tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23292410315197193972024-02-19T04:11:09.509-08:00Lt. Pacello's Home PageAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12220476948913167116noreply@blogger.comBlogger71125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2329241031519719397.post-76129540683613246572015-06-26T13:13:00.000-07:002015-06-26T13:13:39.509-07:00Soldier's Heart - The Path of the Spiritual Warrior - Part 5 of 5PTSD is a broken circle. You haven't completed the journey yet. You were abandoned in hell. We must find ways for you to complete the journey and the circle. One of the most essential and effective ways to help a warrior return is the application of empathy and love. This is a universal prescription for the return journey.<br />
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I am going to describe to you an example of an ideal model which comes from the Papago people of Arizona. The first prescription of a returning warrior was to put them in isolation because they were tainted. This wasn't done as a punishment; it was done for purification. There was no sex; no food served by the families; no going straight home; both visible and invisible wounds were tended to. The warrior was surrounded by medicine people (our modern day psychologists, healers, life coaches, doctors, therapists, shamans, etc.) and elder warriors who would come to feed them. In this space, they were allowed to have an acute time to feel and heal - cry, rage, express the pain - and he was surrounded by all those who understood and who'd been there. Who 'got it'. Who were able to listen to their stories. Then, when the tending was done, they would ask the warrior, "Did you not wish to be a warrior? Can you not accept the hardships of the journey?" If the emotions were unbalanced, he was not ready to go. He was not ready to come out. But when he got to the point where he was calm and affirming, he would make an affirmation of his warrior destiny - "I affirm my warrior's destiny." He could then move onto the next stage of purification.<br />
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During this stage, in the American Indian tradition, sweat lodges were used. I've had the great fortune and honor of being able to attend a lodge out here in Los Angeles on my healing journey. It is incredibly powerful. Fire is transformative. In this sacred space you "burn off" all that is impure within you. You come out different. Something profound occurs in these rituals and ceremonies.<br />
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There are many different types of purification rituals for this stage, not just the lodge, and it can be created to fit your needs and beliefs. It must be public. All religions have purification rituals written in them for returning warriors. <u>It's a universal necessity</u>. The deeper in the zone you've been, the deeper the wound called PTSD you've suffered - the trauma, the horrors you've seen - the longer, generally, for the purification.<br />
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Many of us are walking around feeling polluted, feeling unworthy. Think how differently our society would be if we followed these simple steps and took the time to heal our wounds before going back into our communities? What a different world we would have.<br />
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After the purification stage is storytelling. This stimulates healing for the veteran as he re-contextualizes the experience and purges himself of the pain. Those who listen to the stories serve as a sacred witness to it. First the stories are told to just one person - your life coach, therapist, trusted friend, or fellow warrior. <u>You have to empty your story</u>. Eventually your story gets shared with the community. The whole community needs to participate. This is an essential component for re-integration. Why? <u>Because you must empty your story so you will be free of the toxic and polluted emotions from the experience</u>. By sharing your story with others, it becomes a part of them. They carry it with you.<br />
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There are many ways to tell your story, especially using the arts. You can write about it, dance, sing, paint, perform a work of theater - anything that is creative. You want to balance the destructive arts with the creative arts. These are tools of the soul. And tools of the soul are the most essential tools to provide.<br />
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Once you've completed this stage of the return, what follows is restitution into the community. The community takes these stories, accepts these stories, and carries them as their own. You no longer have to carry the burden by yourself; we are going to carry it together. What this does is the community transfers responsibility from the warriors to the whole community. What you are saying as the community is "I am responsible for having put you there. Regardless of what my political stance might be, I put you there. You are part of this community and I am responsible for that. You did this for me." Then, the burden is no longer on one person's shoulders; it is shared. When we share our burdens, we make better choices. When we see what happens when we put people in harms way, we'll make better decisions next time war becomes an option and the reasons why we are going to war, so that we don't do this to our men and women when motivated by corporate or self-interest. <br />
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Then, there are atonement practices, which help the warrior to be restored to the community. If you have destroyed, as an antidote, you want to create. How can you do this? Donate your time, effort, and money to a worthy cause; help re-build schools; get involved in groups that help disadvantaged youths; restore water supplies in war-torn countries; get actively engaged in community restoration activities - whatever it is, this activity must enable you to connect back to the warrior ethos of being a provider, protector, and a restorer of the natural order.<br />
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Last part of the initiation is the initiation of yourself as a warrior. You carry both the light and the darkness. When both are finally brought together, assimilated and integrated, you carry a new identity. You continue to give service without any sense of traumatic breakdown. Your identity gets bigger and bigger while the traumas get smaller and smaller until finally they disappear. You carry this new identity with honor, dignity, respect, and wisdom.<br />
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In order to get to that point, you have to go through a catharsis. You have to go through a moment where you are allowed to purge all those feelings that have been welling up, that you have been keeping contained and locked up inside of you. The program that I have created and established which incorporates and includes all of Dr. Tick's decades of dedicated, selfless work for the healing of our veterans, and is the very program that I healed myself from the crushing, devastating effects of PTSD, does this. It creates the conditions for you to do this in a safe and sacred environment. Catharsis is the goal. It is critical for the liberation of the pain and suffering you endure.<br />
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The culture of Guatemala has a description for this which I think is very appropriate. It's called 'dasaigo' - which means 'un-drowning'. You are 'un-drowning' yourself from the toxic emotions that pull you down. Catharsis achieves what most therapies fail to achieve - liberation of the soul. This ultimately leads to forgiveness, not only of yourself, but of others. Forgiveness is the key to happiness. What follows is complete restitution and re-integration. Finally coming back home.<br />
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One more story from the retreat I want to share with you. A Vietnam vet came up to me on the last night, looked at me in the eyes for a long while, and gave me a gift. He gave me a Soldier's Cross. He put it around my neck and said, "You now bear the Soldier's Cross. It's a heavy burden to bear, but you are the right man to bear it." I am honored to carry it.<br />
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As I've stated many times in these blog posts, to successfully heal and recover from this disorder you must learn to master yourself. You have got to learn the tools and the process of return which enable you to become your own master. I have brought only the best into my work. It is my goal to give you the most comprehensive and complete programs for truly healing and recovering from PTSD, and reclaiming the life you were meant to live. I am so grateful for the many blessings Dr. Tick has given me. All of us who serve the veteran population and their families are indebted to him for providing the pathway of return for all of our warriors across all the generations so that no one is left behind. Thank you Dr. Tick.<br />
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Let's transform your wounds into gifts. I want to remind all of you who read this blog that no matter how you got PTSD - whether in war, rape, abuse, disaster, or some other way - you will continue to re-live your traumas over and over again until you transform them. Transforming the part of your old self into the new self that wants to emerge is critical and essential to your full recovery. There is a way of doing it without medications, that helps make meaning of the experiences. Through spirituality, we are restored to our true selves. And when you learn from those experiences the values and gifts they gave you, unique to you, you will be able to contribute more to your families, communities, and to the world.<br />
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Blessings<br />
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Please visit Soldier's Heart's website at <a href="http://www.soldiersheart.net/">www.soldiersheart.net</a> to learn more about the work being done to restoring our warriors and communities. If you are inspired, please donate!<br />
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<u>Charlie Pacello,</u> an Air Force veteran, is a Life Coach and Healing Expert for PTSD, Depression, Addiction, and Trauma. He is a facilitator with the Mindful Warrior Project, an author, inspirational speaker, and a candidate for a Masters in Psychology and Theater at Burlington College. Charlie also works as a trainer with the Soldier's Heart program and with Drs. Ed Tick and Sarah Larsen in trauma release and healing. He is also the creator of the program, 'Lt. Pacello's Life Training Program' based on his work in healing his own PTSD, depression, addiction, and trauma. Charlie graduated from the United States Air Force Academy in 1996 and was commissioned an officer. He comes from a family of veterans: his grandfather fought in WWII, his father fought in Vietnam, and he was on the front lines of nuclear warfare. All suffered from PTSD. Charlie struggled to make that return journey home and is now committed to helping others succeed as he has. He can be reached by visiting his website at <a href="http://www.charliepacello.com/">www.charliepacello.com</a><br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12220476948913167116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2329241031519719397.post-44362705609303982082015-06-25T11:27:00.000-07:002015-06-25T11:27:26.765-07:00Soldier's Heart - The Path of the Spiritual Warrior - Part 4 of 5This hero's journey I've been writing about is an initiation. To dismember oneself, you must enter the darkness, and in the darkness, at the very bottom of it, you encounter the Beast. The Beast is your animal nature; it's the animal within you. It's the part of you that has a will to survive that is so strong, it will do anything to get what it wants. It has the power over life and death. You've got to be honest about it. You've got to be honest about experiencing it. Anyone who has ever experienced it, fully experienced it, knows how powerful it is. It can be consuming.<br />
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To gain control of the Beast though, you have to unite the head with the heart. You can get control of the Beast without allowing it to dominate and control you.<br />
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When we were in council at the retreat in 2013, we were talking about the nature of killing. What causes PTSD in soldiers is 2 things:<br />
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<li>The pain of loss. You lose somebody, your best friend, a guy or gal you went to boot camp with, who you trained with, who was always by your side. You lose them. So you have this loss - what could I have done to save him or her, and the guilt attached to that.</li>
<li>Being put in a situation where you have to kill or be killed. That's the encounter with the Beast. Ask yourself, what would you do in that situation?</li>
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We were given an opportunity to speak after the lecture and exercise. When it was my turn, I spoke to the group about how you've got to love the Beast. (By the way, the people gathered together for this retreat were amazing - there was so much deep and honest sharing of the high values, dedication, and passion for our veterans and their families. It is an honor to be working together with them on this issue). What I meant by loving the Beast is that you must love them beyond the Beast. You have to look beyond; you have to see the innocence in them; you have to love the berserker of which they have touched upon in themselves. You have to love them so much that their true nature emerges. By judging one way or another whether having killed or not killed and what that means doesn't help the sufferer. If we want our soldiers to come back home and complete their journey, we have to see beyond that, see the truth in them, and give them our unconditional love and non-judgmental support.<br />
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It was at this point, after the exhortation that I made and a momentary break to allow some time to process, we re-convened the council with the reading of a poem. While the poem was being read, a Vietnam veteran who was sitting two chairs away from me broke down into tears. He wept. Dr. Tick and the rest of the group gave him space to release what needed to be released. He told us he'd been holding onto so much pain that he hadn't wept in 40 years. He'd felt so safe in this environment that he was finally able to surrender all that he'd been holding up inside of him. Then, he looked over at me and said, "You are my son. We need you." It was a defining moment on the retreat for me on so many levels.<br />
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The point is - these warriors, these soldiers, these men and women, they all deserve to come home. They do not need to be treated as victims. You've got to look at the Beast with them; you've got to meet it; you've got to walk with it. You have to walk it with them. No judgment. No flinching. Because you are meeting the inhumanity of humanity with them. It's part of the collective human shadow.<br />
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Now, the purpose of initiation is, ironically, to lose our innocence. It is to understand both good and evil, to take this wisdom, and then, become one of the leaders and elders of the community in order to bring about the greatest good for all. Initiation can take many forms. It doesn't necessarily have to be going to war. It could be boot camp or going off to college that is a traumatic experience. When people enter boot camp, it's very traumatic - it's a dismembering; a taking apart of one's individuality and building you back up again for the military model. You start accessing parts you didn't know you had.<br />
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The military is trying to create a unified machine where individuality is stripped away and conformity is of the essence. It dehumanizes you. It dehumanizes the individual, the enemy, and civilians. That's just part of the process. In order for you to heal from your PTSD experience, you must learn to master yourself by transforming and integrating these wounds to make yourself whole once again.<br />
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The homecoming can be very traumatic in itself. First you have grief attached to it. There's a culture shock. There's a loss of adrenaline rush. The loss of your buddies. There's a feeling of displacement and anger at the trivialities of life, and a disorientation. What can you do? You must find a healthy way of returning home that makes meaning of the experience. With a study of universal spiritual principles and a realignment with the archetype of the warrior in its fullness, you are able to gain gifts from your experiences; you learn what it is you needed to learn which gives value to your life so that you can contribute more to the world. <b>You must restore meaning through spirituality</b>. Included in this is community restoration, which basically means you come to the community and tell them what you have learned.<br />
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Having the experience of war doesn't necessarily make you a spiritual warrior. There is an initiation into being a spiritual warrior once you have been restored to the community. The true values of a spiritual warrior are protecting, restoring, and preserving all of life. <br />
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The Beast, as I wrote about earlier, is a propellant. If its not related to you, it will come after you. So, you must embrace it. You must make him your friend. Find someone who can embrace it with you. If it's not me, if it's not Dr. Tick, if it's not someone in the Soldier's Heart community, find someone you trust who can embrace it with you; who can go all the way with you to meet you where you need it; to help you restore your soul to its rightful place.<br />
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Part 5 tomorrow.<br />
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Please visit Soldier's Heart's website at <a href="http://www.soldiersheart.net/">www.soldiersheart.net</a> to learn more about the work being done to restoring our warriors and communities. If you are inspired, please donate!<br />
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<u>Charlie Pacello,</u> an Air Force veteran, is a Life Coach and Healing Expert for PTSD, Depression, Addiction, and Trauma. He is a facilitator with the Mindful Warrior Project, an author, inspirational speaker, and a candidate for a Masters in Psychology and Theater at Burlington College. Charlie also works as a trainer with the Soldier's Heart program and with Drs. Ed Tick and Sarah Larsen in trauma release and healing. He is also the creator of the program, 'Lt. Pacello's Life Training Program' based on his work in healing his own PTSD, depression, addiction, and trauma. Charlie graduated from the United States Air Force Academy in 1996 and was commissioned an officer. He comes from a family of veterans: his grandfather fought in WWII, his father fought in Vietnam, and he was on the front lines of nuclear warfare. All suffered from PTSD. Charlie struggled to make that return journey home and is now committed to helping others succeed as he has. He can be reached by visiting his website at <a href="http://www.charliepacello.com/">www.charliepacello.com</a><br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12220476948913167116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2329241031519719397.post-6308343223710373952015-06-24T12:31:00.000-07:002015-06-24T12:31:37.675-07:00Soldier's Heart - The Path of the Spiritual Warrior - Part 3 of 5There are 3 key elements in nations with PTSD:<br />
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<li>There is an epidemic of PTSD in its warriors.</li>
<li>The public is not really being involved. And you can see this in your daily lives. People just went about their business without recognizing there was a war going on. Not recognizing that the soldiers they sent out on behalf of the society are also a part of them.</li>
<li>Governments denial of it and not giving it support. That's why you see so many people working to address this issue - psychologists, healers, holistic practitioners, life coaches, therapists, etc., - who are raising their voices to bring attention to this neglected group of our veterans and active duty members because the government is not doing enough. </li>
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When you see these elements in nations who have epidemics of PTSD, you really have to wonder how and why we are using force. How and why we use force is very critical. It appears from the studies done that the more aggressive nations, those who actually cross boarders into other nations, are more likely to have cases of PTSD in their soldiers, airmen, and seamen. <br />
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Another thing that contributes to this is modern weaponry. Modern weaponry is absolutely devastating. It's carnage on a massive scale. In order to counteract this, we've had to dehumanize the enemy, which hurts our souls even more.<br />
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When a soldier chooses to serve, when they hear the call to adventure, this is the beginning of the hero's journey. Joseph Campbell wrote about the hero's journey in his book, <i>The Hero with a Thousand Faces</i>. Campbell uncovered the same mythological re-telling of the hero's tale in many different cultures, societies, and traditions of the world. These stories were told and passed down through the generations of those societies. The stories connected them to their ancestral past, the origination of their civilizations. It was a record of the psycho-spiritual journey all must go through who are called to the path. These stories are stories of initiation. Initiation from one stage of life to another. And, this initiation is circular. <br />
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Basically, the process is this: you have the initiation, the call to adventure; then you have the crossing of the 1st threshold and the plunge into darkness, which is the death and dismemberment stage; this is followed by the upswing which is re-birth and re-memberment. The death and dismemberment on a psycho-spiritual level is a letting go of the old self. Re-birth and re-memberment is the adoption of the new self.<br />
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One of the important aspects about this for men is that men have to be taught how to be responsible for life. It's not something that we are born with. Women have a menstrual cycle. They are already connected to the responsibility for life. For women, the changes are already built in. For men, it has to be provoked. So, going to war, for thousands of years, has been part of that initiation process, part of the dismemberment - being torn apart - and, in an initiation, this is what occurs, you are symbolically torn apart. What is actually happening is when you are being torn apart, you are actually being re-made.<br />
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Think about a person who gets sick. They have an illness, and when they finally get over their illness, they're a different person. They're ready for the next stage of life. This works the same way on the psycho-spiritual and emotional level. Part of this re-memberment, this putting back together, is if we don't tell our stories, if we don't <u>own</u> our stories, we are not fully re-born.<br />
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Contemporary psychological therapies only teach people how to survive, not to be fully re-born. We are seeking initiation in a culture which doesn't value full initiation; and thus, we get caught, stuck, trapped, and left with the pain of PTSD and trauma.<br />
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In the hero's journey, the most difficult part of the journey is the return. Why? Because you've changed and the culture you're returning to has not. Most soldiers say, and I think you will find this interesting, their most severe traumas occurred not when they were still in the shit, but when they were trying to come back home. The purpose of the journey, your journey, is to enlighten, deepen, and enrich the community. <br />
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Part 4 tomorrow.<br />
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Please visit Soldier's Heart's website at <a href="http://www.soldiersheart.net/">www.soldiersheart.net</a> to learn more about the work being done to restoring our warriors and communities. If you are inspired, please donate!<br />
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<u>Charlie Pacello,</u> an Air Force veteran, is a Life Coach and Healing Expert for PTSD, Depression, Addiction, and Trauma. He is a facilitator with the Mindful Warrior Project, an author, inspirational speaker, and a candidate for a Masters in Psychology and Theater at Burlington College. Charlie also works as a trainer with the Soldier's Heart program and with Drs. Ed Tick and Sarah Larsen in trauma release and healing. He is also the creator of the program, 'Lt. Pacello's Life Training Program' based on his work in healing his own PTSD, depression, addiction, and trauma. Charlie graduated from the United States Air Force Academy in 1996 and was commissioned an officer. He comes from a family of veterans: his grandfather fought in WWII, his father fought in Vietnam, and he was on the front lines of nuclear warfare. All suffered from PTSD. Charlie struggled to make that return journey home and is now committed to helping others succeed as he has. He can be reached by visiting his website at <a href="http://www.charliepacello.com/">www.charliepacello.com</a><br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12220476948913167116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2329241031519719397.post-42295715931615524392015-06-23T13:54:00.000-07:002015-06-23T13:54:37.428-07:00Soldier's Heart - The Path of the Spiritual Warrior - Part 2 of 5The hardest part of the hero's journey is the return. I want you to know that it is possible to heal and come home. I recognize I'm speaking in this series of blog posts to the veterans, active duty personnel, and their families, but the process of healing soul distress applies to most everyone who suffers from PTSD. Why? The war you are fighting is the one within. Whether you got PTSD from war, child abuse, accidents, rape, emotionally or physically abusive relationships, disasters of any kind, whatever it may have been, apply these ideas to your own personal situation. As the Buddha says, "It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell." When you win this victory, you come home.<br />
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Now, the current medical and psychological belief is that this is a life-long disorder. The best you can do is deal with it and make re-adjustments. Everyone else around you also has to make re-adjustments. And yet, you are labeled as someone who is sick. What's to be done? What can be done is you get on the healing path for the restoration of your soul and spirit. Dr. Tick's work and the amazing people at Soldier's Heart, my work, the Mindful Warrior Project, and others, enable you to do just that. </div>
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Trauma is a wound, a moral wound. It comes from an ancient Greek word. It means "a piercing wound". And the warrior's wound is a moral wound. Because we've done something, been a part of something, experienced something that went against our hearts. We had to learn to kill; we had to learn to destroy; we had to learn to accept and unleash the total destructive power contained in the nuclear bomb - this is not something we were born with. This goes against our hearts. It is anathema - against the right way. In order to heal from this, we must place our trauma in a higher power than ourselves. It places it in a different domain, in the spiritual domain. Then we can access healing powers that we wouldn't be able to access otherwise.</div>
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Many people feel they don't need to be healed. That they're ok. Well, let me say something about PTSD. PTSD is honorable and inevitable in environments of intense conflict. It's proof of your humanity. The only ones who don't experience any kind of soul distress after intensely traumatic events are those who are sociopaths, who are incapable of feeling, who have no sense of empathy, which is about 2% of the population. Intense environments - wars and conflicts - make sane people go insane. It's evidence of our humanity. We should be wounded from these experiences and we should take the time to heal and tend our wounds. When we take the time to tend and heal our wounds with someone who has earned your trust - you don't tell your story to everybody, you tell it to someone who's earned the right to hear it, who "get's it", and who understands the power of empathy - you can and will transform your wounds. You can digest those experiences, integrate them into yourselves, so that the symptoms shrink and eventually disappear. Your identity will grow large enough, you will expand large enough so that no longer will the traumas and events of those times in your past control you. And your life will be yours again.</div>
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These invisible wounds. These piercing wounds to our soul. In traditional cultures, you would not carry these wounds alone. The ancient Greeks, Egyptians, and American Indians understood all life to be interconnected; nothing was separated. Hence, if one part of us was wounded, then all of us are wounded. If one of our men; one of our women; one of our family members is wounded, we are all wounded. With this understanding, it takes a more comprehensive, integrated approach to heal this disorder. It requires holistic healing - the body, heart, mind, and soul connection; it's understanding on a transcendent level what it is that you experienced; it's re-connecting to the earth; it's re-integration within the community and acceptance from the community.</div>
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There was something I learned at this retreat which I found fascinating. The Vietnamese vets from the Vietnam war don't have any PTSD. The last recorded case was in the 1970's. And the reason behind this is because they have some major cultural and spiritual differences. The American mindset points to the brain as the center of the problem; whereas the Vietnamese point to the heart. The wound is in the heart. </div>
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Now, their spiritual practices are different than ours. It's foundation is Buddhism and the nature of Karma. Karma plays a big part in their understanding of the world. As we watched a video of a healing pilgrimage to Vietnam, the Vietnamese interviewed didn't see the American soldier as the problem; they saw the political leadership as the problem. They have no hatred for the American soldier. The Vietnamese understood the laws of Karma and applied it to the bullet. The bullet was the messenger of Karma. What this allowed them to do in their mindset was to <u>accept tragedies without judgment</u>. They figured out you can't control chaos. The other major difference was the Vietnamese had a community that brought back their warriors. This community gave them permission to process all that needed to be processed; to digest all that needed to be digested, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually, and let go of all the toxic emotions that needed to be let go. </div>
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We don't do that in this country, or haven't done this for our veterans for a very long time.</div>
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Part 3 tomorrow.<br />
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Please visit Soldier's Heart's website at <a href="http://www.soldiersheart.net/">www.soldiersheart.net</a> to learn more about the work being done to restoring our warriors and communities. If you are inspired, please donate!</div>
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<u>Charlie Pacello,</u> an Air Force veteran, is a Life Coach and Healing Expert for PTSD, Depression, Addiction, and Trauma. He is a facilitator with the Mindful Warrior Project, an author, inspirational speaker, and a candidate for a Masters in Psychology and Theater at Burlington College. Charlie also works as a trainer with the Soldier's Heart program and with Drs. Ed Tick and Sarah Larsen in trauma release and healing. He is also the creator of the program, 'Lt. Pacello's Life Training Program' based on his work in healing his own PTSD, depression, addiction, and trauma. Charlie graduated from the United States Air Force Academy in 1996 and was commissioned an officer. He comes from a family of veterans: his grandfather fought in WWII, his father fought in Vietnam, and he was on the front lines of nuclear warfare. All suffered from PTSD. Charlie struggled to make that return journey home and is now committed to helping others succeed as he has. He can be reached by visiting his website at <a href="http://www.charliepacello.com/">www.charliepacello.com</a><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12220476948913167116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2329241031519719397.post-77706832782637781012015-06-22T10:59:00.000-07:002015-06-22T10:59:02.737-07:00Soldier's Heart - The Path of the Spiritual Warrior - the Inestimable Work of Dr. Edward Tick, Part 1 of 5Back in the fall of 2013, I spent an incredible weekend at a retreat in Joshua Tree. It was the Soldier's Heart Level 1 Training weekend for veterans, family members of veterans, healers, practitioners, psychologists, and others who are dedicated to healing the invisible moral wounds of PTSD. It was one of the most memorable weekends I had on my path of recovery. I wish I had the ability to describe to you the emotions, feelings, and love expressed in this council. Dr. Edward Tick and his wife Kate Dahlstedt conducted the retreat for the purposes of training those in attendance on their model, the Soldier's Heart model of transformation from war veteran to Spiritual Warrior. We were given a comprehensive understanding of the inner world of those who had experienced combat, war trauma, military culture, and the essential role of community in the re-integration process. Dr. Tick wrote the book, <u>War and the Soul</u>, a must read for all veterans and their loved ones who want to understand the path of the Spiritual Warrior and how it relates to those who choose military service. His most recent book, <u>Warrior's Return: Restoring the Soul after War</u> presents a powerful vision for changing the way we welcome our veterans back home. I was given the great honor to be included in this work, to express my own "soul wounding", how this led to me losing my moral compass, and my journey into the Underworld. These are a must read for you veterans out there who read this blog. I implore you to get them and begin to understand the true nature of what PTSD is. As one Iraqi vet has so succinctly stated in <u>Warrior's Return</u>: "We don't need complicated psychological definitions. PTSD results when your head tells you to do what your heart tells you is wrong." <br />
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This Soldier's Heart weekend back in 2013 was so powerful, I've felt the need to write about it and share with all of you my experience. The vision, message, purity of intention, nobility, wisdom, and deep conviction of Dr. Tick's work to heal the hearts and souls of our veterans is so important, so vital to the renewing and restoring of our warriors and society, it needs to be spread. <br />
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Before I go into detail of my experience at the retreat, I want to share with you how Dr. Tick and Kate describe Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. They call it Post-Traumatic Soul Distress. Having had first hand experience with this, I know this to be absolutely, unequivocally true. Our souls are in distress. In a moment in time our souls are shattered, broken. These wounds sear our hearts, we become fragments of who we used to be, disconnected from ourselves, disconnected from the world around us, and we wonder if life will ever be filled with joy again. It takes immense courage, compassion for self and others, determination, and a fearless commitment to reclaim and create the life you were meant to live. Believe me, I know. The hardest part of the journey is the return, and to do it requires an understanding of the true nature of the warrior's path.<br />
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Sitting Bull said,<br />
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"You tribes behold me, the Chiefs of old are gone, and myself, I shall take courage."</blockquote>
When you're on the warrior's path, you can't change it. You are on that path for life. What is so important is the stories we tell. The stories of our soldiers' are our stories, and yet, as a society and community, we've made this disconnect where they have to bear the brunt of their stories and keep it within them, and hence, they suffer alone.<br />
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We need to help soldier's speak their honorable past. They went there with honor, and they should come back with honor. Now, we've artificially created the non-combatant/combatant veteran and this negatively affects veterans who have PTSD that never experienced combat. War has a very long chain, everyone is exposed; you are a part of that war machine. A person who never sees combat and yet who sees the body bags coming in in order to identify the bodies can suffer just as severely as any combat veteran. We should never judge another person's suffering. Another example. An officer who sends his men on a routine mission and they suddenly find themselves caught in an ambush. He hears their cries and screams, bullets flying and bombs exploding in the background, and he stands there in total helplessness and terror for the welfare of his soldiers for he can't do anything to prevent or stop the tragedy from happening. This man or woman can be crippled by PTSD for life.<br />
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War has very long tentacles. It particularly affects family members. Anyone who has ever lived with a veteran know this. The vet comes back from the war with the war still raging inside of them. The family members bear the brunt of having to deal with all the pain, all the toxic emotions, and all the suffering that their veteran is experiencing. <br />
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Military service itself can be very traumatizing. We are broken down. It is a breaking down of your own unique individuality. This is necessary in order for the unit to work together as one in times of war. However, in order to bring our warrior's back, we must rejoice in the warrior's healing. In order to rejoice in the warrior's healing, we have to start thinking differently. We have to start thinking differently about warfare, about warriors, and about the invisible wounds of war and start thinking from a holistic, spiritual perspective. What do I mean by this?<br />
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The warrior's path is a psycho-spiritual journey. The spiritual warrior is an archetype; it's been with us a very long time. It's been around since man first stepped foot on this planet, in every tribe, in every nation, in every culture. The problem is, in the last 4000 years or so, we've not stayed true to the values and ethos of the spiritual warrior. What it's been about is greed, conquest, and aggression. It's been a perversion of what the warrior ethos is all about. No wonder so many men and women are broken. <br />
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Warriorhood is built into us. It's among the archetypes that hold us together in our collective unconscious. What we've forgotten is the path of return. And there are paths of return that have been in all cultures and all religions, but we've forgotten about them. The Bible is loaded with rituals to bring soldier's back home; Native American rituals as well. But because society as a whole doesn't want to deal with these pains and having to accept responsibility for their part in placing these soldiers in harms way, we prevent them from making that return journey. There is a warrior and civilian contract. They are out there serving us. And they are embarking on the hero's journey, everyone is, when we send people to war.<br />
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Part 2 tomorrow.<br />
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Please visit Soldier's Heart's website at <a href="http://www.soldiersheart.net/">www.soldiersheart.net</a> to learn more about the work being done to restoring our warriors and communities. If you are inspired, please donate!<br />
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<u>Charlie Pacello,</u> an Air Force veteran, is a Life Coach and Healing Expert for PTSD, Depression, Addiction, and Trauma. He is a facilitator with the Mindful Warrior Project, an author, inspirational speaker, and a candidate for a Masters in Psychology and Theater at Burlington College. Charlie also works as a trainer with the Soldier's Heart program and with Drs. Ed Tick and Sarah Larsen in trauma release and healing. He is also the creator of the program, 'Lt. Pacello's Life Training Program' based on his work in healing his own PTSD, depression, addiction, and trauma. Charlie graduated from the United States Air Force Academy in 1996 and was commissioned an officer. He comes from a family of veterans: his grandfather fought in WWII, his father fought in Vietnam, and he was on the front lines of nuclear warfare. All suffered from PTSD. Charlie struggled to make that return journey home and is now committed to helping others succeed as he has. He can be reached by visiting his website at <a href="http://www.charliepacello.com/">www.charliepacello.com</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12220476948913167116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2329241031519719397.post-70907825498141291942015-02-08T14:45:00.000-08:002015-02-08T14:45:49.766-08:00California BBS Investigation of my Life Coaching Practice for PTSD<div>
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Are you meeting a challenging time in your life and figuring out what the best thing to do is? Are you at extremes - having the best of times and the worst of times? If so, maybe my recent story can help you.</div>
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It was the best of times. I had finally healed after all the work I had done for 3 years and life was really beginning to open up again. Little did I know what could have been the worst of times was brewing. Last year someone reported me to the California State Board of Behavioral Sciences; they had "received information indicating you may be advertising in a manner which is false, misleading, or deceptive" and that "These statements may lead the public to believe that you are licensed to practice therapy." The Board requested information about my Life Coaching practice for PTSD, depression, and trauma. </div>
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It came as a surprise. Nowhere in any of my advertising or written work had I pretended to be a licensed therapist or psychologist, and I make it very clear to all clients who I work with I am a life coach. I had spent the good part of 3 years healing myself, developing my program, testing it out to see what worked and what didn't, and putting together what I believe is one of the best, most comprehensive, holistically-based programs out there to bring healing and transformation from soul distress. A lot of blood, sweat, and tears were spent. Months of wondering if I was ever going to feel good again, or if life was ever going to be worth living another day. The deep resounding cry wailing from within clamored for a path to be given me to reclaim my life, and in so doing, show others how they might be able to do it as well. There were many dark days and sleepless nights filled with hopelessness and despair of a man dying to be born again and given a second chance to live. </div>
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I kept going. I poured my whole heart and soul into finding a way out of the excruciating pain and suffering I was crippled by from a severe case of complex PTSD. I never quit. I never gave up. And, step by step, with every tear drop, I climbed out of that hell I was in. Then, at the moment of my greatest success, when I had just been vetted by the military on the legitimacy of my program (see the letter below) and given the stamp of approval, I received the letter from the Board. It was crushing. The Board had mailed it to the wrong address and this was a second request, which was mailed to me fortuitously by Michelle Gazeley, who owns the office space Face-to-Face in Redondo Beach. She's the owner of that office and would kindly let me use it to meet with clients when I needed to. She mailed it to my home address just in time for me to respond to it. </div>
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"Meeting the Challenge", that was my father's motto for his business, and those words echoed in my mind as I was being asked to meet the greatest challenge to my work and it's integrity. I submitted to the Board a detailed letter along with my flyers, pamphlets, and my entire program. I didn't want to hide anything. After a very intense weekend, I successfully mailed it off in time to meet the Board's deadline. A month passed before I heard back from the Board. It was a month filled with self-doubt, sadness, and insecurity of the the unknown. I kept working - I continued meeting with clients and building my practice; I attended the LA Pro Bono Fair and offered my Life Coaching services to the community at large; I attended the monthly meeting with the LA Veterans Collaborative; I submitted my application for the level 2 training in January 2015 with Soldier's Heart; I applied to graduate school at Burlington College, Vermont; I continued to do my work with the Mindful Warrior Project in bring mindfulness practices to vets on Skid Row and helped train clinicians at Didi Hirsch on how to incorporate mindfulness into their work. Finally, on November 3rd, the letter arrived from the Board. I remember taking a deep breath as I opened the letter to see what the verdict would be.</div>
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Below is the exchange in it's entirety, the request for information, my response, and the Board's response. I share this with all of you because it is my intention to be clear, authentic, and transparent to all who come across me and my work.</div>
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The Board cleared me. Here's a direct quote from their letter:</div>
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"After a thorough review of the information obtained during our investigation, along with the response you submitted regarding your current advertising practices, prove that you have corrected the matter. Accordingly, the Board is closing the case."</blockquote>
The Board recognized my work. <br />
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What do I hope you take from my sharing of this story? I want you to know you too can be clear, authentic, and transparent, and not to give up hope. Sometimes in our greatest challenges we discover how strong we really are. We are able to meet it with a clarity and strength we did not know we had and conquer a fear we didn't think we were capable of overcoming. When we are tested, we must meet the challenge with courage and fearlessness, believing in our hearts what we know to be the truth of who we are, what we stand for, and what we came here to do. I hope this inspires you to meet whatever challenges you may be facing in your own life. <br />
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These are the original letters' photographed. I apologize in advance if it is difficult to read. </div>
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The Request for Information:<br />
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The Board's response:<br />
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<u>Charlie Pacello</u> is a PTSD, Depression, and Healing Trauma Recovery Expert and Life Coach, a former US Air Force Lieutenant, and creator of the program, 'Lt. Pacello's Life Training Program.' He can be reached by visiting his website at <a href="http://www.charliepacello.com/">www.charliepacello.com</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12220476948913167116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2329241031519719397.post-80243883275211067362015-01-14T13:55:00.000-08:002015-01-14T13:55:06.889-08:00How to Embrace Our Tragedies and Make Peace with our Past<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">This is not easy. It requires a willingness to see things
differently, a willingness to be guided into the dark recesses in our past and
make meaning of the experience. In order
for us to transform our wounds and heal our pain, we must find the courage to
go back and extract the good that came out of those experiences, find the gifts
in the wounds, and turn our suffering into blessings. Whether it’s with me or another coach or
therapist, the person you choose must have earned your trust. They have earned the right to hear your story
and they stand as a sacred witness to the encounter with the beast, or, as I
like to call it, our shadow. Now, there
is no person who’s work best understands the necessity for going into the
shadow and finding its gifts than the work of the late Debbie Ford.</span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The work of
Debbie Ford was instrumental in helping me to integrate the shadow side of
myself during my healing process, and she is one of my most honored
teachers. Debbie Ford’s life work was
focused on understanding the shadow. The
shadow is something we all must face, all of us who suffer from Post-Traumatic
Soul Distress. For some, it’s the encounter with
the Beast; for others, it’s those things about ourselves we don’t want to admit, or we hide
from others, its secretive, it’s everything we don’t want other people to see
or know about us. It’s the thing we lie
about to others, it’s what we lie about to ourselves, and it’s what we are
hiding. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The I Ching says:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>“It is only when we have the courage
to face things exactly as they are, without any self-deception or illusion,
that a light will develop out of the events by which the path to success may be
recognized.”<o:p></o:p></b></span></span></i></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">For time
sake, I’m going to go through the highlights of the movie “The Shadow Effect”
by Debbie Ford, which I have all my clients watch and which I encourage all of
you who are reading this blog to watch as well before you go into the
work with your shadows, with your traumas, with the pains of your past. It will give you some awareness of things you
may not have known before, and it will help ease the process as you navigate
through the dark recesses, these secrets that you keep from yourself and from
others. I’m going to hit on some of the
key notes from the film that I believe will be of so much value to you. My goal is when you finishing reading this post, you will have received valuable information you can
immediately utilize in your lives as you begin to face your shadows. Again, I don’t recommend doing this alone,
find someone you can relate to, who understands and has been there, who gets
it, who will stand with you as a sacred and honored witness as you travel
through the Underworld and retrieve your light back. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">To
experience one aspect of the soul you have to experience its </span></span><span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">counter-force</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">. The shadow comes from thoughts, from
emotions, from impulses we find are so repulsive and are distasteful to accept. So instead of dealing with them, we repress them, and it shows up as: drinking
too much, cheating on your wife or your spouse, or getting into fights,
screaming at your kids, verbally abusing your partners, and it can even get to
the point where its dangerous, where you are thinking of taking someone else’s
life. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">There are
hundreds of millions of people living in denial of their own shadow. And all of us are being affected by the
collective shadow. And this manifests as
evil, as war, as terrorism, and social injustice. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The birth of
the shadow begins when we are very young.
When we don’t have the rational mind quite developed yet to filter out
the messages that are coming in and we are shamed for behaviors that we do. These messages get ingrained in our subconscious and, like a virus, it gets
stuck there and sabotages our sense of self. It wounds our otherwise
healthy egos and then we end up suppressing these qualities, we don’t want
others to see these qualities in us, so we build a false self around it. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">We build a false self around these negative
ideas we have about ourselves to show everyone we meet that we are not this
person.</span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">We create these personas so that
we can belong.</span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">We build masks, and live
life behind them, and they become our prisons.</span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">
</span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">When we deny ourselves an outlet for our dark side, it builds up and it
builds up, and it becomes a very powerful force that is capable of destroying
not only ourselves but the lives of others as well.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">You are
either going to use it or it is going to use you. As my dear friend and healer, Miguel Rivera,
who runs purification ceremonies for veterans says, “The Beast is a propellant. If it’s not related to you, it will come
after you.” We must find a way to make
friends with it, and by uniting the head with the heart, gain control of the
shadow part of our own humanity, without allowing it to dominate us. The purpose of confronting our shadows is to
complete our initiation, our transformation.
We lost our innocence during the events which traumatized us. These shadows of the past haunt us until we
face them. We need courage, compassion,
and empathy for ourselves as we do this. The key though, is when we meet our
shadows, we </span></span><span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">mustn't</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"> stay stuck, and we must find the meaning in the experience. When we are able to identify
the meaning these experiences had for us, we come to understand both good and
evil and the part we played; we then can begin the process of transforming ourselves
through integration of the lessons learned, which allows the charge of the past
to fall away, as our souls become larger than the events that occurred, and we
are wiser for the experience. And then,
we can use these experiences to bring about the greatest good for all within
the community. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Every
quality you see in someone else is in you.
The sinner and the saint; someone who is worthy and someone who is
unworthy; someone who is </span></span><span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">lovable</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"> and someone who is unlovable; someone who is brilliant; someone who is stupid; who is a winner; who is a loser; who is kind;
who is mean; who is selfish, or who is selfless; who is forgiving; who is
blaming; we possess it all. We are
everything. Rather than confronting our
own darkness, we project these unwanted qualities on to others. When we project these unwanted qualities onto
others, we lose bits and pieces of ourselves, and they hold on to some of our
unclaimed light as well, because we projected it away. What we judge in others or condemn is a
disowned part of ourselves, and we attack it because it is the part in us that
we hate. And, this is a really important
part to get, when we react to a projection, you become that projection. When you react with an equal force to the
aggressor, you become the aggressor.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I think it’s
important here to understand what the difference is between a response and a
reaction. The root word of response is
responsibility, it comes from a French word which means ‘standing on
principle.’ So when you are responding,
you’re coming from a place of being. My
being is stable, at peace, connected, creating harmony. These are the principles that I stand
for. And when I’m responding, I’m
responding from that space. I’m
breathing in, I’m checking in on an unconscious/subconscious level with my
principles, and then I’m responding.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">When you
react, there is an action happening, which is re-enacting a belief system, an
exchange. A reaction is taking an action
that has occurred before and happening again.
It’s an automatic way of being for us, for society. It’s not principle based. So, what you want to do is re-stand on
principle, dig in deep, and find a principle that you connect with. You are constantly looking at what do I stand
for? What do I stand for? And as other things come up, and they are
going to come up, you dig back into the work, the bliss list you created, the
value system that you created for yourself.
Everything is an opportunity to reflect, to share, to connect with what
you stand for. Everything is trying to give
you something, and this includes the yelling, the screaming, and the traumas. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">If we don’t
face what’s in us that needs to be faced, the darkness, and shine a light in
the dark, by ignoring these destructive patterns and impulses in you, you will
self-destruct; you will implode, rather than explode. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Traumas
affect our brains, they change our brains functions, and consequently, this
changes the chemicals and hormones released into the body, which is not a good
thing. So it’s important to express any
kind of pain. Without that expression and how we express it, it stays with
us, it gets lodged in the body, and causes us to react and live unconsciously. If these emotions and what you think, the
things that have not been processed from the pains and traumas of your past, it
will pollute your system. These are the
most toxic things to our bodies and lead to all the physical, emotional, and
psychological impairments that show up later in life. Our thoughts and emotions affect the organs
of the body, there is indisputable evidence.
If we repress our anger, it might seem like it’s a good solution, but
pretty soon we run out of places to hide.
By repressing our shadow, it can lead to destructive behaviors. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We have to
resolve the undigested emotions that are in our bodies and dislodge the stress
in our minds. We have to unearth, own,
and embrace the very parts of ourselves that have caused us the most pain, and
the moment we do, the light of our awareness will begin the process of
transforming them. Everyone has gone
through some kind of trauma. And if we
dig deep enough, there is gold to be found in every experience. Bad experiences can be enlightening
experiences because they help us to be who we are. They help us to be more compassionate, they
help is to be forgiving, and they help us to be more loving. So the gold that we seek, it’s hidden within
the dark. We have to embrace our
totality, all that we have disowned, and when we do, we experience freedom, and
we embrace it with love. The more we
move through the shadows of our past, the painful memories and experiences, the
more light we reclaim. And we do this
kind of work, leading you through your Underworld to reclaim your light, to get
you to the point of catharsis. Which is
the true moment of forgiveness. You
forgive yourself, you forgive others, and you are transforming that pain into
the material to be used for the manifestation of, the full embodiment of, the
greatest version of yourself, the greatest expression of yourself. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">You don’t
have to carry this shame with you all alone, you don’t have to keep it secret,
and there are people out there who are willing to shine a light for you so that
you can see who you really are beyond the shadow. You've got to fight your way out of the
darkness. And I honor people in that way, in that most vulnerable level,
because I understand, I've been there, and I will walk with you step by step to
get you to the other side. I took my own
medicine. I’m not asking you to do anything I haven’t already done. We will find what you have learned that gives
value to your experience and helps you to transform those wounds into gifts.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Debbie Ford
reminds us in the film, “Forgiveness doesn't happen in your head, until it
happens in your heart.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I want to
move forward now to one of the most important exercises I have my clients do
when I work with them in healing the pain of their past. This is just one of many tools I have to help
you unlock the prison doors which keep you locked up in the painful recycling
of memories, triggers, and images from the past. I could spend several hours going over how to
embrace your tragedies, it is a process one must be willing and ready to do,
and have the commitment and dedication to do it. You must want to heal more than anything, and
be willing to invest the time into your own healing, for yourself and for
others. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">When you
look at your traumas, and when you work with me we will look at all of them, we
are going to ask the question, ‘What would you like to re-shape?’ With just this one question, you give
yourself the opportunity to re-shape all of your conflicts. You want to look back at all the conflicts in
your life and at the genesis of the conflict, where it began. And then, you are going to write an essay
about it. At the top of the paper, you
want to write ‘I am Whole. I choose this
experience just the way it is.’ You put
this at the top of the page, and then you write about it and what you take from
the experience. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It’s
important to take the time to find the gifts wrapped up in the tragedy. Ask yourself these questions as you are going
through this part of your life story:
‘What is the gift?’ ‘How does it
serve you?’ ‘What is it trying to teach you?’
What you are looking for is the gifts in the wounds. There is something
to be found in there. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It’s our
secrets that keep us sick. Unlock these
secrets. And while you do this resist
all temptation to shame yourself. Shame
is what keeps us doing the same thing over and over again. Shame is a destructive force, it is the most
painful feeling connected to the feelings of unworthiness, it is the lowest
energy of the universe. A healthy shame
is designed to support us when we are behaving well or badly. However, when it becomes negative, it will
destroy. The antidote for shame is true
empathy. Shame cannot survive
empathy. You must have compassion for
yourself as you work through these dark places, and have someone there whose
empathy and love is totally unconditional and non-judgmental to guide you
through to the other side.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The only
thing we have to heal within ourselves is to tell the truth. To become an honest person we must own our
shadows, we must own our own darkness, and bring the light of truth to the
darkness. When you shine a light in the
dark, the darkness goes away, because ultimately the darkness is nothing. It is merely the absence of light. Tell the truth from your whole heart, speak
the truth of your experience from your whole heart, and as the adage goes, ‘it
will set you free.’<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The gold is
in the dark. There are things there to
be found which can help you to detoxify the toxic emotions that have kept you
imprisoned by these events. There is
something there to teach you, there is something there to reclaim. Trust in the process as you write your story
out, trust in the things I am asking you to do.
This is one of the most effective ways in which I healed myself, by
examining the areas in my life that had traumatized me and found the lessons to
be learned. When I got the lesson, it
broke the emotional and psychological stranglehold these events had on me, and
like a river of ice which suddenly breaks, the water began to flow again, the
ice began to melt, and the flow and joy of life returned. This process works.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I want to
say something about emotional triggers.
Emotional triggers, whenever you feel triggered, these are alarms – they
are cues to your shadows, they are cues to the secrets of your past, they
actually have nothing to do with what is going on in front of you right now, it
has something to do with what happened in the past. It shows you something that you need to
uncover and reclaim about yourself. So,
when the triggers come up, start identifying them, and go back to where it
originated. Put down the internal bat,
and investigate where and how this began, how it has affected your life, and
uncover what it is trying to teach you.
One of the keys for this process to work is you must take full ownership
of your life, all of it. Being at the
source of your own life, you are finally able to make the changes necessary to
bring about the things you want to experience.
And to clear up the past, you must own up to the part you played in it,
and that, on some level, you created it.
This will be different for each individual. We are not the same, your story is yours, and
your traumas are yours. You know you
have grown beyond what has happened to you when you can stand up and say, ‘This
is my past. This is what happened. And I am better for the experience. It has given me everything I need to be the
greatest version of myself today. I am
grateful for it all. I wouldn't change a
thing.’<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The most
commonly suppressed emotions turn toxic when we suppress them. You've got to take on the self-hate, the
guilt, the shame, the anger, and see it for what it is. All the hurt, the hopelessness, the sadness,
the jealousy, anger, and hate – you want to ask yourself when confronted by
these messengers, ‘what would I have to see, what would I have to know, to
digest enough of my history that is stored in my body so that when new emotions
open up, new feelings, that they aren't triggered by the 42 events in my past’. You've got to look at your negative emotions
not as enemies, but as friends trying to tell you something. They are trying to guide you, help you, and
support you into becoming something better, something greater. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Another
great question to ask yourself when you look at these events is ‘what do you
think you made it mean about you when this happened?’ Did you shame yourself? Did you think of yourself as a bad
person? A failure, a reject, a
killer? The story is emotionally charged
by the meaning you have given it. You
want to understand what you made it mean about you, and why you no longer
believe this to be true utilizing universal spiritual truths based on love,
peace, and forgiveness as the new baseline for your life. Eventually, when you have purged the story
out on paper, the next step is you want to reduce these painful stories to
their elementary facts. You made it mean
something about you that was going on back then, and because you haven’t fully
digested it, it keeps coming back, until you get it. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We all have
a unique recipe. You must learn to love
those parts of you that you have disowned; you have got to integrate them back
into you. Discover, as you are writing
about your traumas, the good that came out of it. How did you grow? What did you become good at? What lessons did you learn? What are you grateful for? What wisdom can you gain? There is life wisdom to be gained. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We learn our lessons in the valley, not on
the mountain top. And, if we don’t learn
how to forgive ourselves and others, the train stops. So look at the life wisdom you can take away
from the experience. What was this
experience designed to teach you? What
is the lesson to be learned that you can extract from the experience and turn
into a blessing? What did you gain? What qualities did you develop? What relationships opened up to you as result
of this experience, and what do you know now as a result of having this
experience? How can this new wisdom
contribute to your future? And how can
it alter the way you see yourself, the way you see others, the way you see the
world? <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">These
questions, along with the ones I spoke about earlier, you need to ask and
answer for yourself as you examine the traumas in your life. This is challenging work. Ease into it, be gentle and kind with yourself,
when emotions come up, and they will, feel them, let them out and run their
course, and when you come back to a place of balance and equanimity, return to
the work, get to the cause and source of all your pain, and uproot it. Go at your own pace, and leave no stone
unturned. The reward of total freedom,
peace, and release from your past awaits you on the other end.</span><span style="font-size: 16pt;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: 16pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<u>Charlie Pacello</u> is a PTSD, Depression, and Healing Trauma Recovery Expert and Life Coach, a former US Air Force Lieutenant, and creator of the program, 'Lt. Pacello's Life Training Program.' He can be reached by visiting his website at <a href="http://www.charliepacello.com/">www.charliepacello.com</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12220476948913167116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2329241031519719397.post-36086614333447042922015-01-08T09:21:00.000-08:002015-01-08T09:21:22.959-08:00The Opportunity of Adversity - The Amie Mullins Story<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">How do you look at adversity in your
life? Is it something you become afraid
of, try to avoid, or fear? Or is it
something you use as a means to becoming the greatest version of yourself? Well, I want to tell you the story of Amie
Mullins, and how she was able to overcome the extreme challenges in her life
and prove to all of us, that in spite of what life may have dished out to us,
and the experiences we may have had, we still have it within us to reach our
fullest potential and excel in whatever we put our minds to. </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Amie was
born without fibular bones, and had both of her legs amputated below the knee
when she was just an infant. She learned
to walk on prosthetics, then to run – competing at the national and
international level as a championship sprinter, and setting world records at
the 1996 Paralympics in Atlanta. At
Georgetown, where she double majored in history and diplomacy, she became the
first amputee to compete in NCAA Division 1 Track and Field. This is her story.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This
information all comes from the video in which I share with my clients and most
of this is in her own words, because what she has to say is so invaluable I
want you to have it now. In the video,
Amie stands on the stage and talks to us about being disabled. She reads us the entry in a thesaurus of the
word ‘disabled.’ Here it is:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><u><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></u></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><u><span style="line-height: 115%;">Disabled</span></u><span style="line-height: 115%;">:
An adjective. Crippled, helpless,
useless, wreaked, stalled, maimed, wounded, mangled, lame, mutilated, run-down,
worn-out, weakened, impotent, castrated, paralyzed, handicapped, senile,
decrepit, laid-up, done-up, done for, done in, cracked up, counted out. See also hurt, useless, weak. Ant.
Healthy, strong, capable.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">When Amie first read this in the thesaurus, she laughed, it was
so ludicrous, but then she got choked up around the word ‘mangled.’ Amie had to stop and collect herself from the
emotional shock and impact the assault from these words unleashed. Print date of this thesaurus was from the
early 1980’s. Thank God she didn't read
that as a child growing up. From this
entry, it would seem that Amie was born into a world that would perceive
someone like Amie to have nothing positive whatsoever going for them. When, in fact, today she is celebrated for
the opportunities and adventures her life has procured. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Amie decided
to look up the updated version of this entry for ‘disabled.’ She looked in the 2009 Edition of the
Merriam-Webster Thesaurus.
Unfortunately, it wasn't much better.
Here are some of the entries for ‘disabled’ in this one:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><u><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></u></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><u><span style="line-height: 115%;">Disabled</span></u><span style="line-height: 115%;">: blind, deaf, mute, paralyzed,
quadriplegic, immobile, immobilized, ailing, diseased, ill, sick, unfit. <u>Some near ant:</u> bouncing, chipper, fit,
healthy, hearty, robust, whole, wholesome.
<u>Ant</u>: able-bodied, nondisabled. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Amie found
these to be very unsettling, and she was right, these are unsettling
words. They carry a lot of power. But it’s not just about the words. It’s about what we believe when we label
people with these words. It’s about the
values behind the words and how we construct those values. This is something I really want you to
get. <u>Our language affects our
thinking, and how we view the world and how we view other people.</u><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Many ancient
societies believed, including the Romans and the Greeks, that to utter a curse
verbally was so powerful because to say the thing out loud brought it into
existence. So, if this is true, what
reality do we want to call into existence?
Do we want to call into existence a person who is limited or a person
who is empowered? By casually doing
something as simple as naming a person, a child, we might be putting lids and
casting shadows on their power. Wouldn't
we want to open doors for them instead? <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The person
who opened the door for Amie was her childhood doctor, Dr. Pizzatillo. He had the perfect disposition to work with
children. One of the things Amie had to
do as a five year old child was work with these thick elastic bands during her
physical exercise repetitions. Amie
hated it. She tried as a five year old
child to bargain her way out of doing the exercises but to no avail. Dr. Pizzatillo came in one day and told her,
when she was having a very difficult time, ‘Wow, Amie, you are such a strong,
powerful little girl, I think you’re going to break one of those bands. When you do break it, I’m going to give you
100 bucks.’ This was a simple ploy to
get Amie to do the exercises. And, it
worked.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">What he
effectively did for her was re-shape an awful daily occurrence into a new and
promising experience for her. His vision
and declaration of her as a strong and powerful little girl shaped her own view
of herself as inherently strong and powerful person well into the future. This is an example of how adults in positions
of power can ignite the power of a child.
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But if you
think back to the previous entries I wrote out for you from the thesaurus about
‘disabled’, our language isn't allowing us to evolve into the reality that we
would all want: the possibility of a person to see themselves as capable. Our language just hasn't caught up with the
changes in our society, much of which has been brought up as a consequence of
technology. Just take a look at all the
medical marvels that we have: people can
get titanium knees and hips, prosthetic legs, there is laser surgery to correct
vision – think about that for a second.
This is amazing. Look at our
social media networking platforms – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc – this
enables us to self-identify and own our own dispositions about ourselves. Technology is revealing to us what has always
been a truth: <u>that everyone has something rare and powerful to offer our
society</u>. And this above all: <u>our
human ability to adapt is our greatest asset.
</u> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">People
always wanted to talk to Amie about overcoming adversity, and to Amie, this
phrase never sat right with her.
Implicit in this phrase – overcoming adversity – is the idea that
success or happiness is about emerging on the other side of a challenging
experience unscathed or unmarked by the experience. As if her successes and achievements in her
life came about by side-stepping or circumnavigating the presumed pitfalls of
living a life with prosthetics, or what other people perceive as her
disability.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But the fact
is we are changed. We are marked by a
challenge, whether physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually, or all of
them combined, and what Amie suggests in this video is that this is a good
thing. Adversity isn't an obstacle that
we need to get around in order to resume living our life. It’s a part of our life. It’s like your shadow, it’s always with
you. Now this is not intended to
diminish any of your struggles. You may
have experienced absolute horrors in your life, incredible conflicts and
destructive violence, on either an emotional or a physical level, or both; you
may have seen things you wish you’d never have seen; you may have done things
you wish you’d never had done; you may have experienced extraordinary pain in
your life; I am not in any way diminishing the significance of a person’s
struggle with PTSD, depression, and trauma. <u>But
the question is not whether you are going to meet with adversity, but how are
you going to meet it?<o:p></o:p></u></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Our
responsibility is not simply shielding those we care about from the challenges
of adversity, but preparing them to meet it well. We do a disservice to our kids, our friends,
and our loved ones when we make them feel they are not equipped to adapt. There is a very important distinction between
the medical fact of Amie being an amputee and the subjective societal opinion
that Amie is disabled. Truthfully, the
only real and consistent disability Amie had to face in the world was ever
thinking she could be described by the definitions of being disabled. In our desire to protect those we care about
from the truth of their medical prognosis, or a prognosis on the expected
quality of their life, we have to make sure we don’t put the first brick in a
wall that will actually disable somebody.
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Perhaps the
existing model of looking at you and seeing what is broken in you and how do we
fix it serves to be more disabling to an individual than the pathology
itself. <u>By not treating the wholeness
of a person, by not acknowledging their potency, we are creating another ill on
top of whatever natural struggle they may have</u>. PTSD is normal, honorable, and inevitable in
environments of intense conflict. It’s a
sign of your own humanity. You should
have been wounded by these events and you need to take the time to heal and
mend your wounds, share your story with those who understand and can guide you
back to yourself, who can help you to transform the pain of those memories and
turn those experiences into gifts. I've
said this before, and I will say it again.
We will continue to re-live the same traumas over and over again in some
form until we transform them. You
accomplish this transformation by connecting to your wholeness. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">However,
when we don’t treat the wholeness of a person, when we don’t acknowledge their
potency, what happens is we are effectively grading someone’s worth to our
community, so we need to see through the pathology, and into the range of human
capability. Each and every one of you reading this blog can overcome, heal, and transform your pain. I've done it.
I know how to do it. And you can
do it as well.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">There is a
partnership between those perceived differences and our greatest creative
ability. It’s not about devaluing or
degrading these difficult trying times as something we want to avoid but instead,
<u>find those opportunities wrapped in the adversity.</u> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Here’s Amie’s idea what to do when adversity
confronts us, and I agree with her 100%.
She says ‘it’s not so much about overcoming adversity, but opening
ourselves up to it; embracing it; Dancing with it.’ <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Adversity is
natural, consistent, and useful and when we look at it in that way we are less
burdened by the presence of adversity. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Charles
Darwin has a great quote about the essence of the human character. He says, “It’s not the strongest, or the most
intelligent, it’s the one that is most adaptable to change that survives.” Conflict is the genesis of creation. The human ability to thrive and flourish is
driven by the struggles of the human spirit through conflict into
transformation. This is our greatest
human skill: transformation and adaptation.
It’s not until we are tested that we learn what we are made of and
maybe, that’s the gift of adversity - a sense of Self; a sense of our own
power. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">When we look
at it this way, we can give ourselves a gift.
We can re-imagine adversity as change.
It’s just change we haven’t adapted to just yet. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So many
people talk about being normal. We often
hear people saying, “I just want to be normal”, or “Why can’t you be normal?”
as if being normal was the ultimate desire to be cherished. But what is normalcy? There’s no normal. There’s common, there’s typical, but there’s
no normal. We must change this paradigm
from achieving normalcy to possibility or potency, and then we can release the
power of so many people, children and adults alike, and invite them to engage
in their rare and invaluable abilities with the community. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Anthropologists
say the one thing we as humans have always required of our community members is
to be of use, to be able to contribute.
And there is a vast potential in the Human Will. This is our X factor. Unless repeatedly told otherwise, and given a
little support, a child or an adult will achieve. There is a difference between the medical
condition and what someone might do with it.
No prognosis, whether it’s an amputee or a person with PTSD, can account
for how powerful this could be in the determinate in the quality of someone’s
life. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">At 15 years
old, if you would have asked Amie if she would have traded her prosthetics for
flesh and bone legs, she wouldn't have hesitated for a second. She aspired for that ‘normalcy’ back
then. But if you ask her today, she’s not
so sure. And it’s because of the
experiences she’s had with them, and not in spite of the experiences she’s had
with them. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">All you need
is one person, one person, to show you the epiphany of your own power, and
boom, you’re off. If you can hand someone
their own key to their own power, our spirit is so receptive, if you can do
that for someone, and open a door for them at a crucial moment, you are
educating them in the best sense. You
are teaching them to open doors for themselves.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">To Educate. The root word of educate is ‘educe’ which
means to bring forth what is within to bring out potential. So my question to you is: What potential do
you want to bring out?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">There was an
interesting case study done in the 1960’s England called the ‘Streaming
Trials.’ What they did was they
separated ‘A’ students from ‘D’ students and for 3 months, they gave the ‘D’
students ‘A’s, told them they were ‘A’s, they were bright, and at the end of
the 3 months, these students were performing at ‘A’ level. The heartbreaking flipside is they told the
‘A’ students they were ‘D’ students, and that’s exactly what happened. They failed.
Others dropped out. A crucial
part of this case study was the teachers were duped too. The teachers were simply told that these are the
‘A’ students and these are the ‘D’ students, and that’s how they went about
treating them and teaching them. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">What does
this show us? It shows that the only
true disability is a crushed spirit. A
person who has a crushed spirit doesn't have any hope, they don’t have any
curiosity or a deflated curiosity, they don’t see any beauty in life, and it
deprives a person of his or her innate ability to imagine. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">If instead
we could bolster the human spirit to keep hope, see the beauty in themselves
and in others, and to be curious and imaginative, then we are truly using our
power well. When a spirit has those
qualities, we are able to create new realities and new ways of being. </span><span style="font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<u>Charlie Pacello</u> is a PTSD, Depression, and Healing Trauma Recovery Expert and Life Coach, a former US Air Force Lieutenant, and creator of the program, 'Lt. Pacello's Life Training Program.' He can be reached by visiting his website at <a href="http://www.charliepacello.com/">www.charliepacello.com</a><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12220476948913167116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2329241031519719397.post-59508953684044425512015-01-02T15:18:00.000-08:002015-01-02T15:18:41.924-08:00Promises to Make to Yourself for 20152015 has just begun, and we all want to start it off on the right foot. We set new resolutions, plans get underway to make changes in our lives, and we often discover after a month or two has passed, we have fallen behind on what it is we set out to do for the upcoming year. So, how can you keep focused on the year ahead? Drawing up a list of promises to make to yourself is one of them. I've provided a list of 12 promises which I believe will help you to set the stage for 2015 as one of your best years yet. It's a list which has helped me immensely. I encourage each of you who read this blog to print it out and post it where you can look at it daily. Whenever I'm being challenged by life as to what I ought to do, I take a look at this list, and really let it sink in. It has a way of grounding me back into myself, and helps to keep me focused on the things I want to experience in my life. <br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">To be honest with you, I struggle with knowing what to do sometimes. I get so lost. This list was given to me by Dr. Sarah Larsen, one of my mentors, and a dearest friend. It has helped me stay focused on ways to focus my energy until I was beyond this. These are simple but powerful statements you can gift to yourself everyday which can truly make 2015 a year unlike any other.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="background-color: white; color: #444444; line-height: 23.7999992370605px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Repeat after me: “I promise…”</span></div>
<ol style="background-color: white; line-height: 23.7999992370605px; margin: 0px 0px 15px 40px; padding: 0px;">
<li style="margin: 0px; padding: 3px 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">“I will not hold the past against myself.”</strong> – Your problems, your weaknesses, setbacks, regrets and mistakes teach you if you’re willing to learn, or they will punish you if you’re not. So let them teach you, every day. Take everything as a lesson learned. If you regret some of the decisions you have made in the past, stop being so hard on yourself. At that time, you did your best with the knowledge you had. At that time, you did your best with the experience you had. Your decisions were made with a younger mind. If you were to make these decisions with the wisdom you have today, you would choose differently. So give yourself a break. Time and experience has a wonderful way of helping us grow and learn to make better choices today, for ourselves and those we care for.</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px; padding: 3px 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">“I will own my life and never deny responsibility for it.”</strong> – Through the grapevine, you may have learned that you should blame your parents, your teachers, your mentors, the education system, the government, etc., but never to blame yourself. Right? It’s never, ever your fault… WRONG! It’s always your fault, because if you want to change, if you want to let go and move on with your life, you’re the only person who can make it happen. It’s YOUR move to make. It’s YOUR responsibility. Own it!<span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"></span></span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px; padding: 3px 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">“I will speak kindly and consciously to myself.”</strong> – Wait, what did you just say to yourself? Were they the inspiring, encouraging words you would speak to a friend? Or were they the belittling remarks you might shout to an enemy if you had no heart. Or the negative assessments about life you would utter if you had no faith? All day long we speak silently to ourselves, and a part of us believes every word. So stay mindful, and ask yourself, “If I had a friend who always spoke to me in the same way that I am speaking to myself right now, how long would I allow that person to be my friend?” <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">(Read <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400045371/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1400045371&linkCode=as2&tag=marandang-20&linkId=CJKWGOSFEF53XTP6" style="color: #1c9bdc; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Loving What Is</a><img border="0" class="CToWUd" height="1" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/proxy/AVvXsEgCETW2SClv5EWUVcBBKXeuygfKWj99tShQWOtCmOSdawlrYBEWTLCP4hm4JtreSAxBV6s71bSB2GNF9X5fmhagDwer48X_hI8LViRqOIkDEAXsd34MC0UDo72ZMiDGubtnlfsnfcZMW-Q59qrfPpw8zrICocbSWiH3JKIK2U4P9zMoYKbYJoUU5q2I=s0-d-e1-ft&l=as2&o=1&a=1400045371" style="border: medium none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px;" width="1" />.)</em></span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px; padding: 3px 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">“I will listen to what my heart and soul is telling me.”</strong> – When something feels right, that means it is right for you (at least it is worth looking into). And if you genuinely feel deep down that something is wrong, it probably is. Pay attention to your authentic feelings, and follow where they lead. When you’re following your inner voice, doors tend to eventually open for you, even if they mostly slam at first.</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px; padding: 3px 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">“I will live a life that feels right to me, not one that looks right to others.”</strong> – Give yourself permission to follow the path that makes YOU happy. And realize that some people in your life will refuse to walk beside you as you embark on this journey; they simply won’t approve no matter what you say, and that’s OK. Sometimes when you commit yourself to creating your own happiness, it clashes with the perceptions of others. Sometimes when you gain something great, <a href="http://www.marcandangel.com/2014/05/07/6-strong-signs-its-time-to-let-go/" style="color: #1c9bdc; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="6 Strong Signs it’s Time to Let Go">you have to let go of something else</a>. And sometimes this ‘something else’ is a relationship that only wants you to do what they want you to do.</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px; padding: 3px 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">“I will let go of relationships that are obviously not meant to be.”</strong> – Most people come into your life temporarily simply to teach you something. They come and they go and they make a difference. And it’s OK that they’re not in your life anymore. Not all relationships last, but the lessons these relationships bring to you do. If you learn to open your heart and mind, anyone, including the folks who eventually drive you mad, can teach you something worthwhile. Sometimes it will feel weird when you realize you spent so much time with someone you are no longer connected to, but that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be. You are exactly where you’re supposed to be. We all are. <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">(Angel and I discuss this in detail in the “Relationships” chapter of <a href="http://www.marcandangel.com/book/" style="color: #1c9bdc; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="1,000 Little Things Happy, Successful People Do Differently">1,000 Little Things Happy, Successful People Do Differently</a>.)</em></span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px; padding: 3px 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">“I will not let any situation permanently steal my smile.”</strong> – Even when times are tough, take a moment to pause and remember who YOU are. Take a moment to reflect on the things that have real and lasting meaning in your life. And then smile about how far you've come. Honestly, nothing in this world is more beautiful and powerful than a smile that has struggled through the tears. Any fool can be happy when times are easy. It takes a strong soul with real heart to develop smiles out of situations that make us weep. No matter how long it takes, it will get better. Keep going. Tough situations build strong people in the end.</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px; padding: 3px 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">“I will celebrate and appreciate the life I have.”</strong> – Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are. Don’t be one of them. Take a breath of fresh air. The past is behind you. Focus on what you can do today, not on what you could've or should've done yesterday. Remember, for everything you've lost, you've gained something else. Appreciate what you have and who you are today. Life does not have to be perfect to be wonderful. Count your blessings, not your troubles. <a href="http://www.marcandangel.com/2014/05/04/20-questions-that-will-free-your-mind-from-negativity/" style="color: #1c9bdc; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank" title="20 Questions that Will Free Your Mind from Negativity">It costs nothing to be positive, and it changes things for the better.</a> Your thoughts are yours to control, so make good use of them to give your actions and your life a powerful advantage.</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px; padding: 3px 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">“I will realize and use my power to make a difference.”</strong> – The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any. Don’t do this. The world needs you. In a world filled with doubt, you must dare to dream. In a world filled with anger, you must dare to forgive. In a world filled with hate, you must dare to love. In a world filled with distrust, you must dare to believe. And once you do, I promise, you will find that power you once thought you lacked.</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px; padding: 3px 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">“I will dedicate myself to personal excellence.”</strong> – Anything worth doing, is worth doing right. And excellence is never an accident. It’s the result of high intention, focused effort, intelligent direction, skillful execution, and the vision to see obstacles as opportunities. It’s also important to note that excellence cannot be judged by looking at where you are at any given point in time, but by measuring the distance you have traveled from the point where you started. It’s about being diligent and making progress – either a step forward or a lesson learned – day in and day out. <em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">(Read <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1451639619/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1451639619&linkCode=as2&tag=marandang-20&linkId=TOVNCN7Z5FRD6R2X" style="color: #1c9bdc; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People</a><img border="0" class="CToWUd" height="1" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/proxy/AVvXsEgPaOCwmaPkS7rkxBNRT83Pn9I5RENtjcZl0AlRJjfL0jHiEckWBh0f4fv2EgbZAP8dYfndwuGo9k5LP4yBFs-V_S2G52tk_7mwMXn2SXJCRwO9d6-kd-Pq0V2GXP8JY4saSc5hvM6B5DSllpSf27tXAfOxN3OIw8MsDJ1hYuBTs9AYdK4C52aQ4Vri=s0-d-e1-ft&l=as2&o=1&a=1451639619" style="border: medium none !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px;" width="1" />.)</em></span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px; padding: 3px 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">“I will keep stretching myself beyond my previous level of comfort.”</strong> – Just because you’re struggling doesn't mean you’re failing. Every great success requires some type of worthy struggle to get there. Know this! When you’re struggling, that’s when you’re growing stronger and smarter. The more time you spend there, the faster you learn. It’s better to spend an extremely high quality ten minutes growing, than it is to spend a mediocre hour running in place. Every day, you want to practice at the point where you are on the edge of your ability, stretching yourself over and over again, making mistakes, stumbling, learning from those mistakes and stretching yourself even farther.</span></li>
<li style="margin: 0px; padding: 3px 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">“I will embrace the changes I know I need to make.”</strong> – Life is a balancing act of holding on and letting go – of staying put and moving on. We strive to make the right choices, but how do we know when it is truly time to move forward with our lives? The signs aren't always easy to accept, but they are there and you know it. Relationships, jobs, and even the cities we live in have expiration dates. Sometimes we hold on to what’s not working out of fear that we won’t be able to adapt to necessary changes. And thus, the outcome is always the same: more pain, immense frustration, and lasting regret. Be smarter than that. Embrace the changes you know you need to make.</span></li>
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<span style="line-height: 23.7999992370605px;">Happy New Year everyone!</span></div>
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<u>Charlie Pacello</u> is a PTSD, Depression, and Healing Trauma Recovery Expert and Life Coach, a former US Air Force Lieutenant, and creator of the program, 'Lt. Pacello's Life Training Program.' He can be reached by visiting his website at <a href="http://www.charliepacello.com/">www.charliepacello.com</a><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12220476948913167116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2329241031519719397.post-30661682412009347862014-12-27T12:17:00.000-08:002014-12-27T12:17:35.362-08:00World Peace and the Unified FieldDuring this time of year, when we are spending it with our families, setting aside for a moment all the turmoils, tragedies, and numerous conflicts occurring in the world today, we celebrate a time when good will towards men is the theme. In all of our hearts, no matter where we live in the world, we all cherish joy, love, and peace. It is our natural state, and when we set aside our judgments, disagreements, and feelings of separation from our human family, we come in contact, even if it's just for an instant, of the possibility of what life could be like. It's a time where we are given a chance to be re-born to our truer selves, to the goodness within, and plant the seeds for a better day when we will no longer see each other as separate. I'm reminded right now of the Christmas Miracle of 1914, when the German and British soldiers fighting in World War I put down their arms for one day, stepped out of the trenches, and celebrated Christmas together. They drank tea, sang Christmas songs, and played games with each other despite the fact there was a war going on between them. In the midst of trench warfare, these soldiers somehow found it within their hearts to take a step back, recognize each other's common humanity, and let peace, joy, and goodwill towards all men reign for one day. If those men could do it then, we can do it today, no matter where our brother lives, or what his religious or ethnic background is. It's going to take all of us to look deep within our hearts as to what kind of world we want to live in. This time of year, we are given the opportunity to touch what is most true in us. <br />
<br />
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">One of the
videos I have my clients watch when I’m working with them is a video from the
Maharishi University of Management, from a lecture given by David Lynch and
John Hagelin. This talk is on world
peace and the unified field. David Lynch
as you may know is a well-known filmmaker, television director, visual artist,
musician, and an occasional actor. Some of
his best known films are Dune (1984), Mulholland Drive (2001), and Inland Empire
(2006). John Hagelin is a former
researcher at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the
Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC). He
is now Professor of Physics and Director of the Institute of Science,
Technology, and Public Policy at Maharishi University of Management. He has conducted research into the unified
field theory and the Maharishi Effect. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In this
particular video, they are talking about world peace. This is something everybody wants, everybody
wants world peace, but unfortunately nobody believes that there can be world
peace. It’s this nice idea that’s just
hanging out there. It’s really
meaningless. We think it’s got to be
this way, the world has got to be the way it is. We think we've got to have war, we think we've
got to have violence, we've got to have intense struggle and intense conflict
in order for life as we know it to exist.
I want to introduce you to a new science; it’s called the Vedic science,
or the science of consciousness. This
technology of the science of consciousness can easily bring this world we so
want about, this reality of world peace.
The science of peace is not just the absence of war; it’s the absence of
all negativity.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Peace is
real. And it comes from this unified
field. It can be enlivened in an
individual and it can be enlivened in a group to bring peace. This information comes to us in the video
from David Lynch. Dr. John Hagelin, who
is a quantum physicist, speaks next, and he goes into great detail about the
science behind all this theory. He
begins by saying there are 300,000 manuscripts and books on peace, and on
average, about 3 people have read them, which includes the author and the
publisher. We all want to create
peace. Now, the field of consciousness
is the field of unity, the field of bliss, the field of peace, on a tangible,
palpable, physical level, millions of times more powerful than the nuclear
force, if we could just access it, access this consciousness.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">What we need
in order to access this consciousness is we need more peacemakers who can
develop their nervous systems to a point where they become the lighthouses of
peace, where they radiate peace. When an
individual mind contacts Being at the Source of Thought, when individual
awareness expands to become universal, it creates a ripple in the universal
field, just like a ripple in the electromagnetic field. And this ripple propagates in all directions
at the speed of light. Just imagine, for
instance, what happens with a broadcast antenna. Just like a broadcast antenna, when you shake
the electrons up and down in the antenna, it creates a local disturbance in the
electromagnetic field, and that disturbance propagates out in all directions at
the speed of light. If we have a
transistor radio on the other side with an antenna, this disturbance will cause
the electrons in the antenna of the transistor radio to shake up and down and
this shaking up and down of the electrons in the antenna is decoded by our
transistor radio as music. So this
information gets communicated through ripples propagating through the
electromagnetic field. We are all very
familiar with this reality. Whenever you
turn on your radio in your car, this is what is happening, these ripples that
are being propagated through the air and being decoded by the antenna of your
radio so that you can hear music in your car.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In the same
way, we stimulate the more fundamental field of unity, the more fundamental
field of consciousness; it creates a ripple that can be felt. Research shows that to have a really powerful
effect you need to have these ripplers rippling in close proximity to each
other. That creates not just a ripple,
but a tidal wave of unity, a tidal wave of peace, a tidal wave of
coherence. This coherence, this unity,
this peace get communicated through this field of consciousness. <u>That’s why it is important to understand
consciousness is a field that we all share, that underlies and pervades us all!<o:p></o:p></u></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Amazingly,
because the strength of numbers is such that it doesn't take that many people
to influence large areas, say for instance, the whole Pacific Coast. The reason behind this is because, let’s say
for instance, you have 2 loud speakers in a boom box, they are close together,
and they are playing minoral sounds.
What that means is they are playing in sync. The volume of sound generated by two loud
speakers is 4 times the sound of 1 loud speaker. 3 loud speakers produce 9 times the sound of
one loud speaker if the speakers are close together. That’s because these waves all coherently
produce a wave that is 3 times as high.
A wave that is 3 times as high has 9 times the power. The power grows as the square of the height
of the wave. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">That is why
the research shows the radiated influence of peace in the environment grows
roughly as the square of the number of the people doing it together. The end squared effect amplifies the power to
be enough to produce a demonstrable, repeatable, publishable effect on crime
rates, even terrorism, even stopping warfare in war torn areas like the Middle
East. I have a prime example. Look how we miraculously averted war with
Syria. War appeared to be inevitable,
and yet, suddenly, miraculously, a way out of the conflict appeared, and we
avoided military interaction. Enough
people around the country and the world were radiating peace, which in turn
provided for the right conditions to produce an alternative way out of the
crisis and what seemed like a point of no return. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This is a
technology. It is a science and a
technology for peace. Negativity goes
away, like darkness goes away when the sun comes up. The sun doesn't even have to do anything to
drive the darkness away. The sun doesn't
even care about the darkness, the sun just comes up, and the darkness goes
away. When this happens, when the
unified field gets enlivened, negativity goes, it just goes. </span></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">If we look at it in that way, connect the
dots, and use this field towards bring about peace, we will discover that peace
is much more powerful than we realized. At this time of year, when our hearts our filled with all that is good about ourselves, each other, and the world, let us take the time to contemplate extending this sense of peace we feel, not just to this time of year; but to the possibility of peace being the norm of every day of the year, not the exception. If we all do our part, and treat each other with a little more kindness, a little more compassion, a little more love, each moment we do, we are bring more peace into this world. When enough of us are doing this, being lighthouses of peace, the negativity in our world will gradually </span></span><span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">dissipate</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">, and our children, and our children's children will be born into a much different world than we were. We must choose what kind of world we want to gift them with. It's up to us. </span></span></div>
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<u>Charlie Pacello</u> is a PTSD, Depression, and Healing Trauma Recovery Expert and Life Coach, a former US Air Force Lieutenant, and creator of the program, 'Lt. Pacello's Life Training Program.' He can be reached by visiting his website at <a href="http://www.charliepacello.com/">www.charliepacello.com</a><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12220476948913167116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2329241031519719397.post-9980171316956618262014-12-10T13:59:00.002-08:002014-12-10T13:59:52.120-08:00The Incredible Story of Jill Bolte Taylor<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">I want to
share with you now one of my favorite videos I have in my program that I share
with my clients. I am going to share
with you the story of Jill Bolte Taylor in her own words. A neuroanatomist by profession, she had a
rare opportunity few brain scientists ever could have. One morning she realized she was having a
stroke. And as it happened, she felt her
brain functions slip away one by one –her speech, her movement, her understanding
– and while this was happening, she studied and remembered every moment. This video is a powerful story about how our
brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another.</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Jill grew up
studying the brain because she had a brother with a brain disorder,
schizophrenia. As a sister and as a
scientist she wanted to understand why she could connect her dreams to her
reality and make them come true. At the
same time, she wanted to know what it was about her brother’s brain and his
schizophrenia that he could not connect his dreams with a common and shared
reality so they instead became a delusion.
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">She
dedicated her life’s work to research and study severe mental illnesses. She worked at the Harvard Department of
Psychiatry, and her function there was to look at the biological differences
between someone who has what we would consider “normal” control as compared to
the brains of individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia, schizo-affective, or
bipolar disorder. Essentially, they were
mapping the micro-circuitry of the brain.
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Jill had a
very full life. She was working on
something she was passionate about, she was spending her weekends supporting a
non-profit organization she was deeply committed to, and so her life was
fulfilled. Yet, on the morning of
December 10, 1996, she woke up to discover she had a brain disorder of her
own. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A blood
vessel exploded on the left side of her brain.
She had a major hemorrhage. In
the course of 4 hours, she watched her brain completely deteriorate in its
ability to process all information. She
could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life. Essentially she became an infant in a woman’s
body. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">If you have
ever looked at a human brain, most of us have, (you can find on the internet
pictures of what the human brain looks like), you will notice that there are two
cerebral cortices that are actually completely separate from one another. For those of you who understand computers,
the right hemisphere functions like a parallel processor while our left
hemisphere functions like a serial processor.
The two hemispheres do communicate with one another through the corpus
callosum. Other than that, the two
hemispheres are completely separate. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Our
hemispheres process information differently.
They each think about different things and care about different
things. Our right hemisphere is all
about the present moment, this present moment.
Right here. Right now. It thinks in pictures and it learns
kinesthetically through the movement of our bodies. Information in the form of energy streams in
simultaneously through all of our sensory systems and then it explodes into
this enormous collage of what this present moment looks like, what this present
moment smells like, tastes like, what it feels like, and what it sounds
like. We are all energy beings connected
to the energy all around us through the consciousness of our right
hemispheres. We are connected to one
another through the consciousness of our right hemispheres as one human family,
right here, right now. Those of you who
are reading this blog, we are brothers and sisters on this planet here to make this
world a better place. In this moment, we
are perfect, we are whole, we are beautiful, and we are magnificent. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Our left
hemisphere is very different. It thinks
linearly and methodically. Our left
hemisphere is all about the past, and all about the future. It’s designed to take this enormous collage
called the present moment, and it starts to pick out details, lots of details,
it then categorizes and organizes all that information, and then associates it
with everything in the past we've ever learned, and projects into the future
all of our possibilities. Our left
hemisphere thinks in language. It’s our
on-going brain chatter that connects our internal world with our external
world. It’s that little voice that
reminds you of things to do, but more importantly, it tells you who you
are. It tells me, ‘I am’. As soon as my left hemisphere says ‘I am’, it
separates me, you, us, from the energy flow around us and keeps me separate
from you; and you from me. This is the
portion of the brain Jill lost on the morning of her stroke.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">She woke up
to a pounding pain over her left eye. It
was this caustic pain, like when you eat too much ice cream, and it would grip
her then release her, and then it would grip her again, and release her. She noticed it, but she didn't think too much
of it at the time. She ended up jumping
on to her cardio-glider; it’s this full body exercise machine. As Jill was working out on this, she noticed
that her hands looked like primitive claws grasping onto the bar. It was as though her consciousness had
shifted away from her normal perception of reality where she was a person on
the machine having this experience, to some esoteric space where she was
witnessing herself having this experience.
Jill walked across the living room floor and she noticed everything in
her body had slowed way down. Every step
was rigid and very deliberate; there was no fluidity to her movement. There was a constriction in her area of
perception so she was only focused on her internal systems.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Jill
attempted to get into the shower and she ended up losing her balance and was
propped up against the wall. As she
looked down at her arm, she realized she could no longer define the boundaries
of her body, where she began and where she ended, because the molecules and
atoms in her arms blended with the molecules and atoms of the wall. All Jill could detect was this energy. Energy was all around her. She tried to figure out what was going
on. The chatter in her left hemisphere
suddenly went silent. She was captivated
by the energy around her, and because she could no longer identify with the
boundaries of her body, she felt this enormous and expansive feeling. She felt at one with all the energy around
her, and she felt it was beautiful.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Jill’s left
brain comes back on and tells her she’s got a problem. But then she drifted back into this beautiful
energy and expansive consciousness. It
was just too beautiful there. Now,
imagine if you can what it would be like to be totally disconnected to the
brain chatter that connects you to the external world. This is what it felt like: all stress and
concerns, traumas, relationships, problems, issues connected to the external
world were gone. This is the freedom she
felt. She felt lighter in her body and
felt this incredible sense of peace.
Just imagine what it would be like to let go of a lifetime of emotional
baggage! This is what Jill felt like –
it was euphoria!<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Her left
brain comes back on and says she needs to get help. Jill starts walking around the apartment
attempting to get ready for work. And
she keeps asking herself, ‘Can I drive? Can I drive? Can I drive?’, and just
then, her right arm went totally paralyzed by her side. Suddenly she realized she was having a
stroke. So the next thing her brain says
to do is ‘This is so cool! How many
brain scientists have the opportunity to study their own brains from the inside
out?!’<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Jill then
tries to call work to get some help. She
remembers she has a business card in her office with her numbers on it. She goes into her office and pulls out a
stack of business cards, and even though she knows she could see clearly in her
mind’s eye what her business card looked like, she couldn't tell if what she
was looking at was her card or not because all she could see were pixels. All the pixels of the pictures, words,
background and numbers were blended together.
Then Jill would wait for what she described as a wave of clarity, and in
that moment she could reattach to her normal reality and then she could tell
which card was hers or not. It took Jill
45 minutes to get down one inch inside the stack of cards to find
hers. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In the
meantime, her hemorrhage is getting bigger.
Jill didn't understand numbers, or the telephone, but that was the only
plan she had. She put the phone pad and
her card next to each other and she starts matching the shapes of the squiggles
of the phone card to the squiggles on the phone pad. However, she would drift back out into la-la
land, and then she would come back and not remember which numbers she had
dialed. This went on for a while. Eventually the whole number gets dialed, and
her colleague gets on the phone and all she hears is this ‘woof woof woof’ on
the other end, similar to the sound the teacher would make in the Charlie Brown
cartoons. And she thought to herself,
‘he sounds like a golden retriever.’
What Jill didn't know was that she couldn't speak or understand language
until she tried. Her colleague
fortunately figured out she needed help and called the paramedics. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">On her way
to the hospital in the ambulance, Jill curled up into a little fetal ball –
like a balloon that had just a little bit of air – and she felt her energy lift
and felt her spirit surrender. In that
moment, Jill knew she was no longer the choreographer of her life, and either
the doctors would rescue her body and give her a second chance at life, or this
was her moment of transition.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">When she
woke up later that afternoon, Jill was shocked to discover she was still
alive. When she felt her spirit
surrender, Jill had said goodbye to her life.
Her mind was suspended between two very opposite planes of reality. With stimulation coming in through her sensory
systems, it felt like pure pain, light burned her brain, and sounds were so
loud and chaotic she couldn't pick out a voice from the background noise. Jill wanted to escape. At the same time, because she couldn't
identify her body in space, she felt enormous, expansive. Her spirit soared free in a silent
euphoria. She found nirvana. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Jill
remembered thinking there was no way she could squeeze this enormousness of
herself back into her tiny little body.
But then she realized, ‘I’m still alive, I’m still alive! And I have found nirvana! And if I am still alive then everyone who is
alive can find nirvana.’ She pictured a
world of beautiful, loving, peaceful, compassionate people who knew they could
come to this plane at any time. They
could purposely choose to step to the right of their left hemispheres and find
this peace. Then she thought to herself,
‘what a tremendous gift this experience could be, what a stroke of insight this
could be to how we live our lives.’ And
it was this insight that motivated Jill to recover.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">2 ½ weeks
later, the surgeons removed a blood clot the size of a golf ball pushing up
against her language centers. It took
Jill over 8 years to completely recover.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">What were
Jill’s insights from her experience?
Jill discovered as a consequence of her stroke that we are the life
force power of the universe with manual dexterity and two cognitive minds. And we get to choose moment by moment who and
how we want to be in this world. We can
step into the consciousness of the right hemisphere where we are, you are, I
am, the life force power of the universe.
The life force power of 50 trillion beautiful molecular geniuses that
make up our form, at one with all that is.
Or, we can choose to step into the consciousness of our left hemisphere
– a single individual, a solid, separate from the flow, I separate from you,
and you separate from me. These are the
worlds inside of us. Now which would
you choose? Which do you choose? And
when?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Jill Bolte
Taylor says at the very end she believes the more time we spend choosing to run
the deep inner peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peace we will
project into the world, and the more peaceful our planet will be. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This, I
believe, is definitely an idea worth spreading</span></span><span style="font-size: 16.0pt; line-height: 115%;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<u>Charlie Pacello</u> is a PTSD, Depression, and Healing Trauma Recovery Expert and Life Coach, a former US Air Force Lieutenant, and creator of the program, 'Lt. Pacello's Life Training Program.' He can be reached by visiting his website at <a href="http://www.charliepacello.com/">www.charliepacello.com</a><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12220476948913167116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2329241031519719397.post-71052929287149192232014-12-04T13:12:00.000-08:002014-12-04T13:12:18.211-08:00Letting Go of the Things that no Longer Serve You<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We hold on
to so many things that cause us a great deal of pain, stress, and
suffering. Instead of letting them go,
instead of allowing ourselves to be stress-free and happy, we cling on to the
memories and events of our past. Well,
you can change that, starting right now, today.
You are going to learn how to identify those things that no longer serve
you and give them up, which will begin the process for you to embrace the
change. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Ready? Here you go.
These are the tools for you to implement in your own life, right now,
which will accelerate the process of letting go of your past. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"> 1</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"> . </span></span><u style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Give up your need to always be right</span></u><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">.
There’s so many of us who just can’t stand the idea of being wrong,
wanting to always be right, even at the expense of ending relationships that
are causing a great deal of stress and pain, for us and for others. It’s just not worth it. Whenever you feel the urgent need to jump
into a fight over who is right and who is wrong, ask yourself this
question: “Would I rather be right? Or would I rather be kind?” This comes from Wayne Dyer. Now what difference will that make? Or is your ego really that big? </span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"> 2</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">.<span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><u style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Give up you need for control</span></u><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">.
Be willing to give up your need to control everything that happens
around you whether they are situations, events, people, and it doesn't matter
who they may be – workers, co-workers, strangers, your loved ones – just allow
them to be. Allow everyone and
everything to be just exactly as it is and just watch how much better you are
going to feel. “By letting it go, it all
gets done. The world is won by those who
let it go. When you try and try, the
world is beyond winning.” –Lao Tzu </span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"> 3</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">.<span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><u style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Give up on blame</span></u><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">.
Give up your need to blame others for what you have or don’t have, for
what you feel or don’t feel. Stop giving
your powers away and start taking responsibility for your life. </span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"> 4</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">.<span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><u style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Give up on your self-defeating talk</span></u><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">.
Now this is a big one. How many
people are hurting themselves right now because of their negative, polluted,
and repetitive self-defeating mindset?
Here’s a rule of thumb. Don’t
believe anything you mind tells you, especially if its negative, and
self-defeating. You are way better than
that. Eckart Tolle says, “The mind is a
superb instrument if used rightly. Used
wrongly, however, and it becomes very destructive.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-stretch: normal;"><span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-stretch: normal;"><span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;"> 5.</span> </span></span><u style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Give up your limiting beliefs</span></u><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">.
About what you can or can’t do.
About what is possible or impossible.
From now on, you are no longer going to allow your limiting beliefs to
keep you stuck in the wrong place.
Spread your wings, and you fly.
“A belief is not an idea held by the mind, it is an idea that holds the
mind.” – Elly Roselle</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"> 6</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">.<span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><u style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Give up your complaining</span></u><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">.
Give up your constant need to complain about those many, many things in
your life – people, situations, events that make you very unhappy, sad, and
depressed. Nobody can make you
unhappy. No situation can make you sad
or miserable unless you allow it to.
It’s not the situations that trigger those feelings in you but how you
choose to look at it. Never, ever underestimate
the power of positive thinking. </span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"> 7</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">.<span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><u style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Give up the luxury of criticism</span></u><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">.
Give up your need to criticize things, people, or events that are
different from you. Were all different
and we are all the same. We all want to
be happy, we all want to love and be loved and be understood and
understand. We all want something, and
something is wished by all.</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"> 8</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">.<span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><u style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Give up your need to impress others</span></u><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">.
Stop trying so hard to be something that you are not just to make other
people like you. It doesn't work that
way. The moment you stop trying so hard
to be something that you are not, the moment you take off all your masks, the
moment you accept and embrace the real you, you will find people will be drawn
to you, effortlessly.</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"> 9</span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">.<span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><u style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Give up your resistance to change</span></u><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">.
Change is good. Change helps you
move from A to B. Change will help you
make improvements in your life and also the lives around you. Follow your bliss. Embrace change. Don’t resist it. One of my favorite authors is Joseph Campbell
and he writes, “Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you
where there were only walls.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"> 10.<span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><u><span style="line-height: 115%;"> Give up on labels</span></u><span style="line-height: 115%;">.
Stop labeling those things, people, or events that you don’t understand
as being weird or different and try opening your mind, just a little, little by
little. Miracles only work when the mind
is open. Wayne Dyer says, “The highest
form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"> 11.<span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><u><span style="line-height: 115%;"> Give up on your fears</span></u><span style="line-height: 115%;">.
Fear is just an illusion, it doesn't exist! You created it, I created it, it’s all in our
minds. Correct the inside, and
everything else is going to fall into place.
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"> 12.<span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><u><span style="line-height: 115%;"> Give up your excuses</span></u><span style="line-height: 115%;">.
Take your excuses and send them packing and tell them they are
fired. You don’t need them anymore. Lot of times we limit ourselves because of
the many excuses we use. Instead of
growing and working on improving our lives we get stuck. We lie to ourselves. We use all kinds of excuses. Excuses which are 99.9% of the time are not
even real.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"> 13.<span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><u><span style="line-height: 115%;"> Give up the past</span></u><span style="line-height: 115%;">.
Here’s a big one. I know, I know,
it’s hard. Especially when the past
looks so much better than the present and the future looks so frightening. But you have to take in to consideration the
fact that the present moment is all you have and all you will ever have. The past you are longing for – it’s
gone. The past that you were dreaming
about was ignored by you when you were in the present. So, let’s stop deluding ourselves. Be present in everything you do and enjoy
your life. All of life is a journey,
it’s not a destination. Have a clear
vision for the future, prepare yourself, but always be present in the Now.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"> 14.<span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><u><span style="line-height: 115%;"> Give up attachment</span></u><span style="line-height: 115%;">.
This concept is a hard one to grasp, and I have to tell you it was for
me too. It still is. But it’s not impossible. You get better and better at it with time and
practice. The moment you detach from all
things (this doesn't mean you give up your love for them, because love and
attachment have nothing to do with one another.
Attachment comes from a place of fear while love, real love, is pure,
its kind, and selfless. Its peaceful,
where there is love, there can’t be fear, and because of that, attachment and
love cannot coexist.) You become very
peaceful, so kind, so tolerant, so serene.
You will get to a place where eventually you will be able to understand
all things without even trying. It’s a
state beyond words.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"> 15.<span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><u><span style="line-height: 115%;"> Give up living your life to other
people’s expectations</span></u></span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">. Way too many people are living a life that is
not theirs to live. They live their
lives according to what other people think is best for them, they live their
lives according to what their parents think is best for them, they live their
lives according to what their enemies, teachers, their government and the media
thinks is best for them. They ignore
their inner voice, their inner calling.
They are so busy pleasing everybody else with living up to other
people’s expectations, that they lose control over their own lives. They forget what makes them happy, what they
want, what they need, and eventually they forget about themselves. </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">You have one life – you've got this one,
right now – you must live it, you must own it, and especially, don’t allow
other people’s opinions to distract you from your path.</span></div>
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<u>Charlie Pacello</u> is a PTSD, Depression, and Healing Trauma Recovery Expert and Life Coach, a former US Air Force Lieutenant, and creator of the program, 'Lt. Pacello's Life Training Program.' He can be reached by visiting his website at <a href="http://www.charliepacello.com/">www.charliepacello.com</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12220476948913167116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2329241031519719397.post-34077403964928632512014-11-29T12:59:00.000-08:002014-11-29T12:59:40.810-08:00The Science of Why We Are Happy - the Work of Dan Gilbert<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I want to
talk to you</span></span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> now about the science of why we are happy. This part of my program comes from the work
of Dan Gilbert. I have a video which I
show each of my clients and most of what I’m about to write comes directly from this
video. What Dan says is so important, that I want you to get it here. What he says can change your perception on happiness, and for those of you who are reading this blog, I really want you to have it in front of you so you can go back to it. There's something about seeing what's been said in written words that allows us to really grasp an idea, and this idea is radical. I want to thank Dan Gilbert for his inestimable work in this area. He really shined a light for me when I needed it. </span></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Dan Gilbert is a Harvard
psychologist and author of the New York Times best seller ‘Stumbling on
Happiness.’ He believes that in our
ardent pursuit of happiness, most of us have got the wrong road map. He argues that our beliefs about what will
make us happy are often wrong. That our
brains systematically misjudge what will make us happy, and his premise is
supported by clinical research drawn from psychology and neuroscience. He challenges the idea that we’ll be
miserable if we don’t get what we want.
He proposes that our ‘psychological immune system’ lets us feel truly
happy even when things don’t turned out as planned. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So, why are
we happy? Well, about 300,000 years ago
the human brain developed what is called the prefrontal cortex. This makes us different from every other
species on the planet in that it allows us to simulate and imagine. This part of our brain is a simulator. We can experience imagined experiences in the
brain before they actually happen in life.
We can ‘test’ it out in our brains before we act it out in reality. This is very similar to what a test pilot
does in a flight simulator. A pilot will
practice flying in a simulator before he actually flies a plane. He gets to experiment and work out all the
mechanics of flying a plane in a simulator before he actually gets in a plane
and takes off. This same concept occurs
in our brain when we imagine events in our lives which we would like to
experience. We imagine experiences in
our mind before they actually happen. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">What the
researchers have discovered is there is what’s called an ‘impact bias.’ What this means is that the simulator in our
brain works badly. Let me explain what I
mean by this. We would expect someone
who has won the lottery to be happier than someone who becomes paraplegic. When Dan Gilbert and his researchers examined
this and tested out the happiness scale of people who won the lottery versus
someone who’s become a paraplegic, what the data shows is that one year later,
their happiness measures about the same.
They are equally happy with their lives.
So, this impact bias is a tendency to overrate the hedonic impact of
future events. ‘Hedonic’ meaning
pleasure, feeling good, or happy. Why is
this true? Because different outcomes
are more different than they actually are. </span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">For example, whether a person wins or loses an election, or whether you
have a relationship or not, or whether you get a promotion or you don’t get the
promotion, all of these examples have a far less impact, less intensity, and
much less duration than people expect them to have. We would expect someone who won an election
to be happier than someone who lost.
Well, a year later following the election, it turns out that their level
of happiness is probably about the same.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Why is this
true? Because happiness can be
synthesized. What do I mean by
synthesized? What do I mean by synthetic
happiness? <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Sir Thomas
Browne, in 1642, in his work titled ‘<i>Religio
Medici’</i> wrote:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">·<span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="line-height: 115%;">“I am the happiest man alive. I have that in me that can convert poverty
into riches, adversity to prosperity, and I am more invulnerable than Achilles,
fortune hath not one place to hit me.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">What is he
talking about? Sir Thomas knew that we
have this machine in our brain that converts negative experiences and events in
our lives to something positive. We
human beings have what might be called a ‘psychological immune system’. This is a system of cognitive processes,
largely these are non-conscious cognitive processes that help us change the
view of the world so that we can feel better about the world we find ourselves
in. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We
synthesize happiness but ironically we think happiness is something not to be
found. Are there examples of people who
have been able to find happiness after experiencing challenging and upsetting
events in their lives? Who were able to
synthesize their happiness and turn lemons into lemonade? </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I’m going to share with you a few examples of
people who have actually done this. Jim
Wright was a Democratic congressman in the 1990’s, he was chairman of the House
of Representatives, and he resigned in disgrace after an up-and-coming
Republican named Newt Gingrich found out he’d done this shady book deal. As a consequence, Jim Wright lost everything
– power, prestige, money – and he was the most powerful Democrat at that time. What did Jim Wright, this disgraced
congressman have to say about this years later.
He said:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">·<span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="line-height: 115%;">“I am so much better off, physically,
financially, mentally, and in almost every way.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Here’s
another example of a man who was able to synthesize his happiness after
experiencing what many of us would consider a horrible tragedy. A guy named Morese Bickham, spent 37 years in
prison for a crime he didn't do. After
DNA evidence confirmed he was innocent, he was released from prison, at the age
of 78. Now, what did he have to say
about his experience being wrongfully imprisoned for 37 years? He said:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">·<span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><!--[endif]--><span style="line-height: 115%;"> “I don’t have one minute’s
regret. It was a glorious experience.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">He said it
was glorious?! How could he find being
wrongfully imprisoned for a crime he didn't do a glorious experience? To our minds, this is impossible to fathom,
nevertheless, this was his experience.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Here’s
another example: Pete Best was the
original drummer of the Beatles before they dropped him and picked up Ringo
Starr and later became ‘The Beatles’. He
was interviewed in 1994; he was still a drummer, still a musician, still
playing music. What did he have to
say? He could have been a part of one of
the most important bands of the 20<sup>th</sup> Century! He said:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">·<span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">“I’m happier than I would have been with
The Beatles.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Well, of
course, we’re going to say ‘Yeah right.
Sure, ok.’ We smile at this and
chuckle, and basically we deduce it in our minds that the person didn't really
want that job, or you’re just trying to make a bad situation better, or you
didn't really have that much in common with your ex-fiance and you figured that
out just about the time she threw the ring back in your face! But why do we smirk at other people’s ability
to synthesize their happiness? We smirk
because we think that synthetic happiness is not of the same quality as what we
would consider natural happiness. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">What is
natural happiness? Natural happiness is
what we get when we get what we wanted.
Synthetic happiness is what we make when we don’t get what we wanted. In our society we think that synthetic
happiness is of an inferior quality to natural happiness. Where does this belief come from? Well, what kind of an economic engine that
keeps churning over and over again, creating more and more consumers, how could
that engine keep going if we believed that not getting what we wanted could
make us just as happy as getting what we wanted! Dan Gilbert suggests to us that synthetic
happiness is every bit as real, enduring, and of the quality and kind of
happiness that you get when you get what you are aiming for. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This kind of
happiness is about accepting the things that you cannot change, and having the
wisdom to recognize that. Here’s a bit
of irony for you: the freedom that we
all cherish, the freedom to make up your mind and the ability to change your
mind, which allows us to choose all these delicious, enticing futures that we
have before us, it’s the friend of natural happiness, but it is the enemy to
synthetic happiness. Synthetic happiness
works when we recognize there are certain things we simply cannot change! Plato says, “What is once done, can never be
undone.” When we can finally accept
that, we can engage the psychological immune system to convert that negative
experience, that traumatic event, into something more palatable which enables
us to gain a healthier perspective of our own lives, and find happiness where
we are right now. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This
‘psychological immune system’ works best when we are totally stuck, when we are
totally trapped. <u>When we have no
other choice but to keep moving forward.</u>
We have to find a way to be happy within the given circumstances of our
lives, otherwise we get imprisoned in the ‘what ifs’ or ‘I should have done
this’ or ‘I’m a failure’, which only prevents us from activating the non-conscious
cognitive processes innate to us which will bring us out of the past and into
our present happiness. This attribute
that we have which is clinical verified is something that most people don’t
know about themselves and this can work to our disadvantage. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">There was a
study done by Dan Gilbert and his researchers at Harvard where they offered a
photography course to the students in which they would take lots of pictures of
Harvard, their ‘memories of Harvard’, and at the end of the course, the students
would get the opportunity to select and keep one of their two best pictures
they had photographed. The purpose
behind this study was to understand the psychology underlying the unanticipated
joy of being totally stuck. The students
were asked to participate in this photography course and at the end of the
course they were going to get to choose two of their best pictures, and one of
them, they were going to get to keep, the other they would have to
relinquish. For half the class Dan and
his group told the students they could change their mind, they had the freedom
to change their mind, and they had up to 4 days to do that. The other half of the class was told that
once they chose the picture that was it.
The other picture was being sent away right after class, mailed off to
England somewhere. The students had no
option to change their mind. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So the
decision was for half the class reversible, 4 days to make a swap, and the
other half was irreversible, they could never swap. The students were asked whether they could
predict their satisfaction 3 days later or they could go away and report what
their satisfaction was in 3 days and then again in 6 days. What the results were was that those who
could not change their minds really liked the picture that they chose. This group’s satisfaction actually
increased. However, those students who
had the option of deliberating, who had the freedom to choose, didn't like
their picture. ‘Is this the right one?
Did I chose the right one? I think I
like the other one. The other one was
better. Why did I pick this one?’ They had this constant turmoil going on in
their minds as to which picture was better.
It made them not like the picture they chose, and even after the
opportunity to swap the pictures expired; they still didn't like their
picture! Why? This occurred because the reversible
condition is not conducive to the synthesis of happiness! <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Dan and his
researchers conducted another similar study on another group of Harvard
students a little bit later and in this study they asked the students which
photography course they would take: a course where the choice of their two best
pictures at the end would be reversible or irreversible? 66% chose the reversible course, where they
would have the option to deliberate on which of their two pictures they wanted
to keep, not realizing of course, based on the previous study, they will
ultimately be deeply dissatisfied with their picture! Because they did not know the conditions
under which synthetic happiness grows!<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Shakespeare
said this: ‘Tis nothing good or bad, But
thinking makes it so!’ Now wait a
minute, is this really true? Is nothing
really good or bad? Well Dan Gilbert
makes a very salient point about this idea towards the end of this video which
I share with you now. He says that “yes,
there are some things better than others, and we should have the preferences
that lead us to one future or another, no question. But when these preferences drive us too hard,
or too fast, because we have overrated the differences between these two
futures, we are at risk. When our
ambitions are bounded, it leads us to work joyfully. And when our ambitions are unbounded, it
leads us to lie, cheat, to steal, to hurt others, to sacrifice things of real value. When our fears are bounded, we
are prudent, cautious, thoughtful, considerate, and kind. And yet, when our fears are un-bounded and
overblown, we can be reckless and we can be cowardly.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Dan leaves
us with a lesson to be gained at the end of this video, which I really want you
to have. He says, “Our longings and our
worries are both to some degree overblown because we have within us the
capacity to manufacture the very commodity we are constantly chasing when we
choose experience.” </span></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">What is important to take away from this blog? Life sometimes gives
us experiences that are a challenge to overcome. When we refuse to take in these events and
process them, and instead suppress them, it does major psychological,
emotional, and spiritual damage to our beings.
With Post-Traumatic Soul Distress, Depression, and Trauma we are dealt a heavy
hand. Our souls are in trouble. There’s a big gaping hole inside of us which
paralyzes us and keeps us from finding a way to navigate out of the pain, and
retrieve the joy of our own existence we once had. But now we know from the work of Dan Gilbert
we have a power within us that is able to convert those traumas in our lives
and enable us to find the good, and thus, make peace with the past, which
ultimately allows us to synthesize our happiness, so we can then build towards
a better future. We are able to do this
through a ‘psychological immune system’ that is already built into us. If we allow it to freely function without our
interference, if we understand it and recognize its value in our lives, we can
fundamentally change how we view the negative events that happened to us. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It is a
choice. We have the free will to stay
stuck, keep re-living the traumas over and over again in our minds, or we can
take the time to transform them, and allow this built-in mechanism in our minds
to convert that trauma, that pain, that suffering, into good. We must recognize and own the power that we
have within us to convert all of what has happened to us into fertilizer where
we plant new seeds and grow into the people we are capable of becoming. These traumas and pains can serve as
fertilizer to being the best version of ourselves. We must take the time necessary to cultivate
this new self who is emerging by tending to our wounds and healing them. We have the mechanism already built in to us
if we will give ourselves the permission to tap into it. It will synthesize those events for you and
the feeling of happiness will replace all feelings of suffering. Remember, nothing outside of you can give you
what you already have. You have it
within you to be who it is you want to be.
When we are being who we want to be, the outside world will start to
mirror that feeling and belief to us more and more. Soon you will grow beyond the limitations
that have been imposed upon you. The
traumas will continue to diminish in their power over you until they no longer
hold sway over you and your right to be happy and free. It’s time to empower yourselves. Take in this information I am providing you,
digest it, use it, and utilize it in your daily life. You have the power within you to make the
transformations in your life you so deeply long to have. Begin the transformation today.</span><span style="font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<u>Charlie Pacello</u> is a PTSD, Depression, and Healing Trauma Recovery Expert and Life Coach, a former US Air Force Lieutenant, and creator of the program, 'Lt. Pacello's Life Training Program.' He can be reached by visiting his website at <a href="http://www.charliepacello.com/">www.charliepacello.com</a><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12220476948913167116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2329241031519719397.post-59302745304629465062014-11-20T12:52:00.001-08:002014-11-20T12:52:26.638-08:00The Technology of Emotion<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In this blog, I want to d</span></span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">iscuss</span> the technology of emotion.
In my program, there’s a video I share with my clients that was produced
by Greg Braden. For those of you who do
not know who Greg Braden is, let me share with you a brief biography taken from
his website. He is a New York Times
bestselling author and is internationally known as a pioneer in bridging
science, spirituality, and the real world.
For more than 27 years Greg has explored high mountain villages, remote monasteries,
and forgotten texts to merge their timeless secrets. His discoveries are now shared in 33
countries and 38 languages through paradigm-shifting books such as: The God
Code, The Divine Matrix, Fractal Time, and Deep Truth. His 2007 best seller, The Divine Matrix is
now a textbook for college level courses exploring new discoveries of science
and our relationship to the world. He is
an active member of several leadership organizations, including the
Evolutionary Leadership think tank founded by Deepak Chopra in 2008, and has
received numerous awards in recognition of his insights and innovations. Greg’s work has been shared on every
continent in the world and in recent years, he has presented his seminars and
trainings to Fortune 500 companies, the U.S. military, international
businesses, and has been featured in media specials on the History channel, the
Discovery channel, National Geographic, ABC, and NBC.</span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So, in this
video Greg Braden shows us a film where cancer is actually being cured in less
than 3 minutes using the language of emotion.
By using the language of emotion, which each and every one of us has
inside of us, and mirroring that expectation to the field that surrounds us, we
can make measurable and immediate changes to our world. The key to accessing the power behind the
language of emotion is <u>you must feel the feeling as if it has already
happened.<o:p></o:p></u></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This was a
presentation called “Language of the Divine Matrix” which was recorded in Italy
on May 30<sup>th</sup>, 2007. In the
video, Greg tells us, and before I go on I want to be clear that almost all of
the information I am writing about today comes from the video, I’m going to
give it to you all right here, so you have it.
It’s that important. Greg begins
by saying when we have a feeling in our hearts, we are creating these
electrical and magnetic waves inside our bodies that extend beyond our bodies
into the world around us. The research
shows these waves extend not just one or two meters but many kilometers beyond
where our heart physically resides. So
right now, you are having an effect on the outside world, you are having an
effect on the people around you, in your home, in your neighborhood, and ever
further beyond where you are sitting right now.
Now when many people get together with just this one feeling of love,
appreciation or peace, the collective energy emanating from their hearts can
change the world. We would consider this
today to be a miracle. And it remains a
miracle until we understand the science behind it. Once we understand the science behind it, it
no longer is a miracle; it becomes a technology, a powerful technology that we
can access anytime we want it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The film
that’s on the video was filmed in a medicine-less hospital in Beijing,
China. There’s no medicine in this
hospital. And the film shows a woman
who’s been diagnosed with cancer in her bladder. She has a 3-inch diameter cancer. Western doctors told her there was nothing
she could do about it. They couldn't
help her. So, instead, she went to this
clinic in Beijing, China where they think a little bit differently than we
do. At this particular clinic, they
applied the technology we’re talking about, the technology of emotion, which
for them comes from the ancient wisdom they have inherited in their culture. What you see on the film is this: there are three practitioners, three people
trained to feel just the right feeling, the precise feeling in their hearts. They create the feeling as if the woman is
already healed. We are witness to what
is going on inside of her body through a sonogram, through an ultrasound, and
as we’re looking into her body, we get to watch, in real time, her cancer
disappear in three minutes. And this
occurs in the presence of the language that heals. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">What you see
in the video is this woman is awake, she is conscious, she’s not under any
anesthetic, and the critical factor to get is she believes in the process. She believes in what is happening. And the 3 practitioners are trained to create
this feeling in their bodies as if the woman is already healed. On the video you see a computer screen, which
has two images. The one image is before
the healing, it’s on the left side of the computer screen, and then the other
image is next to it on the right, and it is occurring in actual time, in real
time, so we can see the healing happen.
Now when the healing is happening, you are hearing these practitioners
chanting a word. But this word is just
an ordinary word, it could be any word, there’s no magic in this word. The word is the word that they chose which
re-enforces it for them; it connects them to that feeling. This is something the practitioners have
agreed upon that is the word that would create the feeling in them. But, I really want you to understand that it
could be any word. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As the film
begins, we see the two images side by side.
Then we hear this chant: ‘Wa-sa, wa-sa, wa-sa.’ As they say this chant, they gradually
increase the speed of this chant as we watch on the video the cancer
disappearing. She’s awake through it
all, she’s conscious, the practitioners are behind her, and on the video you
can easily see where the tumor is on the bladder. You see the black emptiness of where her
bladder is and then where the tumor is at, a white circular blob on the bottom
right of the bladder. They take a snap
shot of the tumor for a reference, and this is the image posted on the left
hand side of the computer screen. The
image to the right of it, as I've described before, is in actual time, and as
they chant the tumor disappears. And all
of this happens in 2 minutes, 40 seconds.
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">When the
procedure is done, you see the image on the left hand side, the snap shot of
what the bladder looked like before with the tumor, and then you see the image
on the right hand side of the bladder without the tumor, which is the one in
actual time. In our Western way of
thinking, in modern science, this would be considered a miracle because they
don’t understand the field that connects everything together. And they don’t understand the language which
speaks to this field. Once we begin to
understand the language and learn how to access this field, it is no longer
going to be considered a miracle, but it will become a technology. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I want to go
back to the meaning of the word in the chant.
The practitioners chant this word – ‘Wa-sa, wa-sa, wa-sa’ – over and
over again. The word that they are
using, loosely translated means ‘already happened.’ It’s already done, dispersed, gone. Her healing is already done. They believe it whole-heartedly,
convincingly. It’s already done. In their minds and in their hearts they are
coming from a place that the healing has already happened. Not that it’s going to happen, not that it’s
about to happen or that it is a long, slow happening, but that it has already
happened. Why is this important? This is important because the field of energy
which I am about to discuss with you is a mirror. It’s a mirror that reflects our feeling of
what we are going to experience in the moment.
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So, if our
belief is that our healing is about to happen, or that our perfect relationship
will come to us someday in the future, or that our abundance in the bank will
happen for us someday in the future, guess what this field will keep
reflecting? It will keep reflecting
someday, someday, and someday. Why? Because it’s open-ended, there’s no outcome,
and there’s no conclusion. This energy
field I’m talking about is very subtle, it’s very powerful, and we must learn
how this field works. This field is
called ‘The Divine Matrix.’ It is a
field that mirrors now. It’s not in the
past, it’s not in the future; it’s right now, this moment. This is what I really want you to get. If you don’t get anything else from what I’m writing about today, this is the most important part. <u>What we choose to experience in our lives
we must feel in our hearts as if it has already happened.</u><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The cancer
healing that we are witness to on the video happens all the time in this part
of the world. It not just a one-time
thing, they do it all the time here. But
the Western scientists see this and it makes no sense because they can’t
understand it. This is because Western
science says that our beliefs, our feelings, and our emotions have no effect on
the world outside of our bodies.
However, as we are learning more and more every day, this is just simply
not true.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">When I talk
about ‘The Divine Matrix’, I’m talking about Max Plank’s Matrix. Max Plank, for those of you who don’t know,
is the father of quantum theory. He was
a German theoretical physicist who originated quantum theory. This theory revolutionized human
understanding of atomic and subatomic processes, just as Albert Einstein’s
theory of Relativity revolutionized the understanding of space and time. Basically what Max Plank’s matrix is: it’s
the Mind as matrix. Here are his words:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
</div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">“All matter originates and exists
only by virtue of a <u>force</u> which brings the particle of an atom to
vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the
existence of a conscious and intelligent mind.
The mind is the matrix of all matter.”</span></li>
</ul>
<br />
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">There have
been experiments done that show human DNA has a direct effect on the physical
world, and that human emotion changes the DNA that is changing our physical
world. The reason this is happening is
because of this field, this matrix that connects everything together. It’s Max Plank’s Matrix that is the conduit
that allows these results that we see in those experiments. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The idea
that all matter is connected through a net of energy is a very old idea, and
was popular in the late 1800’s. In
science, there was a belief there was an invisible web of energy that connects
everything, and the scientists of that time were in a very heated debate as to
whether or not this field actually exists.
There was a famous experiment done to determine the existence of this
field. At the time the web of creation
was named the “ether” or the “ether/aether” field. The “ether” has been talked about and is
found in many ancient books and texts from our collective past, however, the
scientist wanted to prove scientifically the existence of this field. So, in 1887, the famous Michelson-Morley
experiment attempted to prove once and for all the existence of the ether. It was a good experiment but they interpreted
it badly. Basically, they were unable
to find the existence of the ether and therefore concluded it did not
exist. The field, they concluded, wasn't there. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As a
consequence, for over a hundred years our science has been based on the belief
that it’s not there, however, this belief was later proven incorrect. In 1986, the United States Air Force repeated
this experiment, the Michelson-Morley experiment, and they published the
results in the prestigious scientific journal ‘<i>Nature.’</i> What they found was
that when they repeated the experiment with the more sensitive equipment and
technology that we have today, they ended up discovering the field actually
exists, just as it was predicted in 1887 by Michelson and Morley. It was there!
This report is by E.W. Silvertooth, titled ‘Special Relativity,’ Nature,
vol. 322 (August 1986): p. 590. Of
course, I wanted to verify this, so I looked it up, and there it was. The date of the publication is actually
August 14, 1986. It’s a short little
article, and at the time the Air Force was having some difficulties with their
GPS satellite systems, and they were talking about conducting the
Michelson/Morley experiment in space to see “about the effects of standing
waves in rotating and translational motion of optical apparatus.” This quote is from the article. Without going into all the details of the
article, at the very end it says, “If present findings are sustained, it may
not be necessary to extend the Michelson-Morley tests into outer space in order
to obtain positive, as opposed to null, results in interferometric tests of
linear motion.” There was no reason for
them to continue with the tests in outer space because they had already found
it. The field was there. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So, not only
did they find the field, but it measured precisely as Michelson and Morley had
predicted 100 years earlier – they just didn't have the sensitive equipment to
work all this out. Why don’t we know
about this? You would think this would have been major
news. Well, the reason we don’t know
about it is because it changes everything for the scientists. All the textbooks say the field is not there,
entire careers are built on the field not being there, but the field is
there. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">What does
all this mean for us? We have to create
that feeling in our hearts that what we want to be is already. We have to believe that our healing has
already happened. Not that it’s going to
happen, or it’s about to happen in any moment or that it’s close to happening,
it has happened. And this goes for every
aspect of your life. Whether it’s
healing and recovering from PTSD, depression, or trauma, whether it’s having that
relationship that you want, or having that job you want, it comes down to
believing it has already happened. This
field is a mirror and will reflect back to us our beliefs. And when you believe with your whole heart,
in every cell of your being that it has already happened, and you connect to
this Divine Matrix, (it’s there, believe it), the universe will bend to your
will.</span></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">---------------------------------------------------</span></span><br />
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<u>Charlie Pacello</u> is a PTSD, Depression, and Healing Trauma Recovery Expert and Life Coach, a former US Air Force Lieutenant, and creator of the program, 'Lt. Pacello's Life Training Program.' He can be reached by visiting his website at <a href="http://www.charliepacello.com/">www.charliepacello.com</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12220476948913167116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2329241031519719397.post-50878810551152748692014-11-14T11:40:00.000-08:002014-11-14T11:40:01.230-08:00The Science Behind the Heart<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><span style="line-height: 115%;">The Science behind the Heart</span></b><span style="line-height: 115%;">
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">The heart is
something that is important to all of us.
It is the seat of our souls; it is the seat of all of our dreams, hopes
and aspirations for life. It’s the seat
of our most cherished emotions and feelings, and our connection to the
world. The information that I’m about to
share with you is amazing. It will open
your mind to unimagined possibilities we could never have thought possible
because we didn't understand the power and magnitude the heart has on the
quality of our lives. The people over at
HeartMath, led by Howard Martin, are discovering things scientifically about
the heart that is </span></span><span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">mind-boggling</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">. I've included this in my program and I’m going to share with you everything that’s
in this video, because I want you to have it.
This information is so important to get out and it could be the key
ingredient to open your mind up to new possibilities and new ways of
experiencing your life. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">How do you
go about activating your own heart’s intelligence? Your heart has intelligence, and we’re going
to learn this as we go on, but first, what are some of the qualities we
typically associate with the heart?
First, it’s the core of our essential and authentic self. We reach for our heart whenever were really
trying to communicate with someone and reach them on a deep, meaningful
level. It’s the source of our most
revered emotions: love, compassion, care, appreciation, gratitude, joy, and
peace. All this resides in the area of
the heart. When we are in touch with our
hearts, really in touch, we have a greater discernment of the world around us;
we have an intuitive clarity that enables us to live in the world without being
of this world. We have a deeper
connection, not only with ourselves but with all others that cross our path,
and with all of life. When we act from
our hearts, we have this incredible ability to overcome all obstacles in our
way, it gives us the courage to see the obstacles and not be daunted by the
challenges they present, and combined with desire and determination, we are
able to overcome these barriers. This is
the birthplace of the hero. The hero
within each and every one of you is located in your heart. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Life is
about continuous growth. It’s about
service to others. This is so critical
for you to get. It’s the master key to
making your life work. We, as a society,
have reached a critical juncture in our evolution. As Howard Martin states in the video,
“Humanity has reached a critical juncture.
We are on the threshold of a new stage of social, spiritual, and
cultural evolution.” What does this mean
for us? All of the old ways of doing
things, whether it’s our political systems, economic systems, social systems,
are not working anymore; the models themselves are not producing the desired
effects their implementation had intended.
The economic disparity between the very rich and everyone else is far
too wide and only the few have access to living abundantly; the political
system is driving us away from each other, keeping us divided, and is being
held at the mercy of corporations, banks, and special interests; our
educational system is not educating our children to be free, independent
thinkers and creators, and is de-geniusing them; these are just a few examples
of what is happening in our society.
However, what is so exciting is that there are so many new ideas
percolating up from the groundswell of motivated people seeking solutions to
the problems we have. Ironically,
science and spirituality are merging together, verifying the foundational
principles of universal spiritual truths with actual, physical evidence. And, as more and more people become aware of
these astonishing discoveries, eventually, we will reach a critical mass where
there will be a huge shift in consciousness on a global level, and people from
all walks of life will demand changes to be implemented that coincide with this
new awareness, and as a consequence, a better, happier, more harmonious and
peaceful world will be established. This
is the threshold we all now stand on.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Let’s get
back to the heart and the work of Howard Martin and the scientists and
researchers at HeartMath. Your heart is
a source of wisdom and intelligence, very subtle, and its high speed. It’s a place you go to when you need some
self-security; that sacred place when you really need to find the answers. When all others have failed you or life has
brought disaster upon you, this is the part where you sink into within yourself
during the great crises of your lives.
Your heart is your own best friend.
It’s your own personal guide who guides you towards making the decisions
in your life, regardless of whether they are big or small. When you access this wisdom and
intelligence within your heart, you are gifted with a greater discrimination of
things and acquire a new ability to see yourself, people, places, things, and
events that occur in your world.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The
scientific research is now verifying and validating everything we've always
known about the heart. The heart is so
much more than just a blood pump. It
actually sends communication out to the other parts of the body; it is a
powerful communicator. The heart sends
out commands all the time out to the brain and body, and it does this in four
different ways. The first way is through
neurological communication. There are so
many nerves which surround the heart.
Through these neurological connections, the heart sends out messages all
the way to the brain, and the brain sends messages back to the heart, and what
is evident is there is actually this communication happening between the heart
and brain. What’s really interesting is
when researchers map out this neurological communication going on between the
brain and the heart, what they discovered is there is more information being
sent from the heart to the brain than the brain to the heart. The heart actually sends out more information
than it gets. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Another way
in which the heart communicates is through the blood pressure wave. The blood pressure wave is that pulse you
feel when you place your fingers on your wrist or any place on your body where
a pulse can be felt. What you are
feeling is this wave of energy being created by the heart while it is squeezing
blood through the arteries, veins, and capillaries throughout the body. </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;">Now this wave, this blood pressure wave of
energy is traveling through the entire body and it’s influencing every part of
you, including your brain function.</span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Your heart
also communicates with the body through the release of hormones. Back in 1983, the heart got reclassified as
being a part of the hormonal system because what they discovered was that the
heart was producing some very important hormones to regulate bodily functions
and states. For example, the heart
produces a hormone called atrial peptide.
One of this hormone’s primary functions is to reduce the release of
cortisol, which is a stress hormone. The
heart is actually sending out a hormone to reduce stress and back off a stress
hormone. Does this sound like just an
ordinary blood pump to you?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Lastly, it
communicates through an electromagnetic field, recognized by the people at
HeartMath as the “electrical heart.”
Howard Martin states, “The heart radiates an electromagnetic field that
energetically affects each other’s moods, attitudes, and feelings.” Your heart, among all these other functions
which I've just described for you, is also an electrical organ! The heart, by far, produces the strongest
source of bioelectrical energy in the entire body. It is up to 40 to 60 times stronger than the
second most powerful source which is your brain! This electrical energy that is being produced
by the heart permeates through every part of your body, through every cell, and
it because it is so strong, it actually radiates outside of the skin and out
into the world. And this field is all
around you. It envelopes you, like you
are encapsulated in a sphere, and this radiation, this electromagnetic field
stretches out beyond you and can be measured 3 – 4 feet outside of your body. What’s really fascinating is this
electromagnetic energy will change depending upon what your emotional state is.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So, for
example, if you are feeling a lot of strong, negative emotions like anger,
guilt, shame, fear, hatred, or resentment, what it ends up producing is this
incoherent spectra in the electromagnetic field. On the flip side, if you are experiencing a
lot of the positive emotions that we typically associate with the heart, love,
compassion, appreciation, gratitude, hope, kindness, what ends up happening is
it produces this beautiful coherent spectra in the electromagnetic field. What does this information tell you? You are broadcasting this electromagnetic
energy not only to every cell in your body, but you are broadcasting it outside
of yourself and into the world around you.
You are actually communicating what you are feeling and what your emotions
are to every single person outside of you whether you vocalize it or not. And they pick up on these emotion and
feelings once you cross over into their electromagnetic field, and visa
versa. Now, we’re moving into the realm
of physics. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">If my field crosses your
field, my field is going to be affected by your field and your field is going
to be affected by my field, because our individual fields stretch out beyond
our bodies anywhere from 3-4 feet. The
moment you or I get within that space, our fields will cross and interact with
each other. We will be non-verbally and
energetically influenced by the electromagnetic energy emanating from our
hearts. Multiply this now with a room
full of people; take the next step, and multiply it with the number of people
in an auditorium; a city; a whole nation.
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">When you think
about this new information you have of the heart the next logical step is to
examine how does the collective field relate?
The implications of what this scientifically verified knowledge could
potentially have would be profound. It
would impact significantly the ways in which we interact with each other
because we would have a greater understanding of the collective influence the
heart’s electromagnetic energy has on the society as a whole. First, though,
the folks at HeartMath had to figure out a way to measure this. Their solution to this was to measure heart
rhythms. This is different than your
heart rate. Your heart rhythm is the
timing between heartbeats. This timing
changes between every single heartbeat, and as they started mapping this out,
what they discovered was some very complex patterns began to emerge. What these patterns show is a lot of what is
going on in a person’s body, their overall physical health, and about the
quality of communication going on between the brain and the heart. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">For example,
if you’re feeling frustrated, you have this feeling of frustration, what they
can measure is your heart rhythm patterns.
What they notice when they map out your heart rhythm patterns is it
becomes very jagged and irregular, and you can see the graph of this on the
video. Whenever this pattern shows up in
your life, it’s not very good for your health, and, the heart actually sends
signals to your brain to shut down your higher perceptual centers, which is
called corticol inhibition. As a
consequence, you do not have access to those areas in your brain which allows
you to solve your problems and to think things through clearly. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">On the
opposite end, if you are experiencing feelings of appreciation, gratitude, and
love, when they've mapped this out, it is a very smooth sine wave-like
pattern. This is indicative of high
performance. There is a high quality of
communication going on between the heart and the brain. This is really good for your health. You’re not tense, or stressed, or anxious,
and thus, the heart is able to function smoothly and effortlessly. When you’re in this state of high
performance, the heart is actually sending messages and signals to your brain
to open up and activate the higher perceptual centers. This is called corticol facilitation. When you have access to these higher
perceptual centers, to your higher thinking capacity, you are able to solve your
problems. You’re not stuck in the mire
of being in the problem and entangled in all the emotional turmoil associated
with the trauma; you’re able to stand up above the problem. You can look at the situation from above the
battlefield because you are not in the battlefield. You stand on higher ground, able to look and
assess the situation from a higher point of view, which gives you the clarity
you need to find the right solutions to bring resolution to the problems you
face.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">All of this
relates to the changes in the heart.
It’s not just the brain you have to work on by changing your thoughts;
you also have to work on clearing up the emotions clogging up your hearts,
these toxic emotions that build up over time, that prevent you from
experiencing life on an emotional and feeling level the way it was intended to
be experienced. This information provided
to us by the wonderful scientists and researchers from HeartMath gives a whole
new context and meaning to the old adage ‘A change of heart changes
everything.’ What you change in your
heart – if you focus on something that you love, if you focus on gratitude, if
you focus on appreciation, if you focus on kindness, if you focus on
forgiveness – you can change the way your brain functions. If you can change the way your brain functions,
you can not only change the effect on the brain, but as a happy consequence,
you can change the world around you because your thoughts, feelings, and
emotions will be in alignment with bringing out the greatest good for yourself
and for others. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Every one of
you has this power. Start today to
cultivate this power within you. Break
away from the addiction to your negative emotions, implant in your heart the
desire to feel and experience love, appreciation, gratitude, joy, hope, faith,
and make it a regular practice to check in on yourself to see if you are
setting your hearts free, or keeping it chained by the toxic, negative emotions
corroding your authentic connection to your world. It is impossible to feel a positive emotion
and a negative emotion at the same time; they cannot occupy the same
space. One emotion will dominate. You have the choice as to how you want to be
in this world. The one thing for which
you have absolute and unquestioned authority over is your thoughts. Therefore, choose your thoughts wisely. Decide, once and for all, to cultivate the
emotions of the heart in your life. Stay
consistent. Eventually, with continued
practice, this will become your habit, and your habits become your character. Remember: you are the change you wish to see
in the world, it all starts with you!
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><span style="line-height: 115%;">Exercises to activate your heart’s
intelligence:</span></b><span style="line-height: 115%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So how do
you go about finding this in your own life?
You begin by first learning how to appreciate yourself and others. Think about someone you love, picture them in
your mind right now, see them, and reflect for a moment what it is that you
appreciate about them? What about them
makes you smile or laugh? Take some time
to write these thoughts down, and reflect on them. The next step, is to find out what it is you
appreciate about yourself? What do you
love about yourself? What qualities do
you possess that stand out? Take a
moment to reflect on this, write them down, and put these exercises in a folder
or binder so you can reference them when needed.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Another way
to do this is to create for yourself a gratitude journal. Every day, for the next month, write down 5
things for which you are grateful for and 3 things for which you are grateful
for not. Examples might be: I am grateful
for the morning; I am grateful for the bed I sleep on; I am grateful for the
cup of coffee I have when I wake up; I am grateful for the shoes on my feet; I
am grateful for the food I have to eat.
Examples of what you are grateful for not would be: I am grateful for not being in a war zone; I
am grateful for not being terminally ill; I am grateful for not living in
abject poverty. Taking inventory of all
the things for which you are grateful for and grateful for not allows you to
see how much you take for granted and it connects you to your heart
instantaneously. Start your day out this
way, connected to your heart, and you begin to cultivate the emotions of the
heart in your life on a daily basis. Try
it! After a month of daily inscriptions,
I promise you will find your days to be much happier and filled with
appreciation and gratitude.</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div style="margin: 0px;">
<u>Charlie Pacello</u> is a PTSD, Depression, and Healing Trauma Recovery Expert and Life Coach, a former US Air Force Lieutenant, and creator of the program, 'Lt. Pacello's Life Training Program.' He can be reached by visiting his website at <a href="http://www.charliepacello.com/">www.charliepacello.com</a></div>
</div>
</div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12220476948913167116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2329241031519719397.post-18610477152813425432014-11-06T14:37:00.000-08:002014-11-06T14:37:32.713-08:00Finding the Hero in Your Story<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">One of the
most influential teachers in my recovery was Joseph Campbell. Often cited as his best book, <i>The Hero with a Thousand Faces</i> is a one
of those books I read whenever I’m searching for inspiration, guidance, and
wisdom from the mythological heritage of our ancestors. It’s one of the most important books I've
ever read. For those of you who haven’t
read Joseph Campbell or are unfamiliar with his works, he was the preeminent
scholar on the mythological tradition found in every culture in every
civilization throughout history. He
states, in the first chapter of his book, “It would not be too much to say that
myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the
cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation.” [1] All of our religions,
philosophies, art forms, the first discoveries in science and technology, the
social forms of early and historic man, all come up from this place called
myth. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Myths have a
primary function to supply us with the rites and symbols to carry the human
spirit forward. In this book, Campbell talks about the many myths throughout
mankind’s history, up to and including the modern day (watch the movie Star
Wars), which have an archetypal hero who embarks on a transformational journey,
filled with danger, trials, and tribulations, all of which brings him to
the point where he must confront the Supreme Ordeal of his life, and if
successful, return back to the temporal world (the world in which we all live) with the elixir he or she set out to find. He calls this, the hero’s journey.
Myths help to guide us through the transitions and passages of our
lives. When we identify ourselves as the hero of our own life, we begin to connect to the inestimable psychic power contained within the mythic
tradition. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Anyone who has suffered from
PTSD intuitively knows in order to get to the other side you have to go through
the transformation, you have to let go of the old self, the old self has to die
psychically, for the new self to emerge.
The hero’s journey provides the rites and symbols one must travel
through for one to be reborn, returning to the world transfigured – perfected,
eternal, universal – and then teach the lessons he or she has learned of a life
renewed. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Now, I
believe we are all on our own hero’s journey.
Every single one of you is capable of being the hero in your own
life. When you see yourself as the hero
of your story, you can see where you are on the path in relation to this
archetypal journey found in all the traditions and cultures of any age
throughout the world. This is
empowering. We want to find out where
you are on your own journey, so that you don’t remain stuck, so that you know
your story continues on, and when you connect to this absolute truth, as a
consequence, you begin to embody the energy of the hero in your story. </span></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">There are several steps of the hero’s
journey which I will illustrate for you briefly. As you are reading this, think about your own
life, and identify where you think you are in the adventure story of the hero. With honest and deep reflection, you will be
able to see where you are, which will give you the knowledge, wisdom, and
courage to continue on and face within you all that needs to be faced.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Hero’s Adventure</span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin-left: 39.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
</div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;"><u>The
ordinary world</u> – this is where you are introduced to the audience. You don’t know what you’re potential or
calling is yet. You are innocent, naive,
and unprepared for what is coming.</span><span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;"> </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;"><u>The
call to adventure</u> – this is the point in your life, when you are given notice,
that something, everything, is going to change, whether you notice it or
not. The call rings up the curtain; the
familiar life one has grown accustomed too has been outgrown; old beliefs,
emotional patterns, ideals, no longer fit or work; and the time for crossing
the threshold is close at hand.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;"><u>Refusal
of the call</u> – this is often when the future hero, which is you, refuses to heed
it. This comes about from a sense of
duty and obligation to a way of life, fear, insecurity, a sense of inadequacy,
or an array of reasons that keep you locked in your present circumstances. This refusal is essentially a refusal to give
up what one thinks as one’s own best interests.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;"><u>Encounter
with the wise mentor</u> – once the hero has committed to the quest, whether
consciously or unconsciously, he meets with a wise mentor signifying support of
our conscious personalities by the other, larger system of the unconscious as
the hero prepares for the journey.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;"><u>Crossing
of the first Threshold</u> – it’s a point of no return; it’s where you cross into
the field of adventure, which is your life.
You leave the known limits of your world, and venture into an unknown
and dangerous realm, where the rules and limits are not known. In this realm there are tests, there are
allies, and there are enemies. The road
of trials that you go through are a series of tests, tasks, and ordeals, which
are all brought to you and must undergo for you to initiate your
transformation. Often the person is
going to fail one of these tests or more, and they often occur in threes. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;"><u>The
Supreme Ordeal</u> – this is described as a person’s lowest point or darkest
moment. You have made a complete
separation from the old world and your old self, and are at the cusp of a new
world and a new self. When you enter
this stage, you are demonstrating to the universe you are willing to make a
change, to die (the ego self) and become a new person (ego and spirit
united). I know exactly when this moment
occurred in my life. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;"><u>Revisiting
the mentor</u> – you revisit the teachings of an old mentor, or you meet someone
new, and you learn from this mentor, and then you return to the path you
originally set out on</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;"><u>Return
with New Knowledge</u> – the trick is you must return while retaining the wisdom
you gained on the quest. You must find a
way to integrate it in your human life, and maybe figure out how to share this
wisdom with the rest of the world. This
is usually extremely difficult. Just as
you needed guides and assistants to get you out on the quest, often times you
are going to need powerful guides to get you back to everyday life, especially
if you’ve been wounded or weakened by the experience. </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;"><u>Seizing
the Sword or the Prize</u> – this is where the hero, you, confronts and defeats all
the old enemies, whether they are without, or more importantly, within. With this new power and knowledge gained, you
are able to overthrow and defeat this opponent.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;"><u>Resurrection</u>
– The old self dies physically or spiritually and moves beyond the normal human
state. It’s a god-like state, where you
acknowledge your new stature. It is
often experienced as a period of rest, peace, and fulfillment prior to the
hero’s return.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;"><u>Coming
back with the Elixir</u> – this is the achievement of the goal of the quest. It’s what you went out on the journey to
get. All the previous steps prepared you
to purify you for this final step. In
many myths, the elixir is like a plant, or a magic potion, a medicine, which
supplies the hero with immortality. What
does that mean for us? For a human, it
means achieving a balance between the material and spiritual worlds. That is the freedom we seek. To live and be free from the fear of death,
and that is sometimes described as ‘living in the moment.’</span></li>
</ul>
<!--[if !supportLists]--><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">You all have
the capacity to be the heroes in the stories of your own lives. You need to find out where you are on this
quest. Are you returning with the
elixir? Are you at the supreme ordeal of
your life? If you are at the supreme
ordeal of your life, all that means is that you are on the verge of
transformation, if you will allow it and give yourselves permission to undergo
the process. This program enables you to
do it.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Exercise:<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></b></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Identify
what stage you are in in the hero’s journey.
You are the hero of the story of your life, claim it, and once you've
identified where you are, write out what this means to you? Are you at the beginning, middle, or
end? If you’re just past the first
threshold, how can you embolden yourself to keep pressing forward undaunted by
the challenges you may face knowing this is part of the journey? What resources could you access (mentors,
books, support groups) to give you the keys to making it to the next
level? Who are your mentors and
guides? What are the obstacles and
challenges you must face to effect the transformation in your life? Answers to these questions can help to
re-contextualize your experiences, place them in a broader perspective, and
help you to understand the process of transformation going on within you on a
psychic level.</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<u>Charlie Pacello</u> is a PTSD, Depression, and Healing Trauma Recovery Expert and Life Coach, a former US Air Force Lieutenant, and creator of the program, 'Lt. Pacello's Life Training Program.' He can be reached by visiting his website at <a href="http://www.charliepacello.com/">www.charliepacello.com</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12220476948913167116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2329241031519719397.post-52589410095224287282014-10-31T15:20:00.000-07:002014-10-31T15:20:25.783-07:00What Motivates You? - Part 3 - Analysis of Tony Robbins video<div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>DECISIONS OF DESTINY</b></span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In this
video, Tony Robbins points out there are three decisions of destiny for
everybody. These three decisions we are
making every moment of our lives, whether we are aware of it or not. So, to become aware of it is huge! We want to know why we are doing what we are
doing! The three decisions that affect
your destiny are: 1. what am I going to focus on? 2. What does it mean? 3.
What are you going to do? Let’s
go back to the first one, what am I going to focus on? Your focus, whatever it is you are focusing
on right now, is where the energy is going to go. Where thought goes, energy flows. You have to decide where you are going to
place you focus. Is it going to be on
the past, or am I going to focus on the present and the future? That’s your choice. If you focus on the past, which as someone
who suffered from PTSD, depression, and trauma, all I did was focus on the past. My attention would be on the regrettable
memories of my past, the pain, the suffering, wondering if I could have done
something different which might have changed the outcomes, shaming myself and
living in guilt for the things I had done, I punished myself unmercifully! My focus was only on the past. As a consequence, I was barely able to
function, I wasn't able to connect with people on an emotional level, I felt
different and isolated, and then I’d get angry at myself for not being able to
handle things better. What was the
meaning for me when I focused on my past?
It meant that this was the end.
There was no future. I turned my
anger inward and became depressed. I
didn't believe I deserved to have good things in my life. I was guilty of unforgivable sin. I was ashamed for the things I did and didn't
do, for allowing events to happen the way they did, for committing and being
the cause of so much pain for so many people.
It led me to feel that I was being punished for something. So, what was I going to do? I was just going to give up. That’s it.
That was my thought process. What
was I going to focus on? The past. What
did it mean? I am being punished for my
sins from the past. What was I going to
do? I was just going to give up. That was one way to look at things.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">When I
decided to focus on my future, then the energy and emotion for me changed. What am I going to focus on? I’m going to help people heal themselves from
PTSD, depression, and trauma. What does this
mean? This means this is the
beginning. Since I healed this within
myself, I know how to heal this. This
empowers me to create a beautiful life, and the emotion behind it is love and
compassion for the suffering of others and wanting to give them the tools to
fully heal and break free from this disorder, no matter where they got it from,
to be who they truly are. What was I
going to do now that I had this focus and meaning, what was my plan of action
from there? I started writing a
blog. I started writing a book on how to
heal from PTSD and trauma. I created a program, bringing in all these marvelous teachers of science,
spirituality, psychology, philosophy, and higher consciousness; I've been working with a doctor for almost 3 years, Dr. Sarah Larsen, an amazing, incredible woman, an angel on earth (there aren't enough words in the dictionary to express my gratitude for Dr. Larsen), who
shined the light for me where I needed to go to work this program out on myself and who helped me put this all together. I hosted and led conference calls. I’m doing radio interviews and webinars. I was led to the brilliant Dr. Edward Tick, an amazing, deeply compassionate, wise man with an enormous heart (again, there aren't enough words to express my gratitude for Dr. Tick). He is the foremost expert in the country on PTSD experienced by our soldiers. Dr. Tick was instrumental in helping me heal my war wounding from the military, my own and the wounding passed down to me generationally. I had the glorious opportunity to travel on a sacred pilgrimage to Greece with him and reclaim my honor in the sacred fields of Athens, Greece. I hosted a panel discussion of experts about Solutions to PTSD and Trauma following the encore presentation of my production company Lightning Rod Productions (formerly Sewer Socialists Productions) performance of the award-winning play, 'Woof-Woof.' All these things were the actions I took to
bring this message of healing to others.
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Think about
this in your own life. What emotions are
driving you? Look at the decisions you've
made in your life. How have your
emotions and what you focused on affected the decisions that you've made? You've got to get emotional fitness in your
life. You've got to work out emotionally
the same way you would work out physically in the gym for the health of your
body. You've got to clear up all the
toxic emotions that are keeping you down. Yes, you have to process the negative
experiences from your life, and it is so important to take the time to heal and
discover the good that came from those traumatic events, but you don’t want to
wallow in it. Wallowing in our pain
keeps us stuck. You want to digest what
is needed to be processed, and then allow for the rest to be washed away.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">You also
want to get psychological strength.
You've got to get your thoughts in order, you've got to understand there
are these automatic negative thoughts that come into your mind and you've got
to learn how not to attach yourself to them.
You've got to understand how the mind works, and learn to focus on what
it is you want to produce and experience in your life. You want to raise your vibration. How do you raise your vibration? You raise your vibration by changing your
thoughts, your emotions, and your feelings.
Having emotional fitness and psychological strength is the difference
between those that quit and those that succeed.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>THE SIX UNIVERSAL HUMAN NEEDS</b> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Once you've
addressed the three decisions of destiny, you've found your target, what it is
you want to bring into the world and to experience, you've got to understand
what your needs are. This is much
different from your desires, as I stated to you earlier. We connect your needs to the driving emotion
behind your life in order to imbue your life with meaning and purpose. The key is to uncover what your needs are for
you, the truth for you. From there, you
develop a map, and we look at all your belief systems which will tell you how
you are going to get these needs met.
After you establish your map, you decide what is going to fuel you to
action. Are you doing this for the
money? For recognition? For the fame?
For the big house? Am I doing
this to give what I can to make this world a better place? To add my contribution to the world? Am I doing this to advance life on this
planet? Am I doing this to make a better
life for my family? Am I doing this for
my wife and children to give them the best life that I possibly can? Whatever your motivation is, and it could be
a combination of all of these, is going to determine the direction of your
destiny.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">There are
six human needs, and this information comes from the Robbins video. These are universal needs that every human
being has, and I would encourage all of you after reading this blog to look at
where your needs are at and how you are going about to get them met. The first one is <u>certainty</u>. We all need certainty in our lives. Certainty is the feeling that we are safe, we
are protected, we have enough money, we have food, shelter, water, and all of
our survival needs are taken care of.
How do you go about getting certainty?
You can try to control your environment; you can live within your means;
you can acquire a skill by going to school or learning a trade; you can give
up. All these are ways in which you and
I go about getting certainty in our lives. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">If we don’t have certainty in our lives, if we fear about our own
survival, we are really not going to be concerned with anything else. However, when we have certainty, all of our
basic needs are met, what happens then?
We become bored. So, the second
need we have is <u>uncertainty</u>. We need
variety. We need adventure and
spontaneity. We need problems and
struggles, it’s how we challenge ourselves, it’s how we grow; it adds to the
color and tapestry of our lives. The
unknown has always been the boarder land of the possible; it is the frontier of
that which has yet to be seen. It can be
the birthplace of something beautiful if we allow ourselves to just step into
it without fear.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The third
need is <u>significance</u>. We all need to
feel important, to feel of value. This
is about our uniqueness, and we all go about this in different ways. Some of us feel this sense of value and
significance by making lots of money; by constructing big buildings and owning
all of them; others by taking positions of power in government or in the
service; for others it’s about being more spiritual; for others it’s the
position they fill at work and the responsibilities that come with it; for
others it’s the role they fill in the family.
Violence gives us significance.
Young men and women will either join the service or join a gang or join
the police force because it gives them a sense that what they are doing is
important. Whether the person joins the
gang, or the service, or the police force, the person is going for that same
sense of value in their own lives, it’s just different ways of achieving the
need of significance. Inherent in all of
these approaches is the individual has a willingness to risk their own lives
for this significance. Before we can
eradicate violence from the planet, there is going to have to be a huge
collective shift in consciousness, particularly and most importantly, in men.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The fourth
need is the need for <u>connection and love</u>.
We truly need this. We need
connection and intimacy from loved ones, friends, acquaintances, and our
community at large. How do we go about
doing this? Spending time with our
significant other, spending quality time with our family and friends, walking
in nature, participating in community activities, joining spiritual groups,
seeking others who have the same interests we have, engaging in life on a
feeling level. This is a huge need for
people who suffer from PTSD, depression, trauma, and stress because we feel so disconnected
with life. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">These first
four needs are the needs of the personality.
There are two more needs which are the needs of the spirit. Without these last two needs being met, you
will not be fulfilled. Your personality
will be satisfied, but you won’t have the sense of fulfillment that comes with
the needs of the spirit. <u>The first need
of the spirit is you must grow</u>. All of
life is constantly evolving and changing.
The reason we grow is so we have something to give of value; to others,
to yourself, to the people in your life. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">When we grow, we have something to share, and this gives us a sense of
fulfillment because we've added to the value of someone else’s life. <u>The second need of the spirit is to
contribute beyond ourselves.</u> When we
participate in the ever expanding nature of life, we feel at one with
everything around us, we feel connected to something larger than ourselves, and
this gives us a sense of being an active participant in the evolution of life
on this planet. You know what the secret
of living is? The secret of living is
giving. What you give to another, you
receive. What you give to life, you
receive. It may not be readily apparent
to you now, but every thought you have, every single thing you do, is being
recording by the infinite intelligence that governs everything, and you will
get back what you give. Besides, giving
feels good. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The six universal
needs are: certainty, uncertainty, significance, connection and love, grow, and
to contribute beyond ourselves. When we
understand these needs, rank them from top to bottom, and then connect them to
what motivates you, we can then lay the ground work for creating the life you
want to live! <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So, what are
you driven by? Are you driven by
significance? Are you driven by
connection and love? Or are you driven
by contributing to others? Whichever one
of these needs is most important to you is going to affect your choices; it
will determine the direction of your destiny.
Thus, it is important for you to know where you fit on this list,
because it will guide you as you make the important decisions regarding the
meaning and purpose behind your life, why it is you do what you do. This will serve as the foundation for the map
you lay out for your life, for example, creating for yourself a ten year plan. When you start from these needs, and map it
out for what it looks like in ten years, then as you begin to take the actions
to get you there, more will come into focus as time progresses, as each
decision you make is aimed at making your ten year plan a realization. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Critical to making your vision for your life
a reality is the emotion you choose to drive you. You want to choose empowering emotions that
uplift and inspire you, fill you up with love and passion for what you do,
which will undoubtedly create the ideal conditions for your dreams to manifest
as the synchronicity of the universe lines everything up for you to give you
what you truly want to experience. Your
thoughts, your words, your deeds, your feelings, and emotions must be in
alignment for the miraculous orchestration of the universe to unfold itself
before your feet. This is a universal
spiritual law, however, we have to learn how to access our connection to this
process, and this occurs gradually as the negative thought patterns are
replaced with the empowering ones. The
process itself builds trust, so it is important to stay in the process,
avoiding all temptation to fall back to old beliefs and thought systems. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The quality
of your life is the quality of your emotions.
Therefore, you've got to get emotional strength, you've got to have
emotional fitness, and start choosing the emotions you want to feel and
experience. When you start feeling and
experiencing it right now, in this moment, not in some future time, right now,
you will send a different vibration out to the universe. You will send out a different vibration to
the people around you! They’re going to
notice it, they’re going to feel it, and they’re going to sense the
difference! Try this in your own
life. Start with you and watch how it
affects all the other people in your life.
They may not react immediately to this change in you because they will
still be reacting to their own projection of the old you, but as you maintain
this new thought system in your life, eventually, they will respond to this new
you in ways you couldn't even possibly have imagined.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Every day
you want to give it your all, you want to love your all, and you want to be doing
everything you can to make your life everything it could possibly be. Don’t worry about what others are doing, or
how far ahead they might be, or how challenging the road is to get to where you
want to be, keep persevering. It’s never
too late to start doing what it is you want to do. Never quit.
Never give up. Even if it’s just
one step a day, take that step, and keep moving forward. What is yours to have will always be
yours. What is for others to have will
always be theirs. There’s no need to compare
or beat yourself up if you don’t appear to be where it is you want to be. Hold fast to your dreams, follow the whispers
in your heart, know that you are creating from a power of infinite
possibilities and infinite abundance, and thus, you do not have to take
anything away from anyone else to achieve your goals and dreams. Believe in yourself, align all of your
deepest longings and desires with the Spirit within you, and as Joseph Campbell
says, “Follow your bliss.” And all will
be given you.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Exercise to do at home:<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Answer the
following questions:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">1.<span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="line-height: 115%;">What motivates you?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">2.<span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="line-height: 115%;">What are the 6 needs?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">3.<span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="line-height: 115%;">Rank your needs from top to bottom<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">4.<span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="line-height: 115%;">What would you do this week if you
knew you were going to die?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">5.<span style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="line-height: 115%;">What connects you to your bliss?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Additional exercise:<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Observe your
thoughts this week. Write them
down. Don’t judge or shame
yourself. When you've completed the
week’s list of thoughts, review and note what thoughts preoccupy your
mind? Are they thoughts that keep you
locked up in the past? Thoughts filled
with guilt, shame, anger, or blame? Or
are they thoughts of love, gratitude, feelings of joy and wonder? Are they empowering thoughts lifting you to
the future you want to experience? Are
you creating the future by contemplating the conditions you want to produce or
are you locked up in a cycle of re-creating the dramas in your life both past
and present? Are you becoming aware of
the beauty and silence of the now? What
jotting down all these thoughts will show you are where you are putting your
energy, and remember, where thought goes, energy flows. By writing down your thoughts, you can see
what you are thinking about, and then, you can use this to re-calibrate your
mind to focus on the things you want to bring into your life.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">-----------------------------------------------------</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<u>Charlie Pacello</u> is a PTSD, Depression, and Healing Trauma Recovery Expert and Life Coach, a former US Air Force Lieutenant, and creator of the program, 'Lt. Pacello's Life Training Program.' He can be reached by visiting his website at <a href="http://www.charliepacello.com/">www.charliepacello.com</a><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12220476948913167116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2329241031519719397.post-22401873838200323502014-10-30T13:34:00.000-07:002014-10-30T13:34:41.189-07:00What Motivates You? - Part 2 - Inspired by Tony Robbins<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>WHAT LIGHTS YOU UP?</b></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Now, what
motivates you? What is going to get you
out of bed in the morning? What is that
thing that is going to spark you and get you so excited to make your life
everything it could possibly be? Is it
going to be money? Is it going to be
having that new car? Is it going to be
having some other possession? This type
of motivation may work temporarily, it may be the way you do it and obviously a
majority of people use this as a motivation in today’s society, but the thing
is, once you get that possession, what are you going to do? What’s next?
Once that desire is satisfied, you’ll have to find a new desire to
covet. So it becomes a pattern of
something always outside of ourselves as giving us the motivation to
achieve. Something outside of ourselves
that we are chasing after to give us meaning and fulfillment, instead of
looking inside and finding our true motivation and saying ‘this is what I’m all
about, this is who I am, this is what I am giving and contributing to the
world.’ When you come from this place,
all those other material possessions will come.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not denying the value and the pleasure these possessions
give us, I enjoy possessions just like the rest of you, however, you must
always keep in mind these things are transient.
They come and they go. You get
one car, you get tired of it, and you get another. You buy one house, you decide you want to
move or you lose it for whatever reason, you change residences. You work at one job, you decide to change
careers or you lose that job, and you’re off to find another one. So, with the transient nature of all these things,
you have to decide, are you going to place your value, the value of your life
on something outside of you which is completely out of your control, or on what
you have within? </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">If your motivation is
based on something outside of yourself, you are inevitably putting yourself at
the vulnerability of being let down. But
if you place your motivation in the core of your being and who you truly are,
regardless of what happens outside of you in the external world, and it could
be upsetting, for example, you could lose your job, your home, your
relationship might suddenly end, someone close to you might die, you could be
in the worst situation possible, but you will still know the thing that drives
you, why you do what you do. <b>What it is
that motivates you to action.</b> That’s
what we are looking at here. It’s not
what drove you yesterday. It’s not what
drove you ten years ago. It’s not what drove you twenty years ago. What drove me ten years ago is completely
different than what drives me today. What
drives me today is I want to help heal in others Post-Traumatic Stress
Disorder, depression, trauma, and stress and I want to do this for everybody. Why?
Because I understand how painful it is.
I had lived with it for so long, I was genetically, environmentally, and
unconsciously programmed to experience and live with this from the time I was
born, and to finally be free from it, all of it, I want to give that to
others. That’s my motivation. That’s what gets me up in the morning. That’s what gets me excited is to be able to
give people the tools and permission to heal themselves. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">That wasn't my motivation 10 years ago. Ten years ago, my motivation was I wanted to
become a great actor, a movie and stage star.
And I still want to be a great actor, and I know I've done and will
continue to do great acting when the roles come, but things have changed now
after the incredible journey I've gone through.
So that was my motivation 10 years ago.
20 years ago, my motivation was to be the best officer I could be, to
learn the skills to becoming an officer in the Air Force, and inculcate those
principles in my being. So there were different
motivations at different times in my life.
So, we got to figure out what it is that motivates you today! What drives you today? <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">One of the
teachers that I've brought into my program, and I have numerous teachers that I
draw from for their insights, wisdom, and deep understandings of the nature of
life and living, is Tony Robbins. There
is nobody out there better than Tony Robbins about getting you motivated. He epitomizes life coaching and he has
motivated millions to live inspired lives, and that’s why he’s in this
program. People who suffer from PTSD, depression, trauma, or stress must uncover what moves them to action in order for them to
break free from the past.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Tony says,
“The invisible force of internal drive activated is the most important thing in
the world.” Really get this. “The invisible force of internal drive
activated is the most important thing in the world.” This is that thing inside of you that is your
force of life, the emotion that is inside of you that drives you to do what you
do. Emotion is the force of life. It’s going to drive you to the life you want
to live. The video I have of Tony
Robbins I’m going to break down and analyze it for you right here, what I got
from it, so that you can get everything you need from it right now. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“All
effective leaders have the ability to consistently move themselves and others
to action because they understand the invisible forces that shape us.” This is a direct quote from the video. These invisible forces are your thoughts,
your emotions, your feelings, your beliefs, your values, all these things that
are inside of you that shape your ability to contribute to something beyond
yourself. If you just focus on yourself
and what the world can give you, or what the world owes you, you’re coming from
a place of lack, of scarcity, of wantingness.
Wantingness is an insatiable, pervasive, empty feeling inside that can
never be satisfied. It’s an insatiable
desire on the part of the individual where nothing satisfies the craving for
more, no matter how many desires are actually fulfilled. It is a negative energy field that is
constantly consuming without ever being filled up. The desire of wanting more is actually more
desired than the desires being met. A
person coming from this place is constantly consuming. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We live in a consumer culture, our whole
society has been built up around consuming – what can I get out of this? What’s in it for me? – Instead of what can I
give? What can I contribute? As a consequence of this, we've collectively
forgotten the art of fulfillment. This
art of fulfillment is about how do I fulfill my life, and give it meaning and
purpose. It has nothing to do with
buying things, acquiring possessions, what’s my take, what’s in it for me,
etc., that’s why we have the selfish,
narcissistic, ego-centered culture that we have because it’s all about satisfying
this insatiable wantingness of the ego, which we identify as me. Well, it’s not just about your ego, and
having you ego desires be met. Yes, it
is very important to love yourself, and know who you are, no doubt in my mind
you must master yourself; and from this place of wholeness, it then becomes
about what it is that I can give? What
it is I can contribute? How can I make
this world better? How do I create the
life that I want to live? What can I do
to add to life, add to the expansion of life, that’s what’s going to give you
fulfillment. That’s going to give you
appreciation for others, appreciation for yourself, and you are going to be
contributing something. And the sense of
being able to contribute something fills you up, it gives you a sense of
meaning and purpose, it gives your life purpose, you are living your life on
purpose! </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">To live your life on purpose is
so invigorating! The problem is we are
living in a culture that thinks we are our biography. That we are our past. That biography defines us. Whatever our past was, that’s what our
present is going to be, that’s what our future is going to be. And most of the people who are out there,
quite frankly, this is how they are going to live. And this will be true for them. Your biography is your destiny, and your past
is going to equal your future. If you choose
to live this way, whatever your past was, you are going to bring it right into
your future, guaranteed. That’s what you
are going to get, if that is where you stay.
However, what you have as a human being, you have the free will to
choose something different; you have the power of decision. Decision is the ultimate power. You can choose to live in the past, or you
can choose to do something different, and build a better now and a better
future.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">What are
some of the reasons people say that they didn't achieve their goal? I know what my reasons were! My biggest one? Money!
I didn't have enough money or resources to go out and get what I wanted;
I didn't have the time to do it; I didn't have the knowledge or the
understanding; I wasn't smart enough – this person is way too smart for me and
too far ahead of me for me to be able to do that – boy, oh boy! I made more
excuses for myself for not accomplishing a goal, or even attempting one, rather
than just deciding once and for all to do it!
And these were all based upon my perception of lack. These beliefs were so deeply embedded within
my psyche, this perception of lack and scarcity, that they were all my claims
for not having enough resources! What I
was missing was that despite the fact these statements were probably true,
these excuses were not my biggest problem.
My biggest defining factor was not that I didn't have enough resources;
it was that I wasn't resourceful. Resourcefulness
is the defining factor on whether or not someone is going to fail or someone is
going to succeed. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">What are
some of the qualities of resourcefulness?
A person who is resourceful is creative; they’re determined; they love
and care about what they do; they have curiosity about everything, they want to
know, they’re curious; they have passion for what they do; and they have
resolve. Nothing is going to stop them
from doing what it is that they set out to do.
I had none of these, well I had some; I had passion. I have passion for acting, I had passion to
be an officer and to succeed at the Academy, but I was deficient in some of
these other areas. And as I looked back
at my life, I examined when I was successful and when I wasn't. And the areas when I was really successful,
when I was really on target, when I was really focused on what I set out to do,
it’s when I had an emotion connected to it, a deep, passionate, driving
emotion. And that emotion, this real
human emotion, was something I was able to give and communicate to someone
else, on a level they were able to experience and comprehend, it was an
authentic communication of something so profound within me, I was able to
connect with them. I was able to
communicate that excitement, that passion, that deep desire to them. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So, what I've learned, both from my own personal
experience and from the Tony Robbins video, is you've got to get the right
emotion! You have to get the feeling
inside you can do anything! We can do it;
we can do anything, if we have the right emotion behind it. If you have this emotion, and you are
creative enough, playful enough, fun enough, adventurous enough, determined
enough, compassionate enough, you can communicate and connect to anyone. And when I was successful, that’s where I was
at. That’s when I met my goals. And when I didn't have that, the majority of
the time, I didn't meet my goals. So,
for me, when I didn't have the money to do the things I wanted to do, I would
let this get me down. I used this as an
excuse not to go after the things I wanted to do. And so, the bottom line is you have to find a
way. If you don’t have the money, you
don’t have the resources, you've got to be resourceful, and your ultimate
resource is going to be your emotion. </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Part 3 tomorrow.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">-----------------------------------------------</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<div style="margin: 0px;">
<u>Charlie Pacello</u> is a PTSD, Depression, and Healing Trauma Recovery Expert and Life Coach, a former US Air Force Lieutenant, and creator of the program, 'Lt. Pacello's Life Training Program.' He can be reached by visiting his website at <a href="http://www.charliepacello.com/">www.charliepacello.com</a><br />
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12220476948913167116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2329241031519719397.post-48193082395929369622014-10-29T14:10:00.000-07:002014-10-29T14:10:30.865-07:00What Motivates You? - Part 1<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">WHAT MOTIVATES YOU?<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As I began
to write these next few blogs, I was reflecting on what my program is all about. The
purpose of my program, 'Lt. Pacello’s Life Training Program', is to bring a
total mind, body, and soul healing modality to those who suffer from PTSD, depression, trauma, or stress. In order to fully
recover from this disorder, it has to be on all levels: mental, physical,
emotional, and spiritual. Why? The reason is because we exist on 4 different
planes of existence. There’s the mental
plane, the emotional plane, the physical plane, and the spiritual plane. Three of these are unseen: the mental, the
emotional, and the spiritual. The
balance and harmony in our lives is based on all 4 of these areas being
healthy, functioning properly, and interconnected to all the others. If the unseen world, the inner world, is out
of balance, this will be reflected in the physical world. It’s not the other way around. However, when we identify ourselves only as a
body, we are at the mercy and effect of the physical world, and as a
consequence, we only treat the body for the symptoms we are experiencing and
not dealing with the cause. We limit
ourselves to treating the effects of PTSD, depression, and trauma. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">If we just treat the symptoms and the effects
of PTSD, depression, and trauma, this is very limiting and short-sighted in dealing with the
overall problem. You’re going to get limited
results; you’re going to get short term solutions and coping strategies to deal
with this disorder for the rest of your life.
Thus, you might be able to alleviate some of the depression, some of the
angst, or anxiety you might feel through some of the skills you develop through
counseling, or by taking pharmaceuticals to make you feel better. However, this does nothing to heal the cause
of your pain. So, the purpose of this
program, the program which I offer to each and every one of you who suffers
from PTSD, depression, or trauma, is to give you a way, a path, for you to completely heal
this within yourselves. In this program,
one of the many things you learn is that mind is the cause; the outside world
is the effect. You are subject to what
you hold in mind. That is crucial for
you to understand and what is going to make all the difference in allowing the
transformation in your life to occur. If
you are subject to what you hold in your mind, than what you hold is going to
influence every aspect of your life. Our
goal is to go to the cause of the pain, shine a light on it, uproot all the
belief systems, the traumas, the things that have kept you from being the best
version of yourself, and do this in a holistic, healthy, loving way, and
bringing in the non-linear context of universal spiritual principles like love,
compassion, and forgiveness in looking at the traumas you've experienced; and
when you are truly able to do this, you will be able to heal this within
yourself completely on all levels. If you choose to work with me, we
are going to remove all the clouds that are covering up the sun that is you
that is shining brightly underneath. All
of you are already whole. You do not
need to fix anything. We just have to
remove all those things, those traumas, and pains you've experienced in your
life that are preventing you from feeling and being that wholeness. And that’s what this program is really all
about. It is a complete and total
self-healing of your soul distress.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Part of the
process to connecting to what motivates you, one of the things you must
understand, really grasp, is you are the source of your own happiness. We get so bogged down by the outside world
not giving us what we want, not fulfilling our needs, not fulfilling our
desires, and it’s because we've placed the source of our happiness outside of
us. We are often motivated by what we
hope to get from someone or something to fill us. A relationship, for example, can be a source
of our happiness. Yet, by placing the
source of our happiness in the other person we are placing ourselves in a very
vulnerable position because we are seeking appreciation, acceptance, love, and
value from something outside of us, and when the person fails to do so or the
relationship doesn't live up to your expectations, you get sad and depressed,
or you feel cheated, or feel unworthy of love and belonging, or even worse,
unlovable. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It’s difficult for us to let
go of this unconscious program running through our lives. It's something we were programmed with since
birth. Love is outside of me, not inside
of me. My value and worth is determined
by others’ love and acceptance of me, not by me accepting and loving
myself. Nothing outside of you can give
you happiness. You, and only you, are
responsible for your own happiness. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We
project onto the world, we project all these things and give it their meaning
and value, and when they don’t come through for us, we get angry, we get depressed;
we get filled with hopelessness and despair.
This vulnerability to being at the effect of the outside world is a
consequence of the way we were taught.
We were taught to believe that if we do these things, we will have these
things, and then we will be happy. For
example, if I do this job, then I will be able to have these possessions, and then
I will be happy. As a consequence, we've
placed our happiness somewhere out into the future, rather than being happy
right now, starting from a place of beingness.
By being happy, starting from a place of being content and satisfied,
then we are coming from the place we already want to be, and thus, when we go
out and do the things that we want to do, we’re doing it because we truly want
to do it, and inevitably, because we are coming from a place of wholeness, we’ll
get the things that we truly want.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">When we
recognize we've placed the source of our happiness as outside of ourselves, we begin
to understand how this creates a negative energy field because it is basically
a lie. I want you to really get this
right now, <b>you are the source</b>. You, and I, have mistakenly given our power
over to the world, the power to live life to its fullest and to enjoy it, and
now it’s time to take back that power.
As a former suffer of PTSD, depression, addiction, and trauma, I can tell you with 100%
confidence that your minds have to be re-trained. You must learn how to re-train your mind to
separate yourself from the thoughts that imprison you, and the thoughts that
invigorate and inspire you. This
includes all the pain, the flashbacks, the triggers, the fears, the anxiety,
the anger, the incessant painful memories that keep recurring. For me, in my recovery, it was to really
grasp and understand the error I had made in placing my happiness outside of
me. Once I understood that the source of
my happiness was within me, that I was the source, I was the true source of my
motivation, I had to look at things in a completely different way.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Now, in recognizing what motivates you, we begin
to re-align to who you truly are. There
are questions which I ask of you when I work with you, which are designed to
get you to look very deep within yourselves and find out what is the driving force
behind your life? When we understand
what the driving force behind your life is, we understand what motivates
you. And then we really get in touch
with who you are; we really get in touch with you. And then the program moves forward from
there, really tailored to you. When we
re-discover what motivates you, we start letting go of the belief systems that
keep you from being this person, who you truly are. And when we understand what motivates you, we
begin to heal your pain; we heal your past pain because we connect with the
trauma to understand how it occurred and what it means, and how to use that for
your own motivation. That’s why we do
it. And that’s why it’s so important to
understand what motivates you. To change
the things in the outer world we must first work on our inner world.</span></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Part 2 tomorrow.</span></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">------------------------------------------------------------</span><br />
<span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;"><br /></span>
<span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;"></span><br />
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<u>Charlie Pacello</u> is a PTSD, Depression, and Healing Trauma Recovery Expert and Life Coach, a former US Air Force Lieutenant, and creator of the program, 'Lt. Pacello's Life Training Program.' He can be reached by visiting his website at <a href="http://www.charliepacello.com/">www.charliepacello.com</a><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12220476948913167116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2329241031519719397.post-76959813002413113012014-10-22T12:43:00.000-07:002014-10-22T12:43:45.987-07:00Do We Come Back to Heal Old Wounds?<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><b>REINCARNATION</b></span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I want to spend a few minutes with you on reincarnation. Do our souls really come back in another life
form? Is such a thing plausible? Do we have any evidence to suggest that maybe
this is true? Socrates talked about the
immortality of the soul and how it moves from the spirit world into our world
and back again in the dialogue, <i>The
Phaedo</i>. Many philosophers and
spiritual masters have spoken to us about the idea that the soul comes back to
the earth and takes on another form in order to learn and evolve. Over 50% of the world’s population believes
in reincarnation. But where is the
scientific evidence to support this?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><b>The
work of Dr. Ian Stevenson</b></span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The most compelling evidence of reincarnation comes from
Dr. Ian Stevenson. He began his research
into reincarnation at the University of Virginia around 1960. He was the former head of the Department of
Psychiatry at the University of Virginia, and his work is the best, and most
respected, collection of scientific data that appears to give scientific proof
of reincarnation. He investigated the
stories of very young children who had memories of previous lives. He spent 40 years of his life traveling the
world and compiling evidence. <b>He
collected over 2500 cases of children making claims,</b> <b>half of which were solved,
meaning they had been verified</b>. He would
methodically document the child’s statements of a previous life, and then, he
identified the deceased person the child remembered being, and verified the
facts of the deceased person’s life that matched the child’s memory. His studies are scrupulously objective and
methodologically impeccable. I highly
suggest you look him up and do the research yourself. If I thought it was necessary, I'd transcribe excerpts from his books, but the case I am going to discuss next will astound you, and thus, there is no reason to go into other verifiable cases. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><b>The
reincarnation case of James Huston, Jr/James Leininger</b></span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In my program, I have a video which vividly depicts the
case that reincarnation actually happens, and it involves a boy named James
Leininger, who was born April 10, 1998.
This video is from a local news program here in the United States, Fox 8
News. The story of James has come to us
through 4 years of research conducted by his parents, Bruce and Andrea. For Bruce, this involved a great personal
struggle, for the idea of reincarnation conflicted with his beliefs, and by the
end, he became a Christian who had accepted reincarnation as a reality. In the video we learn that: <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin-left: 51.75pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
</div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">As a
small boy, when he was just a toddler, James Leininger had a passion for
Japanese warplanes from WWII. He seemed
intimately familiar with the aircraft.
He did drawings of airplanes shooting down other airplanes, bombing
ships, men parachuting, etc.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">After
turning 2 years of age, James started to experience vivid nightmares that would
make him scream from out of his sleep.
His parents would rush in and see him struggling and crying, kicking and
clawing on the covers, like he was trapped in an airplane. James would cry out, “Airplane crash. Plane on fire. Little man can’t get out!” Andrea, his mother, would ask who the little
man was in the plane. James replied,
“Me.”</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">Both
Bruce and Andrea were surprised and impressed with James’s knowledge regarding
Japanese WW II aircraft, as they knew he was not learning this information
through normal means. He wasn’t getting
this stuff from Sesame Street. They
started asking more detailed questions such as:</span></li>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">What plane did you fly? James: Corsair</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">Why did your plane crash? James:
My plane was shot down</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">Who shot your plane? The Japanese</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">Where did you take off from? A Boat</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;"> Do you remember the name of your boat? Natoma</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; text-indent: -0.25in;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">What is your name? James (this confused his parents because his
name was already James)</span></li>
</ul>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">James
was not even potty trained and yet he knew intimate details of World War
II. His father Bruce wanted to disprove
all this. He decided to research the
statements made by little James. He
discovered there was indeed a WWII aircraft carrier named the Natoma Bay that
had operated in the Pacific during the battle of Iwo Jima. He tracked down veterans from the USS Natoma
Bay, and what they told him was that there was a James Huston Jr who died in
the invasion battle of Iwo Jima. When
little James met some of the Natoma Bay veterans, his parents were stunned when
we recognized them by name!</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">Bruce
and Andrea also tracked down James Huston Jr. sister Anne. They set up a phone call between Anne (who
was 84 years old when they contacted her) and little James. In the conversation, little James knew many
personal details of James Huston’s life, which Anne confirmed as accurate. For example:</span></li>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">Little James told Anne that he called her Annie. Anne confirmed that only James Huston called
her Annie</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">Little James told Anne they had a sister named
Ruth, which was correct</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">Little James said Ruth was four years older
than Anne and that Anne was four years older than James, which was correct</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">Little James reported that their father was an
alcoholic and smashed things when drunk, and that he had to go into rehab for
alcoholism. Anne corroborated this.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">Anne later sent a picture her mother had painted
of James Huston to the younger James.
Little James called Annie to thank her and asked where was the one mom
painted of you. She went and found it,
sent a copy, and told Bruce and Andrea, no one in the world except her brother
and sister knew there was an identical picture of Annie at the same age.</span></li>
</ul>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">Little
James was talking about a past life from 50 years before, so there was no way
he could have known the details that he came up with.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">The family went
to Japan, at the site of where the battle took place. Without any help, James knew exactly where
the plane had crashed. They held a
memorial service and threw flowers over the wreckage. Little James got very emotional.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -0.25in;">After
the memorial, the death and destruction drawings were replaced with dolphins,
whales, and the Japanese ships floating with their flags’ raised. War scenes were no longer depicted. </span></li>
</ul>
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<u><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">What do we learn from this</span></span></u><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">? That reincarnation is possible. And what reincarnates? The essential self. It should be noted that evidence is not
proof, but without question, there is a lot of empirical evidence for
reincarnation. James Huston’s soul
reincarnated as James Leininger, and through the diligent and thorough work
done by his parents Andrea and Bruce, they helped to heal James of his painful
past. Little James won’t have to repeat
his previous life’s history to heal his wounds, and now, he can move on to
create something new. Many of our souls
come back to heal old wounds. And since
we are tied in with our families, we come to heal those wounds as well. Much of what we go through is to heal us from
our unremembered past, and when we heal it, we get to move on to the next level
of our growth, evolution, and expansion.
But, until we transform it, we continue to re-live the same problems
over and over again. Transforming our
pain is the only way to prevent us from repeating history, both on an
individual and collective level. These
problems affect individuals, families, and societies, and that’s why it is so
important to take the time to heal the pains of your past. Making peace with your past is one of the
most important things you can do to guarantee a better, healthier, and happier
present and future.</span><span style="font-family: Rockwell, serif; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<b><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Exercise:</span></span></b><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
Whether you believe in reincarnation or not is always going to be a
subjective decision. You are going to
believe what you believe to be true, and our beliefs often stand in the way of
our own ability to see things in a different way. Often, the best way to utilize the
information I've just presented is to use your imagination while remembering
your dreams as a child. So, for an
exercise, I want you to go back and remember your childhood and reflect back on
the things you loved doing. What were
your dreams as a kid? What were your
focuses? What did you come in already
knowing? Some of us at a very young age
were musically inclined and could sing or play an instrument with relative
ease, as if we had this talent give to us by God. Others were fascinated by building things, or
airplanes, or cars, and naturally gravitated towards those interests and seemed
to just have a curiosity or knowledge or fascination about these particular
areas of interest. Others loved to draw
or paint; or imagined themselves as being superheroes, or feeling deeply
connected to nature, any number of things.
Why were you drawn to those things?
We all have natural inclinations that, if we look deep enough, we had
some kind of knowledge about that that is beyond any rational explanation. What were they for you? Finally, when you've answered all of these
questions for yourself, I want you to use your imagination to the following
questions: What if you had a past life? Who would you have been and why? The purpose of this exercise is to expand
your mind and look at yourself in a new way.
Chances are that after doing these exercises, you will see how expansive
you really are, and re-discover the nobility that lives within you. We identify with those who are a reflection
of our own inner nature. See your own
nature in others, and you will see it within you. </span><span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<u>Charlie Pacello</u> is a PTSD, Depression, and Healing Trauma Recovery Expert and Life Coach, a former US Air Force Lieutenant, and creator of the program, 'Lt. Pacello's Life Training Program.' He can be reached by visiting his website at <a href="http://www.charliepacello.com/">www.charliepacello.com</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12220476948913167116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2329241031519719397.post-11158867750820279392014-10-17T12:56:00.000-07:002014-10-19T01:02:24.059-07:00Understanding the Nature of Guilt, Shame, and Vulnerability - Brene Brown - Conclusion - Part 4<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><br />GUILT AND SHAME CANNOT SURVIVE EMPATHY</b><br />
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<span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">What do we do to numb? Addictions. This can occur in a variety of forms: alcohol or drug abuse; high-risk sex; gambling; compulsive exercise or work; or repeatedly getting involved in emotionally or physically abusive relationships. These are just a few examples. We make the uncertain, certain. Religion was a beautiful mystery of spirit infusing all of life, and there are many different pathways to the same God, however, we've come to a situation in our society and our world where my way is right, your way is wrong, and if you don’t follow my way, I’m going to kill you. Our beliefs have become so restrictive and limiting, we don’t allow ourselves to open up to something bigger and more inclusive. Instead, we believe we are right, and if you’re with us, we like you, you’re our friends, and if you don’t, you’re against us, and therefore, you are our enemy. We also use blame as a way to discharge the pain and discomfort of guilt and shame. The playwright Moliere in his play Tartuffe writes, “Those who have the most guilt and shame, are the first ones to accuse and blame.” Blame is a method we employ to avoid facing what needs to be faced. Another thing we do is we ‘perfect’, which doesn't work. We get plastic surgery; we obsess over our bodies; we attempt to control the behaviors of the people in our world, because we see others in our world as a reflection of who we are, and if they are perfect, that must mean I am perfect; we do this to our children, and instead of giving them nurturing, love, and the tools to empower them to meet the challenges they will inevitably face in life, we try to make them these perfect little boys and girls. And when they don’t measure up to our expectations of them, they are likely to experience emotional and psychological damage. </span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">Lastly, we pretend. We pretend that what we do does not affect other people. It does. All of life is connected. Plants give off oxygen which we need to breathe, and we exhale carbon dioxide which the plants need to live. At the molecular level, the atomic soup of all living things is carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen. This is found in every living thing you see: a butterfly’s wing, a parrot’s beak, a lion’s tooth, a leaf of a tree, and in you. What we do affects all of life, because we are a part of life and life is a part of us. Whenever you hurt another human being, imagine a sword right above your head, and whenever you strike out from your pain, that sword is reaching down and striking you. What you do to others is what you do to yourself. There is only one of us. All of these things by themselves or used in combination prevent us from being real and authentic with the people in our lives.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">Shame keeps us doing the same things over and over again because our souls want to heal from this pain. The soul wants to be united with love, the love that it is, and the love that it shares with every living thing. Anything that is not love will come up to be healed and transformed, if we recognize that this is what the soul is doing. </span><br />
<span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;"><br /></span>
<span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">So, how do we eliminate shame? How do we eliminate guilt? First of all, we must give ourselves permission to truly be seen. We must be transparent; otherwise we are living in secrecy and hiding the things we don’t want others to see. Our society has taught us it is better to lie about ourselves than to be open and honest with the people in our lives. Everyone has at one time withheld the truth because it was our impression this would keep us safe and protected from the judgment and accusations of others that we are bad or wrong for feeling this way, which would then keep us from feeling love and connection. I’m declaring this is wrong minded thinking. It is better to speak the truth of who you are than to live a lie in order for people to like and love you. Those who truly love you will love you more because of the courage you showed by opening up your heart to them honestly and truthfully. Those who find fault or judge you harshly, are coming from a mind that doesn't understand what it means to live authentically, and the courage it takes to reveal the secrets that you hold. Let them go, with acceptance, grace, and dignity, knowing the right people will come into your world who will accept you exactly as you are. Truth plus transparency along with unconditional love equals healed. You have to allow yourself to be seen by those with whom you can tell your story whole-heartedly to without being shamed for it or judged. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">Another thing to do to eliminate shame is to love with your whole heart, even though there is no guarantee you will receive love back. You've got to go out into the world and love. Be love. As many people have said before, you can only give what you have, and thus, in order to give love, you must be love; you must recognize the love that is already inside of you and give it away. It will come back to you, in some way, in another form; your job is to be what it is you want to experience. You also want to practice gratitude, joy, and seeing the goodness and abundance in your life. When you are able to see the good things in your life, which are right there in front of you just asking to be seen, you will slowly but surely pull yourself out of the prison house of shame. Life is not all dark. See the light, be drawn by the light, and light will infuse your world. You call into your life what it is you want to see and experience. Along with the desire to experience the light, you've got to feel that you are worthy of good things, that you are enough. No one can give you what you already have. No one outside of you can make you feel worthy, it comes from you. You have everything inside of you right now. Stop running away from the things you need to face. Face it; with love, compassion, and understanding, and you’ll be able to free yourself from the guilt, shame, and pain of your past.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">What do we learn from the Brene Brown video and from the analysis presented in these last 4 blogs? If we don’t look at our guilt and shame, it will keep us in a place that doesn't allow us to be the fullest expression of who we are capable of being. Guilt and shame imprisons us, binds our spirits, and holds us down at the mercy of our past actions and behaviors. Guilt and shame is hell. There is no other hell than that. However, guilt and shame cannot survive empathy. And when you find it within yourself to be truly honest, and to look at those places, re-contextualize those events and those experiences, to extract the gold from the dark, to pull out the things which are of value in your life, you will see that these were lessons for you to learn and grow so that you may become the person you are capable of becoming. Without those experiences, you wouldn't be able to bring to the world what you were intended to bring into it.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<u>Charlie Pacello</u> is a PTSD, Depression, and Healing Trauma Recovery Expert and Life Coach, a former US Air Force Lieutenant, and creator of the program, 'Lt. Pacello's Life Training Program.' He can be reached by visiting his website at <a href="http://www.charliepacello.com/">www.charliepacello.com</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12220476948913167116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2329241031519719397.post-72865260807135528872014-10-16T14:14:00.000-07:002014-10-16T14:14:19.328-07:00Understanding the Nature of Guilt, Shame, and Vulnerability - Brene Brown - Part 3<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;"><br /></span>
<span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;"><b>VULNERABILITY</b></span><br />
<span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;"><br /></span>
<span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">Vulnerability is at the core of shame, of fear, of guilt, and of self-hatred; and the struggle for love and belonging. However, as Brene Brown points out, it is also the birthplace of joy, creativity, belonging, and love. If vulnerability is the birthplace of all those emotions that we truly cherish, then it is so vitally important to be tender and kind to ourselves, and to those around us. Love begets more love, fear begets more fear. It can be no other way. When we give ourselves permission to be vulnerable, we give ourselves a chance to experience life from a place of wholeness, because we are not afraid of letting ourselves be seen. This takes true courage, and the reward for living from this place, is you live from a place of true authenticity. You are authentically you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">Why is it so difficult for us to be vulnerable? For one thing, we numb vulnerability. We don’t allow ourselves to live in vulnerability, which is about being in touch with who you are and with your feelings and emotions. Human beings are unique in the animal kingdom because we think and we feel. Feelings can make us feel very vulnerable and at the same time, make life so worth living. Can you imagine what life would be like without feelings? All the color and majesty of life would be stripped away; we wouldn't know what the sun on our skin felt like, the taste of an apple, the smell of a rose, or the tenderness of a kiss. We wouldn't feel pain, but we also wouldn't feel joy either. We live in a world of opposites. This is how mankind learns – in contrasts, and it’s no different with feelings. But we reject our negative feelings because we fear them, and what we fear, controls and dominates our lives. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">So what is it that we are so afraid of? We are afraid of rejection. We live in a very vulnerable world. One moment you have a job, and the next, you've just been laid off. Bills are piling up that you don’t know how you are going to pay. A relationship turns sour and you don’t know if you will ever be able to love again. Because there are so many areas of our lives where we feel threatened, or have experienced tragedy, we don’t allow ourselves to be vulnerable and feel those negative emotions. It’s the only way, we believe, we can protect ourselves and our livelihood from the cold, cruel world. What ends up happening is, instead of giving ourselves the permission to experience the negative emotions associated with a traumatic event, we numb it. But you can’t selectively numb your emotions. </span><br />
<span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;"><br /></span>
<span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">So, this is what you do. You think to yourself, ‘I’m not going to feel these negative emotions, it’s just too painful’. Well, at this point, your mind employs unconscious coping strategies to drown out these toxic feelings. For example: you go out and medicate yourself and/or engage in addictive or self-destructive behaviors; you sleep too much; you use tv, reading, or hobbies to distract you and numb out; you work compulsively at unrewarding jobs; you binge on any of the above activities when things get tough; you take out your anger and frustration by getting into fights with your loved ones; or you keep repeating painful experiences over and over again. These are just a few ways people who have experienced trauma deal with the trauma in their lives. Why do we do this? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">These deep seated emotions of guilt and shame are like poisons to our soul, and our soul wants to get rid of it.</span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 18.3999996185303px;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">It wants to be purged of all that is toxic to its well-being.</span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 18.3999996185303px;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">But when we numb our emotions, it’s like we put a plug on the wound hoping this will solve the problem.</span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 18.3999996185303px;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">It does temporarily, but like water in a plugged up pipe in your house, if you don’t clear it up, it will burst, and the mess you have to clean up later is much worse than if you just cleaned it up when you first noticed the problem.</span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">By numbing your negative emotions, you also numb your capacity to feel love, your capacity to feel joy, and your capacity to feel good. Life is seen through lenses that are fogged up, because your emotions are clogged up and your mind is stuck in the painful experiences of the past. Behind all these negative feelings and emotions, are all the good feelings and emotions we want to experience: gratitude, joy, love, happiness, and authentic connection. What ends up happening is when we don’t feel good, when we don’t feel happy, we feel miserable, and then, we’re not finding the meaning and purpose in our lives we desire, we feel despair, we feel hopeless, we feel like our lives are going nowhere, and so what do we do, we repeat the same cycle all over again. We start drinking, we do drugs, we medicate ourselves all over again, and this becomes a dangerous cycle. If we could just go back to the original trauma, the original place where the error occurred, and atoned for that error and heal it within ourselves, we can unravel all that we've done to ourselves to bury the pain of the experience. We make it worse and compound the problem by employing all these other ways in which we try to cope.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">Part 4, the last in this series, tomorrow.</span></div>
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<u>Charlie Pacello</u> is a PTSD, Depression, and Healing Trauma Recovery Expert and Life Coach, a former US Air Force Lieutenant, and creator of the program, 'Lt. Pacello's Life Training Program.' He can be reached by visiting his website at <a href="http://www.charliepacello.com/">www.charliepacello.com</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12220476948913167116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2329241031519719397.post-39789322408784483082014-10-15T11:05:00.000-07:002014-10-15T11:05:28.937-07:00Understanding the Nature of Guilt, Shame, and Vulnerability - The Work of Brene Brown - Part 2<div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;"><b>WE HAVE TO ALLOW OURSELVES TO BE SEEN</b></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In order for
us to connect to others, we have to allow ourselves to be seen. We have to give ourselves permission to show
others who we really are without fear of being rejected or shamed because it is
the only way we will be able to have a true authentic connection with another
human being. We have to feel worthy of
connection. Now, this is what shame
boils down to: am I worthy of love, belonging, and connection? To feel shame is to believe you are not
worthy. The opposite of shame is
worthiness. So how do you get a sense of
worthiness, a deep feeling of being worthy of belonging, love, and
connection? The key is to allow yourself
to be vulnerable, to speak your truth without guilt, shame, anger, or blame,
and to trust that your willingness to be totally transparent, will foster the
conditions to bring the truth of who you are out for all those to see.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Brene Brown
talks about whole-hearted people.
Whole-hearted people feel they are worthy of connection, and have a
strong sense of who they are, regardless of what other people might be saying
about them. Brown describes four
characteristics of whole-hearted people: courage, compassion, connection, and
vulnerability. Courage is often confused
with bravery. One of the ways our
culture has defined courage is the inner strength to face your fears, which is
often equated with standing on the battlefield in the front line facing a
barrage of artillery, witnessing and partaking in the horrors of battle. This is bravery. Courage comes from the Latin, and its
etymological root is ‘of the heart.’
Hence, the true meaning of courage is to tell your story of who you are
with your whole heart. That’s what
courage is. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Whole-hearted
people are able to speak the story of who they are with their whole heart. They’re able to speak all their
imperfections, their insecurities, their self-doubts, and they’re able to do
that with a sense of love about themselves, and recognition of their own
limitations. Our ego-minds have a tendency
to infect how we perceive ourselves. If we are not as “perfect” as our ego mind
directs us to be, then, we will believe on some level, whether we are conscious
of this or not, that we are not good.
Whole-hearted people do not have this conundrum. They recognize that life is a journey; they
are imperfect by nature, which gives them permission to grow and learn from
their mistakes and errors consciously without the burden of the excessive
weight of guilt and shame. We can only
become the people we are capable of becoming by learning from our
mistakes. If we don’t allow ourselves to
learn from our mistakes, and get stuck in guilt and shame, we impede the
process of our evolution.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Compassion
is the understanding or empathy for the suffering of others. Whole-hearted people have compassion for
themselves, for others, and recognize their own humanity. They have let go of anything they thought
they were supposed to be, or should be, so that they could be who they are. This enables you to have true connection with
someone because you are not hiding anything.
You are showing your strengths, your weaknesses, all of it. By allowing yourself to be truly seen, you
miraculously get this deep connection we’re all searching for, but what’s
unique about this kind of connection, allowing yourself to be that vulnerable,
is it is authentic. You have an
authentic connection to another human being.
You’re not hiding anything, you’re not covering up anything, you’re not
deceiving anybody, and thus you’re opening yourself up to be who you truly are,
the whole of you. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">People who
are whole-hearted fully embrace their vulnerability. It’s not something they run away from,
cowering in fear, worried about what others might think of them. They are not afraid of losing love because
they know the source of their love is inside them. They believe their vulnerability is what
makes them beautiful. To be vulnerable
is to be fully open to life, to be fully alive, and is characterized by the
willingness to embrace all that life has to offer. So, whole-hearted people forgive easily, not
because the other person deserves it, but because they deserve peace. They will be the first ones to say, ‘I’m
sorry’ or ‘I love you’, because they know there are no guarantees in life; they
recognize the transience of the material world, and will find out and cultivate
what is truly most important. It is not
material things or grievances which are of value to the whole-hearted person. ‘Love holds no grievances’ as A Course in
Miracles says. You cannot love someone
and at the same time, hold a grievance against them. These are contradictory impulses, and deny
the holder of these impulses with the ability to see past the ‘sins’ of the
other to the beauty that is in them. </span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">All
you see when you hold a grievance is the sinner, the unforgivable sinner who
deserves punishment by you. They may
have done something in the past that was wrong, and the wrong may need to be
addressed, but there is a difference in how you do it. When you do it from a place of love, you
respect the person who stands before you, you recognize the error they
committed is not who they really are, that in that moment they fell asleep to
who they truly are, and behaved in ways that were hurtful. But you can’t solve a problem on the same
level that it occurred. You must rise up
above the pain, anger, and desire for revenge, and seek what is noble in
you. When you seek what is noble in you,
and act from that place of self-love and self-respect, you will begin the
process of transcending the event which has caused you so much pain. Trust in this process, and I promise you, you
will see the person you hold a grievance against transform, you will no longer
be holding them hostage to their past, and you and they will eventually be free
from the past completely. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Tomorrow, Part 3.</span></span></div>
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<u>Charlie Pacello</u> is a PTSD, Depression, and Healing Trauma Recovery Expert and Life Coach, a former US Air Force Lieutenant, and creator of the program, 'Lt. Pacello's Life Training Program.' He can be reached by visiting his website at <a href="http://www.charliepacello.com/">www.charliepacello.com</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12220476948913167116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2329241031519719397.post-82432699303890182792014-10-10T12:03:00.000-07:002014-10-10T12:03:44.701-07:00Understanding the Nature of Guilt, Shame, and Vulnerability - Part 1<div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><span style="line-height: 115%;">GUILT, SHAME, AND VULNERABILITY</span></b><span style="line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">One of the
things you learn in my program is that mind is the cause; the observable
world is the effect. Perception is a
mirror, not a fact, and what you look on is your state of mind reflected
outward. Now, in order for us to
completely heal from our past, we have to understand the nature of guilt,
shame, and vulnerability. It is
something that people who suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and trauma
are constantly fighting against, which is the regrettable memories of their
past. The things they wish they would
have done differently, the things that they feel are unforgivable, that they
can’t free themselves from and are imprisoned by. Guilt and shame is a preoccupation with sin. Sin has been used over the centuries in order
to manipulate and control people and keep them down. Religion has turned something that was
intended to be used in guiding one’s conscience in order to do well and learn
from one’s mistakes, and perverted the understanding to keep them in fear of
God, in fear of eternal damnation, and so, as a consequence, they've been able
to keep people in control through the use and manipulation of guilt and
shame.</span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Sin actually
is an archery term; it means ‘you missed the mark.’ It’s really about learning from your
mistakes. What sin has become is an
exaggerated fear of eternal damnation.
If we sin, and God condemns us for our sins, our souls will live in the
fires of hell for all eternity. This
idea has so </span></span><span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">embedded</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"> itself into our unconscious minds that we often punish
ourselves in the present moment for the ‘sins’ </span></span><span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">we've</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;"> made in this life before
God has even passed any kind of judgment against us, and then, because we see
ourselves as unforgivable sinners, we continue to do things that bring us pain,
which only strengthens the idea that we are sinners, we are bad, and we are
going to hell. It’s a vicious cycle we
do to ourselves without us even being aware of it. The lives of people who suffer from guilt and
shame, by virtue of these unconscious negative beliefs, can be so tortured and
debilitating that one’s life is completely altered because of the things they
have yet to learn from. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">So what is
the nature of guilt and shame? Guilt is
‘I've done something bad and I should feel bad about it.’ Shame is ‘I've done something bad and
therefore, I am bad.’ Shame is total
despair, an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness, life has lost all its
meaning, and there is a feeling that our errors are totally unforgivable and we
will never be able to recover from it.
It is the total imprisonment of one’s self. Shame is the lowest energy of the
universe. Someone who is so
self-absorbed into their own shame cannot see how they will ever extricate
themselves from the place in their lives they find themselves in. Guilt is intimately connected with
shame. Guilt can be turned inward or
guilt can be turned outward. Guilt
turned inward is self-violence; you are committing violence towards yourself. Guilt provokes rage. So let’s say you are guilty of doing
something, or having done something, or having experienced something, and if
you are non-violent, you will turn the rage that guilt provokes against
yourself, and this shows up as ‘I’m not good enough, I don’t deserve this, I’m
a failure, I’m not worthy, etc.’ If you
are prone to violence, acting out from your pain, and projecting hatred out,
you will put it ‘out there’, and then seek the means for revenge and
retaliation. That’s how guilt manifests
itself. Guilt is “the consequence of the
memory of regretted past actions as they are recalled.” (Hawkins, p. 51). What you feel is that what you have done is
so bad, and what follows are the self-punitive judgments you make about your
past actions. ‘I don’t deserve to have anything, I’m not worthy of anything,
I’m not </span></span><span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">love-able</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">, I’m a worthless worm in the face of God or the Universe, in
the face of all my friends and loved ones’, and what pins this all together is
the belief you don’t deserve to have any good and you are completely </span></span><span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">unforgivable</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Guilt and
shame have been exploited by people in position of power throughout mankind’s
history to keep man down, in fear and trepidation for the welfare of his soul,
and trapped in the tragedies of the past.
I’m saying to all of you, who are reading this blog; you can break free
from your past! What I want you to know
is guilt is something that ages you and will make you sick. It will show up in your body if you don’t
change it and heal it. It can be
changed, it can be re-contextualized, and it can be used as a means to
re-calibrate your life and your story, which helps you to make peace with your
past. PTSD and trauma suffers must learn
how to overcome and transcend their guilt and shame. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The foremost
authority and expert on guilt and shame is Dr. Brene Brown, who spent ten years
researching the nature of guilt, shame, and vulnerability. Her research is a part of my program and we
watch a video where she goes into detail about what she uncovered and
discovered through her years of collecting data and information regarding this
topic. I’m going to share with you
what’s in the video, what the meaning in it is, and what I got out of it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Brene Brown
begins by talking about connection. The
reason why we are here on this planet is to connect with others. We want to connect with them physically,
emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually.
When we have connection with others, this gives us the meaning and
purpose in our lives we so deeply cherish.
If we have connection, to others, to ourselves, to all of life, our
lives become imbued and filled with meaning and purpose. We are neurobiologically programmed to feel
connected to others. When we experience
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or trauma from a traumatic event, whether it is
war, physical abuse, emotional abuse, accidents, disasters, etc., we feel
disconnected from life; we have been disconnected from connection. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">What
unravels that connection is the shame.
This shame is the fear and disconnection that there is something wrong
about me. And that if others know and
see this thing inside of me, what I've done, what happened to me, what I
experienced, then I won’t be worthy of any connection. This deeply rooted fear is something we all
have, this is not an ‘American’ issue, this is universal. The only ones who don’t have this fear are those
who are sociopathic, who have no empathy whatsoever, who are unable to feel
compassion for others, and therefore cannot connect to people on an emotional
level. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We don’t
want to talk about this stuff. No one
wants to talk about their shame, no one wants to talk about their guilt,
because we have been taught to suppress it. This is the dark, ugly side of us
we should avoid and separate ourselves from.
Hence, we project these unwanted qualities within us out into the world
and they become our shadow figures and theses shadow figures are the things we
hate about ourselves, and when we see it in others, we end up hating that
quality in them. When we project it out
into the world, it can lead to violence and the acting out of our repressed
desires to destroy that which we hate in them, which is really about us. However, this doesn’t produce the desired
effect of eliminating that which we loathe, and instead, what happens is our
acts of violence only create more violence.
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“If you
don’t talk about your shame and guilt, there’s a good chance you got it. And the less you talk about it, the more you
got it.” Brene Brown points out that
shame is lethal, it will destroy you. As
she defines it, shame is “the profound sense that you are unworthy of love and belonging.” If you don’t feel you are deserving of love
and belonging, you won’t survive.
Aristotle said that we are social by nature, thus, if we don’t feel like
we belong, that is as good as death. We
may be alive, but we are dead inside.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Now, what holds
this idea of shame together is the idea that ‘I’m not enough, I’m not good
enough, I don’t deserve to have good things, I’m such a sinner that I don’t
deserve to have the good things life has to offer’. This idea makes us feel extraordinarily,
excruciatingly vulnerable, and as a consequence, we can feel immense despair
and total hopelessness of ever being able to connect again to another human
being. This state of existence can be
overwhelmingly painful to the sufferer because of the deeply held unconscious
fear associated with the total absence of love, which is fundamental to our
existence. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A momentary aside before I continue with the
work of Brene Brown as I evaluate my own experience with guilt and shame. I descended to the very depths of my own
hell, thrust down by the heavy weight of all my past, and went through what is
often called, ‘the Dark Night of the Soul’.
Now that I have fully recovered and come out the other side, I have some
new understandings substantiated by personal experience. Our greatest fear is not death. It is the total and complete loss of love, a
state of absolute lovelessness, where we have been separated from love. This is equivalent to a total separation from
God, for if God is Love, and love is the binding force of the entire universe,
then if we reach the state of total separation, we must be unworthy of love,
God has abandoned us, and for this we either must miserably die or savagely
retaliate against love. In my opinion, this
is the source of evil. As A Course In Miracles states, "Love cannot give evil, and what is not happiness is evil." But that’s another discussion for a future time.</span><span style="font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">Part 2 next week.</span><br />
<span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;"><br /></span>
<span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;"><u><br /></u></span>
<span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;"><u>References</u>:</span><br />
<span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;"><br /></span>
<span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">1. Hawkins, David R., M.D., Ph.D. <u>Transcending the Levels of Consciousness: The Stairway to Enlightenment</u>. Veritas Publishing; 1st Edition, 2006.</span><br />
<span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">2. <u>A Course In Miracles</u>, Workbook for Students. Course in Miracles Society, Omaha, NE. 2008</span><br />
<span style="line-height: 18.3999996185303px;">3. Dr. Brene Brown video, TED Talk, 2010. </span></div>
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<u>Charlie Pacello</u> is a PTSD, Depression, and Healing Trauma Recovery Expert and Life Coach, a former US Air Force Lieutenant, and creator of the program, 'Lt. Pacello's Life Training Program.' He can be reached by visiting his website at <a href="http://www.charliepacello.com/">www.charliepacello.com</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12220476948913167116noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2329241031519719397.post-20013749735193920862014-09-04T14:47:00.000-07:002014-09-04T14:47:37.180-07:00Freedom from DepressionIn light of the Robin Williams tragedy, and having experienced severe chronic depression and suicidal contemplation throughout much of my adult life after my time in the military, I feel compelled to tell you a bit of my story during the darkest times with my battle with depression, PTSD, and trauma. It is my hope and intention that what I share will be healing for those who might be battling their own personal demons and feel there is no way out. Some of the things I will share in the next few blogs are very dark, and are not suitable for children. I am exposing my demons to you, and thus I ask that you please read this first before any young children read it. By sharing my battle with my inner demons, I hope it will serve to stop someone who might be thinking of ending their life, and get some help. Getting help was the best decision I've ever made. It helped me to find the joy for my life once again. <br />
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<b>Depression</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
One of the most common consequences of someone who has experienced Post-Traumatic Soul Distress or trauma in their lives is the experience of depression. Depression is something we all have experienced at least once in our lives. It's very common. It can be traced back to ancient biblical times. Depression is as common as man has been on this earth. In the energy field of depression, we view ourselves and the world as sad and hopeless; a place of sin and immeasurable, unending suffering; and our view of God or Source is someone who doesn't love us, who ignores us; who has no feelings for us, is uncaring, and who we feel separated from and abandoned by. Essentially, at its core, we feel separated from life. The most common feelings associated with depression are self-blame, self-loathing, guilt, shame, and worthlessness. In addition, a sufferer of depression feels powerless to do anything about his condition or effect positive changes in the world he lives in that might change his perspective. He feels total hopelessness and despair that his life, and life in general, has no meaning and no purpose. There are many regrets about the past. There are paralyzing fears about the future. Attached to both of these are the feelings of guilt and anger. Depression can be described as anger turned inward.<br />
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What happens is we project what gives us value and what gives us meaning as outside of ourselves. We place value and significance on other people, on our families, on our jobs or careers, on our possessions, and things which are transitory in nature. We give away our power to these "outside things" because we believe they will give us the love, recognition, validation, and identity we need, and thus imbue our lives with meaning and purpose. This, we believe, will give us the connection we want. A depressed person is not able to make this connection. When the outside sources of their happiness has failed them or been lost to the regrettable past, whether it's a person, place, or thing, the internal emptiness one feels can be so overwhelming it's crippling. The sufferer can become so incredibly despondent where he is barely able to function, all is dark, his life force completely drained, and he has no will to live. The future is gone, and what he lost, can never be replaced or replicated, it's gone forever. This perceived lack and total separation from life can be so detrimental to the point where the person feels the only way to extricate himself from this excruciating pain is to commit suicide. To feel separated from that which we want is to unconsciously feel separated from God as our Source. We are totally separated from the source of our happiness.<br />
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For most of my life, I was sad and depressed. As a child, I was quiet, shy, gentle, and sad. That doesn't mean I didn't have good times; I did, I have many, many beautiful memories from my childhood and adolescence, my battle with depression doesn't negate or take away from any of those times, they were the times I lived for. However, as I grew older, I began increasingly feeling more sad, lonely and depressed, never quite measuring up in my mind to the people around me, always seeing others outside of myself as being happier, more content, having a better life. <br />
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It's not like I wanted to be depressed. Depressed people know they're depressed, and they know no one wants to be around someone who is depressed all the time. It's depressing. When family or others take notice something is wrong, you try to pretend nothing is wrong, because you don't want to burden them with your feelings about your life or your relationship to the world. You put on a mask to the world that everything is fine, but inside you're in the dark. You feel everyone's pain around you, and take it on as your own, which depresses you even more. Something inside of you knows something is not right, something is terribly wrong with the way the world operates, and how you operate, and you feel helpless to do anything about it.<br />
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By the time I was an officer in the Air Force, I was suffering from chronic depression, it was plaguing my life, and nothing I was doing offered any escape from the sense of hopelessness and despair I felt. And then, I experienced my trauma by working on the GPS/NDS program. I was in charge of the operational readiness and capability of these mobile ground units that would only be used for Integrated Tactical Warning/Attack Assessment and Nuclear Force Management. End-to-end nuclear war. Under my leadership, my team and I executed all mission essential testing which resulted in full operational acceptance and turnover of a new system - a first for the NDS survivable ground mission. You can find all this stuff on my Officer Performance Reports, so nothing I am telling you is classified. <br />
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I remember the moment my soul was wounded by the work I was engaged in. I was sitting in one of these units doing some testing with one of our contractors, and as I was sitting there, I looked around, and imagined what would be happening if this machine was actually being used. There would be all out nuclear war. Life on earth, as we know it, would be over. And I had contributed my life in service to our nation to ultimately see to its destruction. I saw images of nuclear bombs going off; I saw the people using this machine that I and my team had made operational and ready to conduct the war, and it made me sick. I remember a big knot in my stomach as these and other thoughts consumed my mind, and I said to myself, 'This is not what I signed up for. I wanted to preserve, protect, and defend our nation. Not participate in the planning for the destruction and annihilation of mankind.' I received a deep, moral, spiritual wound in that moment. We all want to contribute something to this world. That what I did served a higher purpose, it added to the continuity of life, and made life better. No matter how I looked at it, I couldn't see how what I was doing served any higher purpose. To me, it was premeditated mass murder. And there was nothing I could do to change what I believed at the time was the inevitable outcome of the work I contributed my life and talents to. My soul revolted. And my depression about the future of humanity reached new depths never before experienced. I sought to 'numb out', and, as I will explain later in another blog, that is exactly what I did.<br />
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Depressed people literally have depressed cells. Happy people have happy ones. And the reason why we are depressed is because we have placed the source of our happiness as being outside of ourselves. There is an internal emptiness inside so deep and pervasive, nothing seems to satisfy this perceived lack - you can see the beauty on the outside, but not inside. There is this intolerable feeling that we have built up a veil of morality on a amoral reality. Nothing is as it should be; violence, death, and destruction rule this realm, and all we can do is stand up to it as best we can. For some of us, this is too much to bear, and we medicate ourselves or consider suicide as the only option to free ourselves from the suffering. I'm sharing with you my personal experience with PTSD and depression; others may have a different experience with it, but the essence is the same. <br />
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Beneath these disturbing thoughts and feelings I was having about my life and the world I lived in was all the pain, the loneliness, the hopelessness, and despair of my life that I carried with me from the genetic and historical transmission of trauma passed down to me through my father and mother. Traumas get passed down through the generations. It's not anybody's fault. We are all innocent at birth, and the world we are brought into gives us the experiences we have. Whatever is not consciously contained by one generation gets passed down which then necessarily and largely unconsciously plays itself out through the next generation. <br />
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I was completely unconscious of what was going on with me on the inside, in my inner world. I didn't know why I was always depressed. I didn't know why I felt the way I did, I didn't know why I couldn't seem to fit in, I didn't know why I felt so disconnected to all of life and the people around me, I didn't know where this pain came from or why it came to me. Of course, I didn't show it, or let anyone know I was so severely depressed because I didn't want to seem weak or unmanly. As a matter of fact, I put on the opposite face, the happy party guy, to cover up what was really going on. But by putting on a face and burying the pain I felt on the inside only made things exponentially worse. I didn't have the tools or resources at that time to face my depression and everything else that was in me that needed to be faced and healed. Instead, I coped with my depression and my traumas, by 'drowning out my sorrows' through alcohol and later drugs.<br />
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I want to conclude this by suggesting depression might be our friend. If looked at in the right way, perhaps this is nature's way, or our own psychology's way, or God's way of pointing out to us that something is not right in the way we see our life. And, it's my belief now, after years of battling with depression, it is our psychological, biological, and spiritual way of putting on the brakes and addressing that within us that needs to be re-examined. It's as if our own soul is saying to us, "Please look at this. Please understand me out of your compassion. Just love me. Heal me, heal all of it." When we address the fear underlying the depression, we give ourselves a chance to finally be free of it. Having the courage to look at what is depressing us with the eyes of compassion and non-judgment, having the intention to at least look at the subject as promising and hopeful, changes our relationship to depression. We are no longer at the mercy of it. We know it is trying to teach us something. It wants us to come back to ourselves and be the source of our own happiness regardless of the circumstances on the outside. And, if we can look at it and discover that "there is a benefit in here for me, not only for this particular situation, but for the rest of my life. When I solve it, I solve it for all time within myself." With this in mind, you empower yourself. You lift your energy up, you give yourself a chance to find the gold in the dark. And when you finally do find it, like a bird set free from its cage, you will miraculously be free to be yourself again.<br />
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<b>What to do to break free from Depression without having to resort to alcohol, drugs, or pharmaceuticals:</b><br />
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<ul>
<li>Be the <u>source</u> of your own happiness</li>
<li>Fill yourself up with love by doing things you love that are not dependent on anyone else</li>
<li>Look at the 'worst case scenarios' and face your fears</li>
<li>Learn to be content with being by yourself; you're going to be with you your whole life, might as well be your best and most loving friend</li>
<li>Surround yourself with people who will inspire and motivate you; join groups that get you out of yourself and into life</li>
<li>Stay active; exercise regularly</li>
<li>Spend time in nature</li>
<li>Meditate</li>
<li>Treat yourself the way you deserve to be treated, it makes you feel good</li>
<li>Laugh a lot; smile. That alone can lift up your energy and pick your spirits up</li>
<li>Have a life coach, therapist, or trusted friend whom you can talk to whenever you feel down. These are people who have earned the right to hear your story. They can be your greatest resource for empathy, connection, and can help put things in perspective and offer solutions</li>
<li>Enroll in a Tai-chi, karate, or movement meditation class. You want to move the negative energy lodged in the body caused by the depression or trauma and release it through active movement</li>
<li>Start a yoga practice</li>
<li>Get plenty of sleep to re-charge your body and mind</li>
<li>Cultivate gratitude in your life. Have a gratitude journal that you write in everyday 5 things for which you are grateful for, and 3 things for which you are grateful for not</li>
<li>Find a way to be of service</li>
<li>Always learn something new. You want to be growing all the time</li>
<li>Treat your body like a temple. Feed it only good things</li>
<li>Remember: your life is a gift! </li>
</ul>
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<u>Charlie Pacello</u> is a PTSD and Healing Trauma Recovery Expert and Life Coach, a former US Air Force Lieutenant, and creator of the program, 'Lt. Pacello's Life Training Program.' He can be reached by visiting his website at <a href="http://www.charliepacello.com/">www.charliepacello.com</a></div>
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