Centering Tools

Willing to be Led Towards your Heart - download Centering poetry

Centering poetry - download Marjorie's extensive collection of poetry years in the making. 

Your Price: $12.97 for the PDF version

Close your eyes, settle back in a comfortable position, and let your breath settle.  Let Marjorie Baker Price's reflective poems  motivate your own spiritual transformation.  Willing to be Led Towards your Heart is a collection of poems Marjorie spent several years writing.

Marjorie conveniently categorizes her poems to aid your own spiritual development.  The therapeutic process begins when you start to reflect, and these poems represent Marjorie's own reflective practices.  This convenient e-book is an exact copy of the physical book, but at a lower price and a more convenient format.  Take it to work, load it in most any portable device, and read and reflect.

Note: to view this product you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader.  There are many programs which allow you to view PDF files, but downloading the official version is your best bet.  Acrobat of course is a free program.

Sin's Root

It's All Rot

I almost titled this, "Sin's Rot".  Even typos engage in synchronicity, I guess.  We do tend to think of sin as involving "rotting" behaviors, do we not?  It's interesting, though, to note that the root of the word "sin" from the original Hebrew means "missing the mark".

Nothing more than a mistake, is the real bottom line here.  No one burns in hell (I dare you to find any greater example of hell than the many possibilities that exist here on earth), no one is reduced to being lesser than anyone else.  Like babies learning to walk, we fall down, we make a mistake, we "miss the mark", we sin.  So what's the big deal?

Infinite Stones

It does take a lot of chutzpah, to reveal my particular ethnic/religious roots, to accuse someone of sinning in the usually-understood sense of the word.  Of course, as Jesus said, "Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone." 

We would be hard put to find that person, and yet the world hotly behaves, and eagerly participates, in casting more "stones" than one could ever count, if we include more modern-day versions like, well, even all the way up to nuclear warheads . . . It's a "he said/she said" times populations, that make up nations' endless cycles of blame which compose all of recorded history, to be really specific.  And when - where - will it end?

Sanctioned Violence

The center is sanctioned violence that is virtually infinite, endlessly harmful.  The Dalai Lama advises us to seek to be harmless as the highest virtue we are capable of.  Mistakes really aren't the point here.  Forgiveness - next step up, speaking of evolution - requires acknowledging wrongdoing, or making mistakes, and simply accepting that this has occurred. 

Of ocurse this is a paradox, so we know we're really in a spiritual ballpark here, because everything in the spiritual ballpark is a paradox.  Can we stretch our consciousness enough beyond blame to state yes, there has been wrongdoing - mistakes - and I fully acknowledge that?

The Position to Create Miracles

Now we're in the realm of responsibility, and when we know we're able to respond, we are powerfully and fully present in the world.  In this position we can create miracles, inspire ourselves and others, and authentically support the greater whole, which is always the greater good. 

I noted another typo just now with the word inspire.  I started to type it as sinpire,  so I'm going to play with it a bit more.  Fire can extinguish wrongdoing - it burns it away - so I think we'ere getting warm here (can't resist the pun) speaking of tracking down  the roots of blame (I believe the full term is "hellfire and damnation").  I guess we're back  - have we ever left it? - to burning in hell.  The problem is, per the way this story goes, it goes on and on, forever and ever.

The Roots of Development

Here's the real truth.  When we are able to take responsibility through being fully present, which is to respond from heightened awareness, we can see and freely admit to making a mistake, understanding as well that we then can learn to correct it.  We do know how to correct, remembering my example of how we learn to walk. 

We crawl - this is development - we manage to stand up - we fall - we pick ourselves up and repeat, as long as it takes for us to learn to balance ourselves and take a step.  Then there are two steps, and eventually there are many more.

Dare to Inspire

This hasn't happened yet, according to recorded history, in spiritual terms.  We stopped at blame and burning in everlasting fires with no development to follow.  And note - the world is in terrible shape.  We are not infants, even though we continue to act like it. 

We live in critical times, times that loudly call for us to grow up, to dare to inspire ourselves to learn to live harmlessly with ourselves and one another, daring as well to admit our mistakes and determine how to do better, and better, and better, until we no longer miss the mark and can behave like compassionate, accepting human beings who acknowledge living in sacred, creating space fully dependant on each others' best graces as the fullest expression of the divine. 

Accept and Love Yourself mp3

Your Price: $8.97

Experience this healing guided meditation hypnosis audio to create a soul miracle for you of recovery – your heart’s desire to unconditionally love and accept yourself just as you are.  This restores your power to be fully present in the world, to share, respond and create your true intent.

Client example: to describe an inner journey

In the spirit of this holiday season, I wanted to post this wonderful poem
by another member of my monthly memoir writing group, completed in response
to my recommendation from the previous class to write a poem describing an
inner journey to one's heart.  Happy Equinox, spring (where is it?), Easter,
Passover . . . and beyond . . .

in-joy - Marjorie
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Taped to our refrigerator, is a poem, very yellow and aged but one that has followed me thru many moves. It‘s title is “Not in Vain” by Emily Dickinson.

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain.
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again
I shall not live in vain

As our Sunday sermon on Stewardship was delivered a few weeks back, my mind began to compose some thoughts in church.  I decided to put these thoughts into verse when I returned home.

HELP WANTED
I took a walk thru life one day
And this is what I saw
The many faces of a crowd
Following me, calling to me, begging me
To remember them with kindness

I took a walk thru life one day
Imagining what might happen
Would good fortune come to those who also walk
Or only just a few?

Who decides where each blessing falls?
Who pray tell is in charge of it all?
Anyone can say “get moving”
But who determines our will and spirit?

Trouble surfaces on many corners
Homes are not always a safe place to be
Children do not feel secure or wanted
Violence visits way too many too frequently

My walk is of no value, if action is not taken
My steps become an echo if I do not heed the call
My walk needs a direction, a purpose
I need God’s hand and help to make it work at all.                   

March 2008
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I welcome client submissions.  Your story, your thoughts, your feelings are
not only powerful testimonials to your own healing and development journeys,
but wonderful related offerings to others'.  Keep 'em coming to
marjorie@centeringtools.com, with many thanks.

One Chapter At a Time

I'm happy to share with you all one of the pieces a client wrote in my senior memoir writing class.  I anticipate you'll all enjoy this as much as I did. 

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One Chapter At A Time

Life is like a book.  You live it one chapter at a time.  At present, I am living chapter seventy in my book.  I have a zest for life.  I take the good with the bad and try to make the best of it always wondering what comes next.  How a person lives their life will determine how good the book will turn out.

When I was a little girl, I often wondered what my future life would be like.  My parents were divorced and my sister and I lived in foster homes.  We moved every couple of years or so.  My father wanted us to remain together.  This started with chapter three and continued until chapter eighteen.  I always lived with an eye on, “what comes next?”  My sister was only fifteen months older than I.  We were treated almost like twins wherever we were living.  We were in the same grade from second on as my sister was kept back a year.  I had almost finished chapter eleven when my father died.  It was only six days before the start of chapter twelve.  Chapter seventeen of my life was saddened by the fact that my sister moved out after graduation and we were physically separated for the first time.  Even though my sister moved miles away for most of her adult life, we were never farther than a phone call away.  My sister passed on in chapter sixty-nine and left a void that cannot be replaced.

My life has many chapters that contain mysteries.  I’m getting better at solving them as time goes on.  There are adventures in all the chapters, some good and others not so good.  There are happy times and sad times.  I pity people that get stuck on a chapter in their life and can’t get past the insignificant details to continue on.  They keep reliving the same things over and over, holding grudges and staying angry as if that will change the chapter.  Once it is written, it is best to move on. 

I know someone who keeps repeating what her life was like when she was young and living at home.  She didn’t have it easy but if I say so myself, it wasn’t as difficult as most people had it at that time.  Besides, all the people that hurt her are gone now.  She holds the resentment and anger and it is keeping her from enjoying what little she might have left in her life.  She has so many blessings and can’t acknowledge them because she is caught in the past.  Her book has almost seventy chapters, all the same.  It would be a boring read. 

My philosophy is to record the facts and move on to the future with hope that all will be much better.  Live your life one chapter at a time and make each one an adventure. 

Compassionate Touch Therapy

The Key Word is Compassion

This year I have put together a series of continuing education staff development programs for several Rochester area nursing homes and their staff caregivers, on an integrative approach I've synthesized for energetic healing called Compassionate Touch Therapy.  What is it, and how can it better help us support and center ourselves and others whom we care for and about?

The word compassion, according to the Tibetan definition, means detached loving.  The Tibetans also say compassion represents the highest emotion we're capable of experiencing.  To be loving without agenda, expectation, and judgment requires a space of inner detachment, which is not uncaring - it is openness - like the openness of a sacred channel.

The Foundation of Energetic Healing

When we can energetically open ourselves as a channel for universal life force energy, the Source which enlivens and sustains us endlessly, we can, in a hands-on way, transmit this energy fully to wherever we centrally focus our meditative intent.  The synthesis of Compassionate Touch Therapy integratively and holistically combines basic elements of Reiki and Therapeutic Touch with a foundation of energetic healing that I have created within my Centering practice.

The steps involved that I've created are both simple and, within the challenges of typical day-to-day life, difficult.  These are centering, building, transmitting, separating, and returning to center.

Five Steps to Completion

Centering is an inner-directed, meditative approach that involves entering your own sacred stillness through allowing your breath to unfold to its deepest, fullest extent in order to let go and let be.  This is how we come to center.

Building is how we position our hands, understood to be transmitters for healing, with our inner-directed spiritual intent from our center, to open as a channel, and allow universal life force energy to fully flow and build.  We are then in full position to transmit.

Transmitting flows from whatever particular position the hands are placed in, with ongoing intent to promote maximum healing responses from a place of letting go and letting be.  This occurs through a light touch, holding the hands in each particular position for as long as one is intuitively moved to do so - generally anywhere from thirty seconds to several minutes.

Separating is what I call "the clean break" which occurs when the healer comes to know, from an inner place of heightened awareness, that the treatment is complete, and simply withdraws their hands and focused intent from connected positions, with a sense of blessing and release.  Separating is always fueled by a sense of trust and acceptance of higher outcome.

Returning to center is the final inner-directed act to return, after separating, to one's own sacred inner center, continuing to experience on the inner planes of consciousness, letting go and letting be.  All healing occurs within a sacred spiritual circle that allows us to fully experience the divine universe of integrative, endless, multidimensional body-mind healing.

A New Definition of Healing

Healing continues, and can be easily reactivated for greater and greater sustaining results with each determined cycle of Compassionate Touch Therapy.  Energy, said Einstein, can be neither created nor destroyed, and, being subtle and in a constant state of motion, can "get through" anything. 

So Compassionate Touch Therapy reaches - touches - beyond - and is without limits in its potential scope.  This is our capability and our highest function as spiritual beings of enlightened consciousness adventuring on the earth plane, transcending even fear and woundedness.  Perhaps that is the real definition of healing.