Does the News Scare You?

How to Feel Safe in Tumultuous Times.

When you watch the evening news, do you feel nervous or scared? 

I do.

That’s our personality (or ego), the part of us that believes our safety and well-being depend on outer conditions. It assumes that when outer conditions are “good” we can feel good, and that when outer conditions are “bad” we have to feel bad.

But what if our personality is wrong?

What if we don’t have to suffer when times are tough?

In times like these, we need to become rooted in well-being that is not disturbed by the economic and political uncertainty swirling around us.

What if we have a deep source of unwavering safety and well-being within us – and we can access it easily if we know how – no matter what is happening around us? 

We do: our true self. True self is our essence, the spirit we are made of. It always gives well-being because it IS well-being.

We suffer to the degree that we do not consciously experience true self, and we feel safe, happy, grateful and free to the degree that we do. Consciously experiencing true self turns misery into well-being.

True self well-being is never as far away or difficult to find as we think.  Because we are made of true self, it is always right here, completely accessible. The moment we notice our true self, a door in our personality instantly opens to the calm, peace, joy, wisdom, clarity, love, compassion, safety, happiness, gratitude, freedom – and all other forms of well-being — we’ve been longing for.

How can we open that door?  And what gets in our way?

Listening to the quiet within us opens the door.  It can be as simple as meditating, noticing our breath for a few minutes, or spending time in nature. Or  simply asking, “Where’s goodness I’m not noticing right now?”

We block our own way every time we  believe our personality’s feelings that we’re inadequate, not meant to have goodness, or are dependent on circumstances or other people for our well-being. Or that struggle and strife are what life is really about.

What have YOU found opens your door to true self – and what gets in your way?

Let’s keep talking about it. Being connected with others who choose to live more deeply from true self accelerates our progress and validates our success.

As a life coach and author, all my work is to help people get in touch with true self. so I’ve got lots of tips up my sleeves. I look forward to sharing them with you! 

But I want to hear from you, too. Ask questions that you’d like me to address. 

And tell me, in the last week what has helped YOU to experience your true self well-being?

Turn Money Stress into Peace of Mind.

A few nights ago on TV I saw financial advisor Suzi Orman set up a Free Financial Advice booth in a mall and counsel people about their holiday spending.

One women had lost both her job and her husband this year. She felt panicked facing the holiday season–and the year ahead.

Cutting right to the heart of the matter, Suzi asked, “What would be the very best Christmas gift you could give yourself?”

Instantly the woman replied, “Peace.”

She was so right. Peace is exactly what we all want.

During the holiday season we wish each other peace and we wish for peace on earth.

The two are linked. The more inner peace we find, the greater our ability to contribute to world peace.

Yet at this time of year many people feel more stress about money.

That makes them feel more fear, anxiety or depression–not peace.

I have something to help with that.

My FREE Special Report will help you identify and quell hidden money fears that are causing you stress and disturbing your peace. Get your copy at my website: http://www.MartiaNelson.com

Then as you go through the holidays, remember the greatest gift you can give to yourself and the world.

Give peace a chance.

It Makes You Stop and Think.

November 14, 2009

I got an email this morning telling me that a friend in Oregon had just passed away.

It wasn’t a surprise. I knew that Bethany’s loving husband, Michael, and devoted friends had been steadfastly caring for her, mostly at home, since her diagnosis of pancreatic cancer two months ago. The diagnosis had come too late for treatment.

At the time I heard about the cancer, I had mostly lost touch with Bethany. We hadn’t talked or seen each other in years, but I knew she and Michael had moved from my tiny town in California to a tinier town in Oregon, one I had noticed on the map but never visited.

Then one weekend two months ago, I was thinking of her as I packed for a camping vacation I was about to take in Oregon, not far from her town.

My plan was that after driving all day–and before pitching my tent in the forested, high mountain terrain I love so much–I would be spending the first night in comparative luxury. I had been promised a comfy bed in the guest house of the Oregonian sister and brother-in-law of a woman I had come to know here by walking our dogs in the same park most mornings.

I was thinking about Bethany because the couple I would be staying with just happened to live in her town. As I searched for tent poles and my down jacket, I wondered if I should phone her about maybe getting together when I arrived the next day.

But I didn’t have to make the decision. As I was about to find out how much of my camping gear could safely be forced into my car, the phone rang. It was Michael calling with the news of Bethany’s diagnosis.

“Tell her I’ll be there tomorrow,” I said, “I’m almost packed.”

I explained to Michael about my vacation, and we were both awestruck at the synchronicity: We hadn’t spoken in years, and I had never been to their town, but I was scheduled to arrive the next day. As we kept talking we also discovered that from walking their dog at the park in their town, they knew the couple I would be staying with.

Such a small world. It makes you stop and think.

Just how connected are we?

Is it possible to ever really “lose touch” with anyone?

Do our lives move in hidden orchestration with everyone in our past, present, and future?

Do our lives move in hidden orchestration with everyone and everything, everywhere, known to us and unknown??

When I got there, Bethany was beautiful, radiant, and very weak. I curled next to her on the couch, eagerly listening to anything and everything she wanted to say. She told me of the shock of being diagnosed only days earlier and spoke in positive, optimistic terms about a future that included healing.

But through it all, I could hear in her voice that her energy was already in retreat, as though deep within she was packing for a trip, too.

On my way back from camping, I stopped to see Bethany again. This time she lay in bed while her friend, Louise, and I talked quietly with her and then did some gentle, healing sound. Louise toned with beautiful, glass Tibetan bowls while I toned with my voice. It was lovely.

And yes, there definitely was healing in Bethany’s future.

Her town rallied and held benefits for her, and two Bed & Breakfasts hosted her out-of-town family and friends for free. “They’re doing it for me!” she softly exclaimed, her eyes shining. “People I don’t even know are helping. For me.”

She said again and again she felt thoroughly loved.

Michael and the caregiver friends and family who were ever present with her spoke of the love and beauty that Bethany was in those last weeks. Even through her pain and nausea, Bethany expanded into love as she prepared for her journey to her next realm.

And even knowing that her journey would bring a great loss to them, those close by expanded into love with her.

By comparison, most of us go through our days with whatever level of awareness we have settled into. From one day to the next, we more or less want the same things and react the same ways: The same things make us feel good, and the same things make us feel bad.

The people, places and events change, but the basic template remains.

What if, instead, every day we remember that any event can be a healing event, any moment a healing moment, expanding us into love?

It makes you stop and think.

With love,
Martia

Michael Jackson, You, and Me: Is self-hate killing us?

Since June 25 I’ve been riveted to the stories about Michael Jackson. Not so much about his death, but his life. It seems that now that he’s gone, we’re getting insight to what he was like as a man, not just an icon.
 
Deepak Chopra, who was a friend and spiritual advisor to Michael for the past 20 years, made reference to Michael being physically and verbally abused as a child and talked about Michael’s subsequent prescription drug addiction and need to isolate himself from a world that saw him in extremes, eager to both idolize and demonize him.
 
Deepak spoke frankly about Michael’s self-hatred, the collateral damage from his childhood abuse. That made me sit up and take notice. THAT was the part we hadn’t been talking about all these years.
 
Self-hatred. 

 

Why hadn’t we seen it more clearly?
 
As Michael’s face was reshaped, piece by piece, right before our eyes, why weren’t we asking each other, “Do you think Michael Jackson is struggling with self-hatred?” rather than so quickly proclaiming him weird and bizarre as we snapped our minds shut?
 
Deepak recalled Michael’s self-hatred driving him to so many plastic surgeries that he then started dressing to cover up his disfigurement. The press–and we, we can admit it–judged him even more harshly then.
 
Why didn’t we see the obvious earlier? And as the obvious became more extremely obvious, why did we still sidestep it into the blind certainty of judgment?
 
Could it be because feeling empathy for Michael’s self-hatred would have put us in touch with our own self-hatred? And could our quick judgment of Michael have reflected our longtime, automatic judgment and rejection of the self-hatred plaguing us?
 
Self-hatred hurts. That’s why we’ll do almost anything to avoid feeling it, even while it’s driving our behavior. Deepak revealed that when talking about his desire for so much plastic surgery “Michael would cry and say, ‘Deepak, you don’t understand how ugly I am!’”
 
What deep, hidden part of us also wants to cry, “You don’t know how ugly I am!”
 
Sometimes we would rather adopt a generalized feeling of unworthiness or despair than feel our self-hatred. We might gravitate to relationships, work, financial straits, or illnesses that keep us so depleted or so occupied with coping and struggle that the deeper, “worse” feeling of self-hatred can’t be felt. Not directly anyway. Yet it still drives our lives.
 
If we want so much to avoid feeling or admitting to our self-hatred, why am I bringing it up? To increase our shame or make us feel even worse about ourselves than we already do?
 
No, the opposite.
 
Self-hate is energy. BIG energy. Big energy mistakenly turned against ourselves. The fact that self-hate is so destructive and debilitating is proof that it is energy used inappropriately.
 
Energy used the way it was truly intended always strengthens, nourishes, and balances us. It gives us peace and joy. Only misdirected energy causes our personality to suffer. The greater the energy we misdirect, the greater our suffering.
 
How can we redirect the big energy of self-hatred so it becomes nourishing strength and a foundation of inner peace and joy?
 
We can open to that energy in its true manifestation: self-love.
 
Self-love and self-hate might seem conflicting, like opposites, but they really are not.
 
Self-love is your essence, the spiritual essence of all of us. While self-hate rejects various aspects of self, self-love welcomes every aspect of our being including self-hate with open arms.
 
Self-love doesn’t need self-hate to change. Self-love has only love for self-hate. But in the loving embrace of self-love, self-hate does change. Naturally, automatically, and all on its own.

 

Not because it should change or is coerced, but because it is at last in the environment that gives it exactly what it needs to transform. You can almost hear self-hate sigh as it lets go and morphs into the energy of love.

 

How does that happen?
 
The vibrations of our true nature, unconditional love, are so strong and pure that self-hate automatically reconfigures itself to match. That is because in the presence of energy that is our true nature, misdirected energy will transform, returning itself to that original, love-based design.
 
So we don’t have to try to eliminate or change our self-hate. Rejecting it won’t help. If it did, we would all be healed by now.
 
What will help is noticing the feelings of self-hate that we have been pushing down or numbing, and then inviting them into the open arms of the self-love of our spirit.
 
We might not feel the change at first. It is often subtle until we adjust our awareness to perceive it. But even the slightest softening of the jaw or dropping of the shoulders–or the tiniest inner peace, so subtle that we normally would call it “nothing”–is a sign that the energy of self-hate is reconfiguring itself. Transformation has started. 
 
Welcoming self-hate into the open arms of the unconditional love of our spirit for even just five or six breaths each day will keep the transformation going.
 
It might feel like nothing, but it’s a big deal.
 
I have posted Michael Jackson’s photos here to help us remember: We are all beautiful and deserving of love, whether we know it or not.

 

Let’s keep talking about it.
 
With love,
Martia
 
P.S. To read a pivotal lesson I got from my self-love guru that helped me sort out my thoughts of plastic surgery, go to
http://martianelson.com/CoachingStories.html  and click on “Chloe’s Story.”

Oprah Scared Me.

 

Yikes!

It happened again. I got scared watching TV. I didn’t expect it. Oprah always makes me feel empowered. But this time she scared me.

It was her show on the deadly Super Bug bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics. Video of people suffering the worst case scenarios coupled with the message, “It can happen to you,” were what did me in.

I’ve always trusted my immune system. It’s gotten me this far with nothing worse than the occasional cold or flu.

Oh, wait–flu?? What about the dreaded Swine Flu?

Because of it we’ve seen schools closed, summer camps canceled, public gatherings postponed, and endless TV footage of people wearing masks everywhere they go. It MUST be a terribly dangerous disease that can make us stay in our houses.

Yet throughout the weeks when we had such media frenzy about the swine flu “threat”, statistics were quietly showing fewer deaths from the swine flu than from the regular flu.

Some days it seems like everybody’s trying to scare us!

But what if we weren’t fascinated by the scary things? What if we just noticed the scary things–but were absolutely fascinated and enthralled with the things that empower us and remind us that well-being is always within our reach?

It’s an idea worth tossing around.

We can remember that even though swine flu is out there we have immune systems that literally save our lives everyday. That’s a trustworthy inner ally!

We often assume that the dangers in life are greater than our strengths. What if we decided to turn that around and assume, always, that our strengths are greater than the dangers and challenges we encounter?

What if we see our immune systems as Super Heroes who quietly triumph for us everyday, whether we ask them to or not?

What if we assume that we have the inner strength and resourcefulness to thrive in the face of all the life challenges we encounter? And the resilience to recover whenever we’ve felt defeat or failure?

And then, what if we take it a step further and assume that, alongside everything we perceive as danger, there is an even greater force that supports our health and well-being?

The more we notice the wonderful and empowering, the less the scary affects us. Our world literally becomes a safer, more nourishing place to us.

With that as our mind’s starting point, how might our thoughts unfold differently?

Watch your thoughts this week–we’ll talk more about this  soon.

With love, Martia

P.S. Get your free mp3 at http://www.MartiaNelson.com

Inaugural Spirit

Life is filled with opportunities to open to true self’s healing power of unconditional love and connectedness.

Today I got a wonderful email describing an opportunity we all have tomorrow.  The words true self aren’t mentioned, but the Inaugural visualization it suggests is a beautiful application of living from true self.

I’ve pasted the email below.  If you read it in time for the Inauguration, great!  If you read it later, great!  It’s something we can do at ANY time, and it will be powerful.

Regardless of how any of us voted or what our political positions are, I believe that we all want what’s in this message.  So let me know how it affects you.  Here it is:

“On Tuesday morning, during the swearing-in ceremony of Barack Obama, let’s constructively use the energy of the love that will be flowing in
abundance all around the world during the whole morning, especially during his speech.  The invitation is to first feel into the energy and inspiration that is being touched in you by watching the morning¹s events.

“Then, at some moment during Obama¹s speech, close your eyes and begin to visualize these very moments are literally the turning point in world history.  Know that this speech will be referred to by future generations as the defining moment that everyone had been waiting for.  See people all over the world being inspired by Obama¹s kind heart and his safe presence and his uncanny intelligence.

“Then allow your heart to become even more tender and allow yourself to be gently touched and moved that, at last, there is an end to the fear and hatred in our hearts.  The fear and hatred that have perpetuated the recent downward spiral of violence, wars, and economic contraction.

“Literally, close your eyes and visualize this very moment as the beginning of the emergence of a new level of harmony within yourself, with your family and neighbors, and with all human beings no matter what their race, religion, nationality, sexual preference, body size or capabilities, or any other way we see ourselves as separate or different rather than looking to the deeper levels where we are all the same:  We just want to love and be loved.

“Take a moment to close your eyes and send love to anyone who you have judged or felt judged by, including yourself.  Let forgiveness flow from
your heart to any person or people who you may need to forgive, in your present life or from your past.  And ask forgiveness in your heart from
anyone who you may have violated in any way, blatantly or subtly.

“Reach deeply into your heart to forgive those politicians and corporate leaders who you perceive as having gotten the world into the mess that we are in.  Rather than your perpetuating the violence that comes with judgment and distain, see the pain that they had to have been in to destroy so many peoples lives.

“See the entire human race being so renewed in their faith and hope and goodness that we come together in trust and kindness.  The world finances turn the corner, countries are cooperating, peace is emerging.

“The environment is recovering as human beings are at last attuned to
Nature¹s beauty and sensitive balance. We are taking the dramatic steps necessary to reverse the violence we have done to her.  See people¹s
priorities shifting to simply enjoying Nature and one another, living in the abundance created by loving one another.

“If this suggestion feels right to you, tune in on Tuesday and play your
part in allowing Obama¹s Inauguration to be a turning point in human
history.  You and I have the power to change the world with our hearts.

“And please send this on to whomever you feel might what to join in.”