The Laws of Living Part 1

This week the Mindshifters group watched the first part of the lecture by Dr. Michael Ryce titled, The Laws of Living. In this lecture Dr. Ryce makes the distinction between the many rules that man creates, which are arbitrary and constantly changing, and The Law which governs our existence as human beings in the physical and spiritual realms. The Law is something which cannot be broken, it is simply the description of the way things work. For a simple example one can observe the Law of gravity. If I lift a pen from the desk and then let it go, it will always fall toward the desk or the floor, or whatever is directly below it. It will not float off to the left or up to the corner of the room on some days, or at different times of the day, it will always fall straight down, unless something or someone acts on it to change its course.

The Laws of Living as described by Dr. Ryce in this lecture are not arbitrary rules set out by some group, government agency, or religion in order to establish a pattern of behavior between people, it is simply a statement of the observation of the way the world works. These Laws have been known by the great spiritual teachers for all of recorded history. They have not changed and there is no reason to believe they will change with the passing of time. If we learn to live our lives in harmony with these laws, we will be assured of happiness and contentment. If we live our lives without regard to these Laws, we will be assured of frustration, anger, bitterness, disappointment and resentment.

If this is seen clearly then the choice seems obvious, to learn of the Law and live our lives in harmony with the Law. However, we have been conditioned to think that there are no absolute laws, and that the rules which men have constructed to help them gain power and authority over others, are the same as The Law. We have been taught that thinking and talking about absolute Law is a bad thing, since it often conflicts with the desires of those who would have us focus completely on the physical world. It has long been said that The Law, and the knowledge of how to live in harmony with it, will set one free. Setting the people free is not in the best interest of those who wish to accumulate wealth and power, using the labor and servitude of others. This being the case, it is seen by some as risky to even talk about The Law, and about setting people free to live the life they were born to live on all levels. People were not born to live lives of servitude and to be controlled by others for the accumulation of wealth and power. People are born to learn, and grow, and expand the possibility of what they can be, by learning to take responsibility for all that they think, feel, say and do.

Another key portion of the lecture focuses on the idea that words do not have meaning. Words are simply vibrations and those vibrations trigger memories, beliefs and sensations within the person who is touched by those vibrations. The word itself has no meaning other than that which is held by the person who receives the vibration created by the word when it is spoken. The simple truth of this can be seen by observing a room full of people who speak only English, when someone who speaks Greek comes into the room to make an announcement in Greek. While the person speaking Greek has an important message to impart, and while the room full of people who speak only English are able to hear the sounds being made, they are completely "deaf" to the message. Only those who have been trained to interpret the sounds made by the person speaking Greek will be able to receive and understand the message. This is because the sounds being received by their ears, will trigger the memory of meaning stored in their brains and then those people will be able to attach meaning to the sounds they hear.

This is what was meant in the scriptures when they talked about how people did not have the eyes to see, or the ears to hear the message being given. It is fairly certain that everyone in the audience, at that time, had physical eyes and ears. However, they did not have the past experience or the frame of reference which would allow them to understand the message which was being taught. Therefore the messages were given in multiple ways, as in a parable, which means a story with parallel meanings. Then with repetition and intervening life experience, people were able to build their own internal understanding of things which could only be hinted at in the words which were being used. True spiritual teachings and stories and parables are not designed to get someone to believe in anything. They are designed to point an individual toward an experience which will open that person to new levels of understanding which can only be achieved through direct contact with a new level of being.

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false.

The Existence of The Field and Emotional Cure of Cancer

I recently came across a fifteen minute video of Gregg Braden talking about the very thing that Dr. Michael Ryce talks about each week in the lectures we watch in the Mindshifters group. In this lecture Gregg Braden shows a video of a woman being treated in a medicine-less hospital, for a three minute procedure which eliminates her bladder cancer tumor.

He then goes on to explain the "technology" behind this experience and at the end of the video he reports on a scientific study which demonstrates the presence of the field of energy which connects all things. I highly recommend this short video as an introduction to the larger field of work which can transform lives, both physically and emotionally and which is the foundation of the work we do each week in the Mindshifters group.

Gregg Braden wrote the book The Divine Matrix in 2007 and the video clip in this link, refers to just one story he tells in that book. See the clip here

Gregg Braden is just one of the many people who are lecturing about the existence of a different Actuality which gives each of us the power to control the way we experience our lives. The work that Gregg Braden cites in many of his books is the blending of ancient knowledge with modern technology. Modern science is only now, slowly, catching up to what has been known to spiritual teachers for thousands of years.

Dr. Ryce's work gives simple, practical tools for applying this knowledge to the task of creating a different experience of life for each person who is willing to apply those tools. It does not take great intelligence, strength or power to remake one's experience of their life. It takes some simple tools and the Willingness to apply them daily.

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false!

Thanksgiving and Giving Thanks

The Mindshifters group has been meeting for five years now. I realized today as I ran "last minute" errands to prepare for the Thanksgiving meal tomorrow, that I am very grateful for many things in my life and that the Mindshifters group is near the top of that list.

There are no adequate words for the gratitude I feel for the people who have given of themselves as teachers. People like Dr. Michael Ryce, Guy Finley, Yahem, Meher Baba, Krishnamurti, Gary Craig, Dr. Scott Walker, and many others who have dedicated their lives to learning what it takes to become a different order of human being, and then shared that knowledge so that others may find their own paths.

When I look back at the past ten years of my life, I cannot imagine how I would have gotten through the changes, challenges, losses, injuries, successes, new relationships and "re-directions" I have experienced, if I had not had these teachers and their lessons to help me. I know only that I would not be where I am today, and I would not be able to be as grateful as I am today, if it had not been for people who have dedicated their lives to learning, growing and teaching.

I am also very grateful for the many people over the past five years who have taken the time to attend the group. I am especially grateful to those who attend the group on a regular basis and give of their time and emotional energy to help make the discussions so productive and helpful. I am grateful for the many people who have shared testimonials about how the group has contributed to them making significant, positive changes in the way they experience their lives.

I am grateful for the loving and supportive attitude which is expressed by almost everyone who attends the group, and by ALL who attend on an regular basis. The expressions of Love, support, respect, tolerance and compassion are truly powerful. It is these qualities, expressed by those who attend the group on a regular basis, which facilitate the healing that is referred to in the testimonials.

Thank you one and all for making me a better person and supporting each other in being more of what human beings can be. Thank you for learning to be more response-able, more aware of your nature as Love, and for being willing to extend that Love to others rather than insist that others "make you feel loved".

I wish to take this time to honor each of you for the work you are doing to make this world a better place, by being a different order of "human - being" in the world.

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false.

An Interpretation of The Beatitudes from the Ancient Aramaic

This Tuesday the Mindshifters group watched a video of a new set of interpretations for The Beatitudes, by Yahem from www.wayofmastery.com

Our Tuesday night Mindshifters group is dedicated to the work of Dr. Michael Ryce because he offers practical tools for improving one's life in terms of emotional states and relationships. I continue to work to keep the focus of the material presented in this group to Dr. Ryce's work, and any other practical tools for understanding how the mind/body energy system works and how to improve our experience of life. It is from this perspective that I would like to share some of the quotes and highlights from this video about The Beatitudes.

Yahem begins by stating in the Ancient Aramaic, a phrase which Yeshua would have often used as a greeting. He stated that it translates as an invitation to open one's self to the Divine and to being penetrated by the Divine.

He then talked about how words in the Ancient Aramaic were more important for their vibrational quality than for the specific meaning that each word carried. This is important because the meaning of the word was determined as much by the mental state and level of understanding of the person who received the vibration, as it was determined by the word itself. So that if thirty people heard the same phrase or paragraph being spoken, there could easily be thirty different meanings taken from that same phrase or paragraph.

Yahem talked extensively about how The Beatitudes are more like a practical form of yoga than just a set of ideas or instructions or religious beliefs. He highlights the idea that "Beliefs don't work. What works is staying open to the moment."

He repeatedly talked about how disturbance is a blessing. This is so because when I am disturbed by anything, I am being given a chance to bring a new presence to energies which once defeated me. The way to do this is "to make a home in the breathing Unity" and to soften the places within me which want to go tight and become rigid and defensive.

"All suffering is rooted in my contraction into the illusion of separation. All healing is but a correction and a remembrance." (that there is no separation)

The first Beatitude encourages us to make our home in the breathing Unity, and let the fertile soil of the Queendom birth our clear guidance.

The second Beatitude encourages us to allow our inner pain to surface and to soften what has been rigid within us.

All grasping outwardly is driven by a lack of embracing and integrating what is already within us.

The whole of creation has been arising and falling away within you. Your heart is breathed by the presence of the Divine and through you the Divine is made manifest.

Restored are they who have been planting peace with every breath.

You need to dig deep to find the primordial oneness that is breathing you now.

It is a blessing when beings push you out of your comfort zone and you become disturbed, because you then become aware of a tightness and contraction within you which was hidden from you before the disturbance. This is an opportunity to return to the breathing and soften what is tense or rigid within you and integrate that part of you that has been newly discovered, with Love and acceptance for all parts of yourself.

This ties into the directive to Love your enemy. This is important because they have given you the gift of disturbing something within you that needs to be Healed. It is also important because, only by generating the feeling of Love within you, and extending it to the other can you Heal that within you which gave rise to the disturbance.

When you withhold your Love from anyone, you must automatically withhold it from yourself first. You are the one who suffers and is denied Healing when you extend anything less than Love to anyone or anything in your awareness.

I highly recommend this DVD for its power and beauty. Available through www.wayofmastery.com

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is False!

Fabulous Time at Heartland & The Way of Mastery VS ACIM

October 14th thru 17th I attended the Intensive at Heartland Healing Center outside of Theodosia Missouri. It was every bit as powerful, challenging and rewarding as it was two years ago when I went there for a nine day Intensive. I strongly recommend doing an Intensive program at Heartland to help you reach deeper levels of understanding about what is keeping you from staying consciously aware of your essence and your source - Love.

Thank you Michael, Jeanie, the entire Heartland staff and all of you who attended this Intensive as participants!

Visit www.whyagain.com and sign up now for one of next year's Intensives to secure a space and receive a special bonus for early registration.



Just before I left for the Intensive I received a blog entry from the gentleman who "channeled" The Way of Mastery. He was responding to questions he receives about the differences and perceived conflicts between The Way of Mastery and A Course In Miracles. I thoroughly enjoyed the article and wanted to share some of it with you and provide the link for the blog in case you are interested in reading the entire article.

Here is the beginning of the blog entry:

A student recently asked: "What is the difference between ACIM (A Course in Miracles) and Way of Mastery and where do they conflict?"

First, perceived conflict - when looking upon teachings that come from the very highest levels of Wisdom - is not in the teachings themselves, but reveals the current limit of our own limit of awareness. Having said that, let me begin by sharing a critical, universal truth that all seeking awakening must begin with. This is the way Jeshua put it to me many years ago:

Teaching is an art, not a science, and all forms of teaching but serve to sever the mind or soul from its infatuation with the illusions it has generated, and then entered into.

The wise teacher speaks the language of the student first, then leads them beyond the very limits they do not know imprisons them.

Both ACIM and The Way of Mastery (WOM) are expressions of this teaching art aimed at reaching downward into the labyrinth of where the student is, and providing ways and means to enter and – depending on the devotion, desire, and commitment of the student – to move through the process of enlightenment.

I am not an ACIM student. I am a disciple of Jeshua, who is the Master Teacher ‘in charge of the Atonement.’ He has selectively led me to small segments of ACIM, and – as far as I can tell – there is no conflict at all if one goes far enough in the enlightenment process. I have had many, many Course students come to me – and to WOM – who, frankly, seem to be suffering in a ‘stuckness’. It appears that they get stuck in a purely mental approach to waking, and this is a very common malaise that can occur if one doesn’t have access to teachers who have themselves gone beyond the level of purely mental/intellectual understanding, for they will be limited to meeting the student’s deeper obstructions with little more than recourse to ideas and statements about Reality, but don’t necessarily have the skillful art that can operate at subtle/deep levels of soul itself, nor even know how to “seduce” the mind out of its ruts of thinking/perceiving.

In a nutshell, SOME students, following the lead of some ACIM teachers, say the body and world are simply unreal (there is a sense in which this is true) and thus tend to discount feeling, breath, and any need to participate in growing one’s capacity to serve others.

Personally, I know that phase of the waking process. It’s actually found in many forms of spirituality around the world. Unfortunately, it can be a clever way to avoid any really ownership of egoic patterns, as well as submission to real transformation. Seeing the unreality of world, self, and purpose of Creation is actually a first step; as extraordinary as it may seem. What is often missed is the overall context of ACIM and a lack of understanding of where it fits along the spectrum of awakening, and the audience it relates to. There are certainly passages in it that reveal what comes once the radical correction in what I call the ‘seat of the soul’ is truly completed.

To Read the entire blog go to: http://www.wayofmastery.com/jayem/blog/3328.html

Enjoy, and remember -

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false!

Fall Colors Intensive at Heartland Healing Center

Please pass this along to anyone you feel may benefit!

Dr. Michael Ryce is holding an Fall Colors four day workshop at his Heartland Healing Center in Theodosia, MO. It begins on October 14th and runs through the 17th, with the option for extending your time at the center, up to a nine day workshop.

I will be attending at the least the first four days of this event from the 14th through the 17th and I highly recommend Heartland and the work that is done there. I attended a nine day workshop at Heartland two years ago and I have repeatedly told people that it was the most beneficial workshop for personal growth and rejuvenation that I have attended in my 35 years of attending trainings, workshops and retreats, as a therapist/psychologist.

To visit Dr. Ryce's website click here: www.whyagain.com

To view a flier for the Fall Colors Intensive Workshop click here: Fall Colors Intensive

Please pass this along to anyone you feel may benefit!

Healing Through Relationships Part 1

Last night the Mindshifters group watched the first half of the lecture by Dr. Michael Ryce titled, Healing Through Relationships. Dr. Ryce begins by telling how the lecture used to be titled, Healing Your Relationships, until he discovered that there is no such thing as a broken relationship, since each relationship and interaction can be seen as a tool for uncovering anything that is less than Love within ourselves. Once we discover that we have hidden something less than Love inside of ourselves then we can use the tools we have learned to dismantle that false and negative reality and restore our awareness to the fact that we are Love.

This process is made even easier by the fact that once we recognize that we are the ones creating whatever negative emotion or reaction we experience, we stop blaming others, and then we are free to ask them for support as we explore and heal our negative realities. Approaching relationship in this way is completely foreign to most people, but results in a collaborative approach to communication and relationship, rather than a competitive approach to communication and relationship. When there is a competitive approach to relationship I find myself thinking, "I am much more balanced and emotionally stable than you are." "I am right about this and you are sadly mistaken."

When there is a collaborative approach to relationship and "Responsibility Communication", I take responsibility for everything I am feeling and I stay focused on my ability to create what I am experiencing. So that when I am uncomfortable, or sad, or angry, or hurt, or confused, I realize that I need to focus on how I am creating that experience if I am to change it. Then I can ask for the Love and support of my friend or family member as I take the time to change and heal the false negative reality within my mind.

I can tell you from personal experience that it is much less stressful to explore my hurt with a collaborative partner, than it is to confront my hurt by attacking and blaming the person I feel caused it!

This lecture tied beautifully into the lecture by Guy Finley which we listened to last week. One of the key points in Guy Finley's talk was that because we have become so focused on acquiring what it is we think will give us peace and freedom from fear, we have come to the point where we view everyone else as either a suspect or a prospect. We either want to blame others for causing our emotional pain and frustration, or we see them as someone who can take away our emotional pain and frustration. This leaves us with the following summary statement; "All attempts at acquisition are the bitter fruit of an imitative life". When one realizes that there is nothing missing within the Self, there is no desire for acquisition.

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false.

Operation Emotional Freedom

If you know anyone suffering from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, (PTSD), you need to send them this link.

The video from Gary Craig, the creator of The Emotional Freedom Technique, (EFT), is now available at the following website:
http://www.operation-emotionalfreedom.com/dvd.php

This powerful video documents the story of veterans suffering from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, and how they are being helped by learning to use EFT to eliminate the symptoms of nightmares, flashbacks, rage, confusion, paranoid thoughts, alcohol and drug abuse, broken relationships and more. This movie began in 2008 with veterans volunteering to try this approach. These veterans and their families thought there was no help for the life threatening symptoms they had as a result of being in combat situations. The movie documents the results they got in five days of treatment and the benefits which lasted a full year later when they were interviewed for followup.

Please help spread the word about this low cost, highly effective, self-empowering tool for resolving the effects of a past trauma, whether the trauma was combat related or from any other situation. This tool and its powerful healing benefits are simply too important to be kept secret, or to be ignored.

You can also go to the EFT website, www.eftuniverse.com to learn more about the actual procedure and download a free manual which shows you how to perform EFT for yourself or a loved one. Please note that if someone has been in a combat situation, or any other severely traumatic situation, they may need to support of a therapist who is trained in EFT or other Energy Psychology, or Mind/Body energy techniques in order to benefit from this process.


Please help those who have served our country and sacrificed more than any of us can truly know, by helping to spread the word about this powerful tool which is transforming lives and healing the effects of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, (PTSD).

Dr. Michael Ryce - A New Beginning, and Guy Finley - Leaving Happy Valley

Last week and this week, the Mindshifters group watched a lecture by Dr. Michael Ryce titled A New Beginning: A lesson from A Course In Miracles, www.whyagain.com, and we listened to a story by Guy Finley about a woman who lived in "Happy Valley" and was trying to leave and "move on" with her life, www.guyfinley.com.

One of the essential messages from Dr. Ryce's talk was the idea that if I want things to be different in my life, I have to find a way to do things differently. Therefore, if I rely on the same processes of my thinking and logical mind which produced the situation I am in, I am not likely to find a result that is any different than what I have already produced. My unhappiness or discomfort in any moment is the result of what I have chosen to focus my awareness upon. If I keep focusing my awareness on the outside events and what others are saying and doing, and assume that these things are causing what I am feeling, then I am doomed to continue feeling the same kind of pain and discomfort.


Dr. Ryce relates that A Course In Miracles suggests that I decide "Today I will make no decisions by myself. I will make decisions with my life today, instead of my past." Then throughout the day I should tell myself the kind of day I want to have, and keep reminding myself of the kind of experience I want to have. Then when things begin to happen that don't seem to produce in me the kind of experience I want to have, it is suggested that I say to myself, "I have no question. I forgot what to decide." This will keep me from the pattern of automatic response based on my past experiences, which has produced discomfort and unhappiness within me, every time something like this has happened in my past.

It is also suggest that when I am unhappy or uncomfortable in any way that I say, "I hope I have been wrong." Because the Truth is that happiness does not depend on being right. Happiness depends on being Love! If I can get myself to realize that no matter how hard I have worked at proving that "I am right!", it has not led me to being happy, then I can begin to suspect that there may be another way to look at my situation.

Guy Finley tells the story of the woman who lives in Happy Valley and is no longer satisfied with her life. She decides to "move on". She tells her friends that she is going to leave Happy Valley and they tell her she can't because there are guards. She thinks this is silly because she has never seen any guards. She then realizes that she has never tried to leave before and so maybe that is why she never noticed any guards. She decides to think about this for a while and gives up the idea of leaving Happy Valley. But eventually she gets tired of all the tension, frustration, gossip, competition, anger, pride, and sadness which define her life in Happy Valley and once again decides she needs to leave and "move on".

When she finally tries to walk out of the valley, she is confronted by someone walking towards her from a distance. This scares her her and she decides to go back to her house and think it over. Eventually a number of years have passed and she has gone through several attempts to leave the valley and each time she did, the person confronted her sooner and sooner, until she finally saw that the person was actually someone who looked just like her. Finally she decided to confront the person face to face and when she did she realized it was just a mirror. She was relieved at first, but then scared again when she tried to walk around the mirror and it moved to be in front of her. Eventually she gave up trying to go around the mirror and went home.

After many attempts to sneak out of the valley and finding that the mirror was confronting her sooner and sooner each time she tried, she opened her door one day to leave and the mirror was in her doorway. She got so angry she threw a stone at the mirror and the mirror was not harmed at all. In fact, the stone bounced off and hit the woman. With great fear and frustration, she reached out to touch the mirror and when she did her finger passed right through the mirror. She instantly felt all manor of strange sensations - many of them were not comfortable. She wanted to run away again but there was nowhere left to run. So she pushed her finger further into the mirror, fighting back the fear and "pain" and realized that this mirror was a passageway to some other place.

With great fear and doubt she pushed forward and walked right into the mirror. Instantly she was transported to another place, outside of Happy Valley.

Guy Finley then talks about how the resistance we feel is greatest just before the moment of transformation. He discusses how we have been tricked into thinking that emotional pain is the same as physical pain and that the proper thing to do is avoid it, rather than sit with it and explore it. This simply leaves us in the same cycle as the woman who wanted to leave Happy Valley, repeating the same useless escape mechanisms over and over again. In truth, the resistance, emotional pain and discomfort we feel is the signal that something has come along to reveal to us something about ourselves which is keeping us from moving forward and knowing Life more completely. The Truth is that we can release those things within us which keep us from knowing Life more completely, only by accepting them as simply self-caused, by the process of avoiding and denying resistance.

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false.

Dr. Michael Ryce's lecture on "Healing Through Relationships"

This week we watched the first half of Dr. Ryce's lecture on the healing power of relationships. The lecture makes the point that relationships are not bad, broken, or diseased. Relationships are sacred tools which reveal to us what it is, inside each of us, that we have denied and suppressed. We deny and suppress things because they are painful or scary, and these are the things which will keep creating pain and fear in our lives until we own them, and dismantle them from our thought. Dr. Ryce suggests that the traditional purpose for relationships in our world has been to see how much stuff we can accumulate, and who can be proven to be "right". He offers that the way to begin using the healing power of relationships begins with adopting a new purpose for relationships; "I want to heal." This changes everything about how we approach relationships, and what we can learn from them.

Guy Finley states in his Seven Steps to Oneness program that: "Before we can change our experience of life, we must change our purpose for living."

This is a fundamental truth which arises from the awareness that we each create our own realities from the selective attention we place on the actuality of life which happens around us. When we choose a focus for our attention and we decide to set a goal or a purpose, that goal or purpose filters what we see, hear, and feel, and motivates our behavior in an attempt to accomplish that goal or purpose. Once we set a goal or purpose, it stays active in us until we achieve it or consciously cancel it. Therefore a goal or purpose can be driving our behavior, and experience, long after we have shifted our conscious awareness away from it and onto something else.

This makes it very important to consciously choose the purpose/goal we have for being in a relationship, and to frequently remind ourselves of that purpose/goal. When we do this with the understanding that we are creating our own experiences and our internal realities, and that no one else is causing any of our emotions, or thoughts, whether positive or negative, we can begin to make good use of the tool of relationship for healing those thoughts and emotions that "come up" within us that are less than Love. Dr. Ryce offers a tool for using relationships to heal at www.whyagain.com/commitment.php


We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false.

Guy Finley's talk - Your New Authority Over Anything That Disturbs You!

Last night the Mindshifters group listened to the one hour audio lecture by Guy Finley, (www.guyfinley.com), before working on Reality Management worksheets. The purpose for this departure from our normal routine was that Dr. Ryce himself talks about how beneficial it is to hear the same message from a variety of different perspectives. If you hear about a new concept from several different sources and perspectives, it shortens the amount of time it takes you to integrate the material. It tends to produce more neural connections and can lead to more flashes of insight.

So with this in mind, we listened to Guy Finley discuss the ways in which everything that stimulates a disturbance in me is truly a gift. Every person, interaction, and situation which produces a disturbance in me is Revealing to me something about myself which I was unaware of, prior to the disturbance. He talks about the situation in which I am just having a wonderful day until someone gives me the wrong look, or criticizes me in some way. Then suddenly there is an irritable little person who erupts from me. I wasn't an irritable little person until that situation occurred. My immediate thought is that someone just put an irritable little person into me. I then blame the other person for what I am feeling, saying and doing.

The fact of the matter is that I had those irritable feelings and thoughts within me, long before the other person gave me the look, or criticized me. I was simply not aware of that irritation, because I had chosen to focus my awareness on other things. Just because I don't choose to focus my awareness on my frustration, irritation, anger, blame, guilt and shame, does not mean I don't have any of those thoughts, feelings and energies hiding in my mind/body energy system. And as Dr. Ryce so often points out, every dis-integrative energy in my energy system is wearing me down and will eventually cause physical dis-ease and eventually death, if it is not seen, acknowledged, and removed.

Guy Finley closed his talk with a description of how a disturbing event produces resistance within me, which could Reveal to me something about myself, which is keeping me from being in direct contact with all that I am. The key to this process is that I accept the Revelation and integrate the realization that I had this energy within me. The problem is that in our current culture and system, we are conditioned to reject the Revelation and lose the realization, but insisting that someone else or something else is responsible for the resistance we feel when we come into contact with a disturbance.

This is the heart of Dr. Ryce's Reality Management Worksheet, (www.whyagain.com) which steps a person through the process of identifying exactly how they are blaming someone or something else for the Reality they are creating in response to a disturbance in their lives. The worksheet helps a person reclaim their power, by taking responsibility for all that they are thinking and feeling, and by helping to uncover the hidden, deeper, projected parts of the mind, which are truly creating the discomfort.

Guy Finley states that with each disturbance we feel, the world is asking us, "Would you like to see what is keeping you from being closer to me?"

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false.

Dr. Michael Ryce Lecture: Did You Hear What I Think I Said?

The Mindshifters group spent the last two weeks watching the video lecture by Dr. Ryce about Response-Ability Communication. This lecture outlines a process of communicating which is built around Dr. Ryce's observations that we each create our own internal reality and that if we are in pain, we are in error. So this model for communicating is designed to allow me to let others know what reality I have created for myself, in a way which makes it clear that I know I have created this reality for myself. This means that I clearly transmit the message that I understand that no one else has done anything which created any discomfort in me.

This model of communication blends Dr. Ryce's awareness of how each of us creates our own pain and then projects that pain onto the image we create in our minds about the other people and situations around us, with solid communication skills which have been promoted by experts for centuries. The value of using a system like this is that it keeps me focused on the things I truly have control over, and this leaves me with the power to create change in my life.

The reason most of Dr. Ryce's lectures have such power is because, at some point in the process, they run counter to the way our traditional culture, or "common sense" would have us think or react. This lecture is no different. Most people think that effective communication is getting other people to agree with them, or believe what they believe, or to accept that what they did was wrong or somehow harmed us. The definition of communication which is given in this lecture is, "To accurately re-create the "reality" in my mind, in the mind of the person I am trying to communicate with." This can only be accomplished if it is known and agreed upon that I am completely responsible for everything that I think, feel, see and hear!

In this model of communication, when I tell the other person, "what I want", it is not about what I want from them or what I want them to change or do differently. In this model of communication when I tell someone "what I want", it is a statement of how I want things to change within me, which only I can do. It is followed by a request for support from the other person in my own process of changing the reality I am creating which is causing me pain.

When I realize that I am the only one who can cause my emotions and that any sense within me that another person has caused my emotions is simply a distraction driven by my fear about what I would have to look at within myself, I am opening a new door to limitless possibilities.

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false.

The Circle of Life and How to Play It - Part 1

This lecture by Dr. Michael Ryce focuses on the use of a tool which amounts to a map of the choices we can make when we respond to events in our lives. Dr. Ryce described two possible paths, "The Upper Path" and "The Lower Path. "The Lower Path" leads eventually to pain, loneliness and dis-ease. "The Upper Path" leads to comfort, healthy loving relationships and health. A key idea in this lecture is that in order to get where we want to go in life we must know to things; we must know the destination, and we must be willing to honestly accept, and accurately define, where we are.

So, Dr. Ryce describes two separate patterns of responses to whatever events occur in life. One is focused on the knowledge that each of us creates our own internal realities and the other is focused on blaming others and the world around us for our internal realities.

People on "The Lower Path" deny and suppress their feelings and thereby block any useful information from coming into their awareness. These people fall into the cycle of being the victim and the hero in their interactions with others, and they are always blaming others for what they don't like in their lives.

The people who choose "The Lower Path" are focused on Right vs. Wrong thinking and they are always willing to tell people how they are right and everyone else is wrong. When these people bump into the truth, it causes them stress and they blame the truth or the one who showed them the truth for causing their discomfort. Their adaptive mechanisms are all about denial, suppression, drug and alcohol use, and holding their breath.

For these people their personal code is "If I am in pain, you did it to me!" Therefore these people feel dis-empowered and they live in a state of destructive dissatisfaction. They throw tantrums and the adults on this path get depressed or full of rage. For these people things are important and they are takers who don't care about how their "taking" influences others.

People who "Take The Upper Path" work to stay open to their feelings and don't deny and suppress them. The are therefore able to use information from a variety of sources to learn how to respond differently. These people take response-ability for what they are feeling and how they choose to respond to what happens in their lives and they refuse to see themselves as either victim or hero.

The people who choose "The Upper Path" are focused on "Right"(for me), vs. "Not Right" (for me), thinking and they refuse to judge others as being wrong because they don't want that energy in their system. When these people bump into the truth, it causes them stress and they welcome the truth, or the one who showed them the truth, for helpful the information it provides, so that they can make corrections within themselves. Their adaptive mechanisms are all about acceptance of Truth, self-correction, the energy of Love, forgiveness work, and breathing.

For these people their personal code is "If I am in pain, I am in error!" Therefore these people feel empowered and they live in a state of Constructive dissatisfaction. They accept response-ability for what they are feeling, and work to use their tools to dismantle and cancel the false realities, they have constructed, which have caused their pain. For these people, relationships are more important than things. These people know that giving and receiving are two sides of the same coin and that neither is truly possible without the other.

The people on "The Upper Path" are working to realize the actuality in their lives that:

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false.



The following is being supplied because of a request from several group members this week.

The mental short form for The Reality Management Worksheet:
1. My mind convinces me that my trigger _____ causes my feelings ______.
2. My reality is my responsibility, strictly internal, unique to me, and is created by my personal and genetic mind energy.
3. I locate and CANCEL my goal ______ (clear my mind).
4. Rookha d' Koodsha /Holy Spirit - please assist me to reset Rakhma & Khooba, change my reality, its effects; and learn the TRUTH.
5. I reconnect with my source, ask for restoration to Love, and send Love to, ______ (trigger). I offer you, (trigger) ____(a loving goal).

Rakhma - is a filter in the mind over intentions, which allows only intentions keyed to Love to be available as raw material for use in setting my goals, which are drivers for my realities.

Khooba - is a filter in the mind over perceptions that allows only units of perceptual memory keyed to Love to be available for structuring my personal Reality, my guidance.

Rookha d' Koodsha - The active force from God in the human mind that breaks off the effect of errors and teaches us the truth. The force for that which is proper for humans, the denial of which leaves us in un-forgiveness! The "SuperProcessor."

More information is available at www.whyagain.com

Laws of Living part 2

This week the Mindshifters group watched the second half of the Dr. Michael Ryce lecture titled: The Laws of Living. What struck me most this time was a comment that Dr. Ryce made about how the Love of Truth produces a tension in the mind which focuses the mind on input and shows the mind the errors of its ways.

I remember from another lecture where Dr. Ryce explained his interpretation of the bible passage that says something like, "The eye is the lamp of the soul, if your lamp goes dark, how deep will your darkness be". Dr. Ryce explains that the ancient Aramaic when translated directly into English says something more like, Your perception is the light for your earthly life, and if your perception is distorted by anything, you will create and experience false realities.

These false realities will always cause you pain and discomfort, and disrupt your relationships. Dr. Ryce explains, the mind is an evidential device, it shows you whatever it is you tell it to show you. So if you believe someone else is wrong or has "wronged you", your mind will show you the evidence that they are wrong. You will literally perceive things that never happened, or twist things that did happen so that they have the meaning you have instructed your mind to give you.

Dr. Ryce repeatedly reminds us that the only way to perceive things accurately is to first hold the condition of Love in the mind. If I hold the condition of Love in my mind, I will Love Truth and desire only to see the Truth of what is. If I hold a desire for anything other than Truth, or if I hold any energy other than Love in my mind, my mind will distort the data that it shows me so that I construct a reality which is based on some form of hostility or fear, and is false! If I desire to be right, the first casualty of that desire will be the Truth. My mind will arrange the data it shows me to prove to me that I am right, and others are wrong. The Truth of the situation is not changed, I am just not able to use it to construct my reality.

If I desire to be right, my mind will show me how I am right, and it will shut down my ability to perceive anything which would conflict with that conclusion. When I desire to be right, I am not able to accept help, insight or input from friends, family or mentors. It is only when I accept that what I perceive may be inaccurate or incomplete that I am willing to accept input.

The Love of Truth literally produces tension and attention in the mind which focuses the mind on input from actuality, and allows the mind to see the errors of its ways. I desire to Love Truth. I frequently forget that desire and replace it with the desire of the Ego which longs to be right.

One important way for me to know when I am in error, and have lost my focus on The Love of Truth, is that I begin to feel tension, contraction and discomfort in my body. Whenever I become aware of this I know that I am in error. I know instantly that I am focusing my energy on something other than Love of Truth. I know instantly that I have shifted my awareness away from the fact that:

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false.

The Laws of Living Part 1

Last night the Mindshifters group watched the first half of the Michael Ryce lecture titled "The Laws of Living". This lecture tries to make a clear distinction between rules, man's "laws", and The Law. The difference between a rule and a Law, is that a rule is something which has been created by man, and if you break a rule there are consequences imposed by men. The Law is something which simply is, and it is not possible to break The Law. You either work within The Law or you "get broken". For instance if you step off a 100 foot cliff because you choose to ignore The Law of gravity, you suffer the natural consequences once you land. There is no one imposing a consequence for your choice to ignore The Law.

The point was made that while many people say they have done things they regret doing, there is only one reason why we do anything, and that is because we had a "reality" in our mind which directed us to act in that way. Since we are the authors of the realities in our minds, it is possible to be mindful of the realities we are creating, and change them so that we don't keep doing things we regret. The tool for removing a false reality from the human mind is what was called "Forgiveness", in the ancient Aramaic. The worksheet titled The Reality Management Worksheet is the primary tool for doing this work in Dr. Ryce's teachings. http://www.whyagain.com/worksheets.php

Once again this lecture discusses the need to build slowly and in stages, the understanding of how the energetic system of the human body/mind works. When we first begin to get exposed to this material it is so foreign and unusual, compared to what most of us have been taught and experienced, that it is impossible to understand the material fully. This is why it is important to keep reading, listening to, and practicing the application of this material, so that the foundation of understanding can be built, and eventually the deeper meaning of the material can be grasped.

The first and most important step in the process is to learn to hold the energy of Love, conscious, active and present in the mind, at all times. It is only when we are holding the energy of Love in our minds that we are able to see clearly what the world actually offers us, and who and what we actually are. Whenever we hold the energy of hostility or fear in our minds, our minds distort the information we receive, and we then construct a false reality in our minds, which leads us to more fear, more hostility and more pain.

The tools provided in this work are all focused on one thing, the removal from the human mind/body energy system of anything which is less than Love. It is not necessary and in fact absolutely futile to look for love from anyone or anything in your life. However it is absolutely possible and highly recommended to extend Love in all of your relationships with people and things.

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false.

Co-Dependence to Inter-Dependence

Last night the Mindshifters Group watched the second half of the lecture titled: Co-Dependence to Inter-Dependence. The definition of Co-Dependence for this lecture is the process of believing that someone else is responsible for anything I am feeling or experiencing. The process of projection was explained in even more detail. The process of projection requires that I have denied and suppressed thoughts and emotions within myself. Once this happens, and I have made the decision, often at the unconscious level, that I won't accept or deal with things in my mind, I doom myself to projecting them onto the world I see. The world I experience is not the actual world. The world I experience is the product of my mind and the thoughts, memories and emotions that get triggered in my mind, most of which is unconscious and comprised of things I have denied and suppressed. Once these things get triggered, they make up my experience of the world, as I project them onto the image my mind creates of the people and things in my world.

What I "see" in others and the world around me, always tells me more about me than it does about others and the world. Until I have uncovered and dismantled every thought, emotion, and conclusion which I have denied and suppressed, I cannot hope to "see" the world accurately. My internal reality is driven by the process of "Blockage of Truth". Until I make "Love of Truth" the most important thing in my life, I will have no hope of seeing the world accurately. Perception is the servant of purpose, and when I tell my mind that I am right, my perception will organize the evidence to show me how I am right. The only hope I have of seeing Truth, is to value Truth more than being right. This is a very tall order for us as humans, raised in a culture which values "being right".

Another point which jumped out at me about this lecture is the definition for the word "Decide". The root of the word means "to cut off, or kill". It is the same as the words, homicide, suicide, genocide, etc. The word "decide" may be said to mean: "To cut off choice". In this way it is the end of the spiritual faculty of "Choice". The ability to be "In Choice" requires that we be able to see what is actually happening in the world, without the effects of personal distortion and the effects of denial, suppression and projection. The process of forgiveness is a tool for dismantling the process of denial, suppression and projection. See www.whyagain.com for the free download titled: The Reality Management Worksheet.

This lecture once again reminds us that the root of all healing is the ability to hold Love conscious, active and present, and hold this state whenever anything unlike Love arises. When anything unlike Love is exposed to the energy of Love, the energy gets transmuted and the energy of Love is all that is left.

This lecture also describes the process that all of us have gone through, in which a parent becomes a power person for a child, and the child gives up her connection to her source of Love, in order to seek the approval of the parent. When this happens, the child learns to define the approval of the parent as Love. This leads us to be human doings, rather than human beings. We get busy doing things trying to gain the approval of those we want to "love" us, rather than focusing our awareness on the reality that:

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false.

Mindshifters Group - Empowered To Heal

This week the group listened to Dr. Ryce describe the process of how our thoughts send out energy which interacts with the world of energy potentials around us and literally creates effects in our world. The first part of the lecture discussed how this energy effects us personally within our body/mind system. The second part of the lecture discussed how the energy we send out also affects the world around us, and influences what it is that "shows up" in our lives.

One of the things that struck me most about this lecture is the balance between the observation that I literally create my own internal reality, and the fact that what other people think and feel, and the energy they send out, can also affect me. While the thoughts of others creates very real energy which radiates out from them and interacts with the world around them, it is nothing compared to my infinite ability to choose what I will focus my consciousness on and what I will create as my own internal reality.

So, I may walk into a situation at work in which people are being rude, angry, blaming and even aggressive to one another, and I still have the ability to choose to see only the highest and the best in each of those people, and to choose to cooperate only with that part of them. I have the ability to choose calm and Love and to create my internal reality from that. No matter what someone else does, or chooses to create as their internal reality, I remain infinitely free to create my internal reality from an awareness of my connection to my Source, the energy of creation which has also been called, Love, and the mind of God.

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false.

A Lesson In Repetition

The Mindshifters group watched the first half of the lecture by Dr. Michael Ryce, "Empowered to Heal". This lecture discusses observations about how we are energetic systems and not "physical bodies". This week my learning is about the value of repetition for the material I find most valuable. Dr. Ryce talks a great deal about the value of "building new brain cells" to be able to understand new material. The only way for this to occur is to provide numerous repetitions of the material, combined with the ability to question everything that one thinks one "knows". Both of these factors are needed in order to "build new brain cells".

Even if I am able to question the validity of everything I think I know while reading a good book about a new subject, or listening to a lecture about a new approach to an old topic, I will only get a small amount from that material. I will need to read that book, or listen to that lecture, time and time again in order to fully understand what is being offered. The first few repetitions merely lay the foundation for new levels of understanding which will occur in future repetitions of that work. Likewise, if I listen to a lecture 37 different times, and my entire focus is on denying and refuting what is being said, by comparing it to what I already "know", I will not gain anything from the experience.

Recent research reveals that a person's ability to "learn" new material, or "accept" new findings is directly related to whether those findings are similar to what that person already believes. If a person reads a scientific paper which presents findings that are in alignment with what that person believes to be true, they are much more likely to "believe" the new findings. If a person reads a scientific paper which presents findings that are not in alignment with what that person believes to be true, that person is much more likely to reject the findings. This is a prime example of the need to "build new brain cells" before one can comprehend and accept new information. The point has been made that historically we, as humans, build our cultures and our belief systems on many things which eventually are proven to be wrong. Recent examples include, "The world is flat.", "The earth is the center of the solar system.", "The atom is the smallest particle of matter.", "We are determined by our DNA - The Primacy of DNA", and "The laws of physics as presented by Newton".

If in our history each of these things has been called into question and proven to be at least partially wrong, what might we find out in the future about some of our current beliefs? Which beliefs will prove misguided or even totally wrong, and how will that affect our daily lives? The point is, that if one is not able to question the validity of everything one knows, and open themselves up to direct observation with a "less" biased mind, then the process of "building new brain cells" cannot even begin.

And so, I strongly recommend the frequent repetition of whatever material challenges your thinking, opens you to new possibilities, and leaves you with a good feeling in your mind/body energy system. You will probably be amazed at "how the material has changed", since the last time you read or listened to it, (Just so you know, the change will have been in you, not in the material). The material may be even better than you remembered. There may be whole chunks or key points which you do not even remember from the first reading/hearing. There may be points that you remember, but upon reading/hearing it again it has an entirely different meaning for you. There is also the possibility that with the changes in you and your experiences, since the last time you read/heard the material, you decide that you don't like the material or the conclusions nearly as much as you did the first time.

What if it is soon possible to "prove" that we are "energy systems" and not simply "physical bodies"? How would that change the way you live your daily life? Would it have as much impact on you as the realization that the earth is round did to those who believed it was flat? Would it have more impact on you than the realization that Newton's laws of physics don't seem to apply below the level of the molecule?

What if the way I end each blog entry is Truth and not just a nice thought? How would that change the way you live your daily life?

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false.

Introduction To A Course In Miracles with Advanced Understanding

Last Tuesday evening the Mindshifters group watched the second half of the lecture by Dr. Michael Ryce titled, "Introduction to A Course In Miracles with Advanced Understanding". While we have watched this lecture several times already, there is always something different which catches my attention. This week I was struck by the observation that, "Limited perception causes us to experience things which never happened." The point here is that each of us as individuals choose to focus our attention on different things and use those things to create our realities. Each of us as individuals have basically the same ability to perceive things as every other human being, and yet we still choose to focus on different parts of what there is to be perceived and use those parts to construct our realities.

Beyond the set of limitations which we impose upon ourselves, by choosing only certain things to be aware of, there is the limitation of what our senses are able to perceive. For example we cannot hear a dog whistle, yet we know that it creates a sound because of the effect it has on dogs. Just because we cannot perceive it, does not mean that it does not exist. In truth, there are many things that are having an effect on our world, which we cannot perceive directly, such as ultraviolet light and infra red light. Well, if there are sounds we cannot hear, and light we cannot see, how many other things exist in our world which we are unable to perceive? The point here is that the only way for us to learn something new, is to be open to the possibility that everything we "know" is wrong, or at least incomplete. If one is not able to admit that they don't know something, one can never learn anything new.

Another quote from the lecture is, "By perception we have lost sight of the real world." This sounds ridiculous unless you start putting the pieces together of all the "things", energies, sounds, effects which we can only become aware of through indirect observation, or with the help of technology, or the observation of our animal friends. When we look through our eyes and hear through our ears, and begin to assemble a "picture" of our world, we are "blind" to ultra high and low pitch frequencies, light energy above and below the "visible" spectrum, (I put visible in quotes because other animals and insects can clearly see those light energies), and probably countless other energies and experiences that we have not yet become aware of. But in truth, just because we cannot hear the vibration of a dog whistle does not mean it does not exist.

So just imagine what we are cutting ourselves off from experiencing because we are telling ourselves that we already know what the world is like. We already know this person or that person. We already know what a tree is like, etc.

Imagine how our world might expand if we approached everything with innocent observation and questioning. Imagine walking through life observing and questioning everything. Not with a forced insistence on knowing what is real, but with an open willingness to experience things as new, each time we encounter them. This could be applied to people as well as animals and things. Sounds like a challenging exercise for learning and growing!

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false!

Why Is This Happening To Me Again?

Last night the Mindshifters group watched the first half of the lecture, "Why Is This Happening To Me Again?" by Dr. Michael Ryce. The points that jumped out at me during this viewing were the following:

1) In the period of time that it takes for my brain to fire 10,000 units of electrical activity, I am only able to be consciously aware of 9 bits of information. It is estimated that in that same period of time, there are over 25 billion bits of information available in my immediate environment. This means that my unconscious chooses only 10,000 bits from the possible 25,000,000,000 bits that are available and that my conscious mind chooses only 9 bits from the 10,000 that my unconscious has chosen. This begins to explain the terribly restricted way that I choose and construct my own reality from the actuality which is occurring in each moment, and how my experience can be so dramatically different from others who witness the very same events.

2) There are only two types of energy relative to my body/mind energy system: integrative energy - that which builds the system up, and dis-integrative energy - that which tears the system down. Whenever I am feeling any form of hostility or fear, I am choosing thoughts that are putting dis-integrative energy into my body/mind energy system, and unless I work to cancel or dismantle that energy it will stay in my system and work to dis-integrate my body/mind system and eventually lead to physical illness and disease.

3) The germ theory is called the germ theory because it is not proven. Some believe it will never be proven because it is not able to account for the lack of the spread of disease. What is meant by this is that if a germ was the cause for an illness, infection, or syndrome, then everyone who was exposed to that germ would automatically get the illness, infection, or syndrome. But that is simply not what happens. Some people who are exposed to the germ become ill, while others who are exposed show no signs or symptoms whatsoever, and never become ill. The discussion point in the lecture was that when tissue breaks down it "triggers" nature's clean-up crew to dismantle and dispose of the dead tissue. This clean-up crew is made up of the "diseases" and "germs" and "viruses" which have mistakenly been seen as the cause of the decay and death in the tissue. This mistaking of the "trigger" for the cause is the next point to be discussed.

4) Many people in our culture have been taught that other people make them angry, other people hurt their feelings, other people make them sad, and other people make them happy, etc.

This lecture asserts that each of us create our own internal reality by choosing what thoughts we will focus on, and thereby creating the feelings and emotions we experience. It is not possible for someone else to make me angry, happy, or afraid. In fact, if I know that someone is just doing something to "try to make me angry", that is the time that it is easiest for me to ignore them and refuse to give them the response they want. In truth, when someone does something and I choose to respond with anger, fear or sadness, what is happening is that I already had the energy of anger, fear or sadness within me, and this energy was simply "triggered" by the actions of the other person, the way I interpreted them, and the thoughts I chose in response to those actions. So what has happened here is that I mistake the "trigger", (the other person's actions and my thoughts about them), for the cause, (my stored and unacknowledged emotional energy of sadness, fear or anger.)

Let's look at the example of the person who knows nothing about draw bridges, or mechanics, or motors of any kind. If we take this person and sit them on the bank of a river near a draw bridge and ask her to discover what makes a bridge go up, she will begin to observe that every time a boat approaches the bridge goes up, and that every time the boat moves away, the bridge goes down. She will likely come to the conclusion that boats make the bridge go up. In reality it is not the boat that makes the bridge go up, it is the motor and the pulleys and the chains attached to the bridge which cause the bridge to go up. The appearance of the boats are just the events which "trigger" the person in the bridge tower to start the motor which lifts the bridge and causes it to go up.

Now then, suppose we offer her anything she wants if she prevents the bridge from going up again, she will assume she needs to change the direction of any boat that heads toward the bridge. Potentially she may end up trying to change the direction of hundreds or even thousands of boats, because she believes that the boats cause the bridge to go up. If she knew about the actual mechanism, she could prevent the bridge from going up by simply cutting some wires feeding power to the motor which lifts the bridge.

Have you ever gotten tired of trying to make everyone else change, so that you did not have to experience a negative emotion or reaction?

5) Lastly the observation was made: "Feelings are a gift to alert you to the quality of mind energy you are engaging in."

Whenever I have a feeling, it is because I have chosen certain thoughts. Thoughts, when invested with enough energy and focus, produce emotions. This is the only cause of emotions. Only my thoughts can cause my emotions. Therefore, when I become aware of feeling an unpleasant feeling it is a wake-up call to alert me that I have chosen unproductive and dis-integrative thoughts.

Fortunately for us, Dr. Ryce teaches a simple tool for dismantling and canceling the negative thoughts and their resultant negative emotions. It is called The Reality Management Worksheet, (available free at www.whyagain.com), and we teach people how to apply this tool to their negative thoughts and emotions, in our Mindshifters Group.

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false!

The Living Matrix.

Last night the Mindshifters group did something we have only done one other time in the last four years. We watched a movie which was not one of Dr. Michael Ryce's lectures. We watched the movie, The Living Matrix, which talks about the integration of the science of Quantum Physics into the science of biology and medicine. The point is made in the movie, as in a book by Bruce Lipton, that the science of biology and medicine are the last sciences to hold out against accepting, and integrating the findings of Quantum Physics. The movie makes the point in many different ways, that our insistence on seeing the body as being only solid matter, and treating "illnesses" by attacking symptoms on a physical and chemical level, is what is keeping us sick and making us sicker.

This is a very interesting movie and it makes the case for opening a person's belief system so that they are able to "believe" that they can get healthy, even without, or in spite of, surgery and medication. The film introduces a new way to think about "The Placebo Effect", and even re-defines it as "The body's ability to heal itself", or "The Belief Effect". Both of these terms are more positive and descriptive of what is happening when someone gets better after taking, "a placebo". Bruce Lipton is quoted in the movie as saying that fully one third of all healing that takes place in our medical system is attributed to "The Placebo Effect". He goes on to say that at a time when we are drowning in health care costs, it is remarkable that the medical community does not acknowledge this and begin to actively use "The Belief Effect", which would immediately reduce health care costs by at least one third.

I highly recommend the movie for anyone who is questioning whether they should try an "alternative" approach to traditional medical care, or anyone who wants a nice refresher, and an optimistic update about where medical science and research is possibly headed in the near future.

However, I must say that as I watched the movie for the second time, I was struck repeatedly by the thought that it is a shame that they are still so focused on the physical and the "scientific" proof of this and that energy, etc., etc. I kept thinking that what they are talking about in terms of healing and health and wellness, has been known for centuries and is found in a number of "religious" and healing traditions. As I watched this movie about the latest in scientific advances and the theory of "fields" of energy which govern the physical body, and its expression and response to thoughts and emotions, I kept thinking about a friend of mine who was raised as a Christian Scientist, and who has seen dramatic, powerful, "miraculous healings" all her life, and knows that they are completely ordinary!

I kept thinking about how ridiculous it would sound for someone who was raised in Christian Science, or Religious Science, or any of a number of other Healing traditions, to watch a movie today which talks about how "New" and "Amazing" and "Powerful" this new science of healing is. It would probably sound about as silly and useless as the words of an ice salesman to an Eskimo.

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false.

Getting The Stress You Need Part 1

This week the Mindshifters group watched the first half of the lecture by Dr. Michael Ryce titled: Getting The Stress You Need. What struck me most about the lecture this time was how Dr. Ryce described how my intentions are the raw materials of my goals. When I hold a number of intentions and eventually elevate one of them to the level of a goal, that goal then organizes my energies and my behaviors to guide me to the accomplishment of that goal. Therefore, the quality of my intentions determines the quality of my goals.

Dr. Ryce described how each of us has a filter over the intentions in our minds, and a filter over the perceptions in our minds. These filters can be set to fear, hostility, or Love. Whenever the filters are set to hostility or fear, they distort our perceptions and show us a false set of data. We then take that data and build our perceptions of reality based on that false data. This is why we were told that the first and most important instruction is to keep the filter of Love set in our minds whenever we are thinking of God, neighbor, or self. The reason is that if the filter is set to hostility or fear, it will distort our perception and show us false data. So we are encouraged to frequently monitor our emotions and mental state and act quickly to reset our filters to Love, whenever we notice that we are feeling something other than Love. By definition this means that we are perceiving things falsely, and therefore we will not be reacting to actuality, but we will be reacting to the false reality we have constructed from the corrupt data that is created by the filters of hostility and fear.

Another critical concept that was introduced is the definition of stress as: "The tension within me that is created by the difference between the way things actually are, and the way I perceive them to be". The greater the difference between these to things, combined with the amount of energy I pour into wanting things to be different, determine the level and intensity of my stress.
This concept alone is worth the entire time I invested in the lecture. The more I monitor my own thoughts and emotional responses and catch myself earlier and earlier in the process, the less time I spend in the tension of stress. As soon as I catch myself feeling tense, angry, frustrated, confused, irritable, or unhappy I ask myself some version of the following question - "I wonder how this is all going to work out for the better?", or "I wonder how this is going to help me learn a critical lesson I need to master?", or "I wonder how this will work out to be a blessing?"

This one process alone has improved the quality of my life more than I can even begin to describe. In the last five years that I have been practicing and applying this process, I have seen that it does two important things. First, it stops me in my tracks when I start thinking negative thoughts which generate negative feelings in my body. I find that since I have started this process, I have spent much less time feeling negative emotions in my daily life. Second, it leaves me more open and observant to see the ways in which things do turn out for the better. I find that I see positive "coincidences" much more often than I ever did before. My hunch is that these positive "coincidences" were always there, but because I was angry, fearful, or frustrated when things did not happen the way I had planned, I was not able to see or notice the positive "coincidences".

Dr. Ryce presented one more very important quality of goals, which is that once a goal has been set in the human mind, it keeps running until it is either attained, or consciously canceled. This is absolutely true, even though it may be running in the unconscious part of the mind, it is still active and the mind is looking for ways to achieve or satisfy the goal despite the fact that the person may be completely unaware of it. This leads to some very confusing and unproductive behavior in people, as their unconscious mind is working to satisfy un-achieved goals, while the conscious mind is unaware of the motivation or the goal.

It is suggested that we take time to consciously cancel all un-achieved goals from the past, with a focused visualization exercise. Then we can implement a nightly routine which has us reviewing the day, and canceling any un-achieved goals before going to sleep each night. In this way we can rid ourselves of some unproductive baggage and prevent ourselves from creating more of it each day.

We come from Love, we are made of Love, we are Love. Everything else is false.