Tuesday, April 24, 2012

The Sins of the Father (& Mother) Really ARE Visited on the Children

Last night, I got a call from an old friend, "Terence", who needed some help for his 16 year old daughter. "Stephani", and said he 'just knew' that I was the person to call. He knew this so strongly that he called a mutual friend to get my phone number, since he'd lost mine a while back.

He told me that his daughter says she is dealing with a demon, a man's voice that tells her to do things like cut herself, and maybe even kill herself. When he said his daughter's name, I realized that I knew exactly where it came from -- and it was only partly psychic. (I've seen these things psychically for others -- what's new for me is the evidence, as you'll see.)

I've known Terence for 20 years. He's an architect, and a really good guy -- smart, sensitive, responsible, athletic, spiritual and a great dad to 4 kids, of whom Stephani is the youngest. We were part of a spiritual group for about 10 of those years. The group met weekly to do yoga and meditation, as well as interactive exercises designed to help us develop our manifestation powers, our emotional health and psychic abilities. We had coffee on Saturday mornings, and partied together occasionally (birthdays, Christmas, etc.). We had monthly evening program of spiritual teachers and an annual retreat, as well. There was definitely a group resonance, so that we knew each other at a very deep level, even if we weren't deeply involved with the details of each others' day to day lives.

About 16 years ago, on the Sunday of Labor Day Weekend, I was on my way home when someone cut me off on a small side street. I was pissed, but when I looked closely -- it was Terence! He apologized through our open car windows, saying he was having a rough time and I invited him back to my place for coffee.  I noticed his hand was bandaged.

Though he was married, with 2 kids at home, he said he was taking the day for himself, and we decided to hike through the hills to the Sausalito Art Festival. We had a great time, taking in the art, and dancing to Jefferson Starship live. Then we walked back to my house.

At that point, he said he needed to soak and rebandage his hand, so I got him a pan of water. We sat and talked some more, and he opened up about how this injury had been inflicted by his wife. As we talked, he decided to name his soon-to-be-born baby girl Stephani, after a late friend, Roger Stephens.

Eventually, he steeled himself for the trip home and left.

Over the next couple of months, I heard stories from a mutual friend about how his wife, a beautiful woman who apparently lived on vitamins and supplements (there was no food in the refrigerator, just supplements), would verbally and physically abuse him. She even hit him and then herself once -- and then called the cops. He spent the night in jail, but all charges were dropped.

After Stephani was born, the wife checked in to a psychiatric hospital. Terence and his wife divorced, and Terence raised their 3 kids as a single dad.

Eventually, I married and moved 45 minutes away, and the group evolved so the old gang wasn't part of it any more. We did meet monthly for meditations, though, and occasionally for speakers. So while I did see Terence, it was a quick 'hi' and a hug, maybe a chat about the speaker, nothing personal. Until last night.

Seeming change of subject: About a week ago, in a meditation, I asked 'the folks' to help me remove some patterns that didn't seem to be mine. As I watched, all these images from the 1950s seemed to fly off me -- print ads, TV commercials, photos of what would have been fashion forward design at the time. I realized that this is what was around my mother when she was pregnant with me, and then got her emotions around raising this child to be, her first.

There is also evidence that a fetus can hear and remember voices and music that were around during its gestation after it is born.

So when Terence wanted to know how to help his daughter, I knew immediately that he had to explain to her what was going on while she was in utero, and that that would immediately decrease the severity of what was going on, and improve her ability to deal with it.

How much of what we think makes us crazy has a real cause that no one is telling us about -- even though they could? 

Monday, April 16, 2012

Limits to the Law of Attraction

You've probably heard of the Law of Attraction (discussed in the book and movie, "The Secret"), which is basically, "What you focus on, expands." The wonderful thing about teaching the Law of Attraction to people is it gives them more power over their lives, and less of a sense of being a victim.

While the Law of Attraction is useful, there are several limitations, which most people don't bother to talk about. I have written about this here, here, and here.

The first of these is that you must be very precise about what you intend. Where you are not clear, anything can show up.

The second is that all of you must be aligned with your intention. This is not as obvious as it sounds: you must find and change beliefs that are beneath your conscious awareness which conflict with your intention.

The third limitation is obvious -- and never discussed either. As I discussed here, your intention will interact with the intentions of others -- none of us is the only person with an intention here on Earth. To use a really simple metaphor, imagine you were arm wrestling with someone else. Each of you would work really hard, and eventually one, probably the stronger and/or bigger one, would win and the other would lose.

But how often are there only 2 people with competing intentions? Let's scale up the metaphor to that of tug of war. Now there are two teams competing, and the one that has the most collective weight will probably win. It's that way with groups of people having intentions, too, as in elections. No candidate wins without a team, including a majority of voters.

But sometimes the team with the most collective weight loses, because they are not aligned on the same intention. Each person on the team has his/her own personal intention -- and if those personal intentions don't align well with the stated group intention (in this case, to win), then the group won't create well together, won't win. Haven't you been on a work team like this, where the unstated personal intentions of one or more team members derailed the group effort?

Back to the Law of Attraction: if you are the only person with an interest in what you are creating, you are clear about what it is, and you are aligned, voila! An example of this would be wanting to be clear about what you want. Yes, you can get your own clarity.

If more than one person is involved, it gets a bit more complicated. But if you are the only person with a strong intention, like a strong desire for a barbecue or a car, your intention will manifest pretty easily.

But let's say you have a strong desire for something bigger, like a successful business producing and selling widgets. Now you have to attract people who might use widgets, convince them that they need widgets, or at least that your widget is the best one around. Then you have to align all those people making the widgets so that they're made well and provide useful and cheerful customer service. Your intention alone, without a lot of skills in promotion and inspiration, will never make that happen, because all of your potential customers and manufacturing workers have their own intentions. Are you beginning to see the limit of the Law of Attraction? 

Or let's say you have a strong desire for something huge, like fairness in our economic system. You can desire it all  you want, but you still have to be clear what it would look like, get rid of all your internal blocks to having it -- and do the same thing for some proportion (a majority?) of the population involved, or it won't manifest. This means involving people who don't notice a problem, or don't have any idea what to do, and coalescing them into a force big enough to overcome the force of those who like things the way they are. And each of those people has his or her own intentions. Again, this is the limit of the Law of Attraction.

Monday, April 02, 2012

The Brain on Love - NYTimes.com

The many biological benefits of a great, long term relationship -- which are why it's worth all the work, and why it's worth kissing all those frogs before you find your prince (or princess):

The Brain on Love - NYTimes.com