someone's suffering or being a martyr. I experienced in him that there is never anything to reject or avoid. He lives the knowing that we are all connected. I am eternally grateful to have seen this wisdom in action and have been shown another ground to live from.


Being around Thich Nhat Hanh allowed painful places in me and stuck perspectives to release that I didn’t even know I was holding onto. I felt such relief and forgiven for mistakes and poor judgments I had made in my life. Nothing more needed to be said or explained. His depth and ability to understand another and compassionately see the roots of one's circumstances is freedom.


As I was sitting right in front of him for an hour and a half receiving his teachings and imbibing his presence, many times he looked directly into my eyes. For one of the first times in my life I felt what love was. I felt a wall of fear around my heart and a protection in my body release that I have felt throughout my life when relating to people. I felt loved for simply being, no reason, no attraction, desire, agenda or need. The depth! So rare and what a treasure. I experienced the delight and pure bliss of simply being love with another. Something I will never forget and has profoundly impacted my being forever informing the way I see and live.


We have been taught whether we are conscious of it or not to love for reasons. I invite you to love simply for the sake of love. It is so freeing, fulfilling and our true nature. I feel more confidence in moving from courage, trust, groundedness and presence no matter the circumstances for Thich Nhat Hanh showed
me that possibility.


I have a profound respect for Thich Nhat Hanh, for who he is and what he has actualized. I realize, for me, he is a living, breathing example of what I value, love and aspire to become. For all of us there are people like this who can make this kind of difference in our lives. They are on our path no matter our interests, values and passions. I invite you, if you do not have someone like that in your life, to open to it. It is catalytic and profoundly transformational. We truly are not alone.


Again, here are the websites to hear and download Thich Nhat Hanh's teachings for free: http://tnhaudio.org/ and http:/pvom.org/.


Thank you for your time and attention, many blessings this holiday season for you and your loved ones.



Love,

Lisa

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Thich Nhat Hanh

I went on a five day mindfulness retreat in Southern California with Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. It was life-changing and an honor to be in his presence and receive his teachings. It has opened me, touched me deeply and brought about transformation and awakening.

His presence is profound, it allows and dissolves all inside of us that is not real or significant. He emanates peace, depth, tranquility and so much more. He is a true walking, talking, breathing example of how to live and be peace without pretense or shutting down to what is around us or inside us. He embraces everything. His love, compassion and understanding is like an ocean of endless waves with no boundaries or borders. It was amazing to feel how rooted he is in the present moment and stable and unshakable like a mountain.

This trip was a heart calling come true. I look forward to sharing what I learned, the insights and his teachings with you next month.

In the mean time, here are two sites where you can receive many complimentary teachings. They are http://pvom.org/ and http://tnhaudio.org/.

Enjoy! He is a true blessing and gem in our world at a much needed time.

Love,
Lisa

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Forgiveness

Are there places in your physical, mental and emotional bodies where you feel stuck, that are repetitious and hard to get past? There are those places in me and I would like to share my experience with you.

For the last ten years in my meditation, I have connected with this place on the right side of my body where I have felt intense physical pain, mental and emotional anguish, hurt, anger, sadness, numbness, isolation and loneliness. In being present with this part of me, I have seen many events in my life associated with this place. With time, I have felt peace and acceptance with the causes of my pain. I have been able to experience settling within the "storm" of voices, emotions and bodily sensations. I have learned to rest in the experience and allow the physical, mental and emotional pain to naturally release. What I have discovered is the myriad of energies of this pattern are actually love.

Over the last 10 years or so of consciously working with this pattern, I have healed in many ways. I have received healing as well as help from friends, gaining understanding and perspectives that have helped me experience some temporary relief. In forgiving myself and others for the events that caused my discomfort and pain, I have felt progress. Many times I have experienced life beyond its limitations. However, the pattern would return like a set point and foundation which I unconsciously saw life from. I now know I can live, engage, be happy and successful even while in pain.

This morning in meditation I had the most astonishing experience. I began my meditation feeling stuck on the right side of my body, once again, experiencing the familiar emotions and associated mental states. The day before I had a profound breakthrough in this terrain, so, as we always do, I wondered why I was experiencing this pattern again so vividly. After about 30 minutes of being intimate and present with this experience, at times asking questions about it and feeling impatient, I felt this breath of forgiveness pass through the right side of my body and the emotions that were held there. It was like a refreshing breeze coming out of nowhere. It allowed me to let go of the pain I was holding onto. Tears flowed and I was shown in that instant all the mental and emotional positioning, based on past experiences, I had been living my life from. Despite all my healing, I had never met this place within my body, mind or emotions with forgiveness.

What was then revealed to me was that I was more committed to understanding this pattern, its origin, living within its confines and healing from it, than I was to letting it go and moving on. I was shown that I was committed to seeing life through that pattern’s lens. Without blame or anger toward myself, I felt a sense of relief in this realization and experienced a new sense of openness and readiness to truly let it go and make a fresh start. Who knows how this will affect the physical, mental and emotional pain, but I sense I will have more resiliency, agility and freedom.

I know life is a journey and with each step we learn, grow and open. This journey has taught me so many precious, life-changing lessons that have enriched and expanded me as a human being. I continue to learn of the power of attachment and realize the internal suffering is no longer from the actual events, but from the "I" created from the experiences. The act of forgiveness dissolves mental fabrications and boundaries of me and you or right or wrong and brings us into contact with the emptiness of all experiences. Forgiveness truly releases attachments and habits opening us to the spaciousness and vastness of consciousness we all are.

I give thanks to this experience for it continues to offer me the opportunity to ripen into a kinder, more loving, more open, sensitive, compassionate and forgiving person. I have learned the fruits of perseverance, faith, trust, humility, acceptance, patience and invaluable truths about life, love and happiness.

May you let the sweet warmth of forgiveness into all those places that need love, so you can take your next step toward a brighter future.

Sincerely,
Lisa