Centering Tools

How Can You Best Support Yourself?

What Heals and Develops Us Best Supports Us

This is a key upcoming week in Judeo-Christian religion.  It begins with the onset of Passover, the celebration of the book of Exodus in the old testament, with the story of transcending the challenges of longstanding slavery to become, in full understanding, responsible, enlightened, free, and transformed.

It ends Good Friday and Easter, with the story of Jesus as the bringer of what became Christianity and the new testament as a spiritual guide to mastery and transcendence through the power of divine love, forgiveness and faith.  Are these key themes – slavery, freedom, responsibility, enlightenment, transformation, divine love, forgiveness, faith and transcendence – what we’re really,centrally challenged to ascend to and become in our lives in order to best support ourselves in the world?

The Stories of Passover and Easter Offer Key Themes of Healing and Development

Both stories that are the crux of these religions tell us just that.  What about the times we live in, the crises we experience, regarding obtaining true support?  We are live as multidimensional spiritual beings of divine consciousness to complete whatever prime directive we’ve chosen before incarnating for how we want to further develop, well understanding at a soul level these key choices support the thrust of higher power to serve the world through all of the above-described themes.    

There is so much we can’t do in our world despite how long and extensively we’ve been told we can.  We can’t change anyone or anything. 

We Always Have the Wherewithal to Greatly Support Ourselves to Become More Empowered

We can’t stop outcomes, particularly and supremely birth and death.  We can’t “get” a guarantee or know what will happen in all given moments.

We do have the wherewithal to more greatly support ourselves, and in that, we carry out our divine directive to best support the world.  We live in a truly win-win matrix – but of course, one needs to understand and know how to function in that paradigm.

A Meditative and Journaling Exercise to Engage Your Divine Will to Transcend and Free Yourself

I invite you to celebrate this very key time and see how you can access core support as that which allows, extends, and accomplished your soul’s directive for healing and development to best offer impact to your world – both inside and outside.  Here is a key meditative and journaling exercise I’ve created to best and transcendently support and empower yourself:

Settle back, take three, deep cleansing breaths, close your eyes, adjust your body so it feels in a wholly relaxed, supported, aligned position, and continue to say to yourself as you inhale, “Let be”; and as you exhale, “Let go”.  Imagine your breath forms a radiant, shimmering, infinite cocoon around you – your breath translated in the Hebrew, Latin and Greek words as meaning “spirit”. 

Feel how completely and endlessly you are held in the center, so lightly and freely, as you begin to rise higher and higher, floating and floating into all that is free, infinitely enveloping and light, endlessly loving.  Just be here now . . . just be here . . . now.

Allow your attention to successively focus on the following words:  Will, Freedom, Choice, Faith, Forgive, Transformation, Healing, Awareness.  Take all the time that you wish.

Then, as you continue to infinitely, evenly, deeply breathe, for three breaths at a time say to yourself, successively each of the above words.  Settle back and experience fully all that happens.

When you’re ready, through your own,light, floating rhythms, return to full, waking consciousness, and open your eyes.  Record your experience and whatever insights occur.

Happy, fruitful celebrating and supporting – Marjorie

Ten Key Ways to Resolve Conflict from Within

Conflict Offers Great Opportunities for Central Healing and Growth

Conflict is a fact of life.  Spiritually and therapeutically conflict offers great potential to catalyze equally great healing and growth.

When we are centered, we are balanced, and when we are balanced, we are peaceful.  To that end, conflict doesn’t “set well” with anyone.

Follow Ten Paths to Higher Resolution

Fundamentally all conflict involves struggle between elements that are incomplete and present at a lesser vibrational frequency than wherever the real resolution exists, which is at a higher level not able to be accessed.  A central challenge of conflict, then is a challenge of completion – higher resolution.

Here are ten key ways I’m developed and recommend in my Centering Tools practice to resolve conflict from within:

Run A Growth Experiment that Supports Completion1.  Assume there is something you are meant to let go of. 

2.  List five things involved in the conflict that you could objectively let go of, and why.

3.  Decide to run a complete experiment to let go of one of these things for a set period of time, and see what happens.

4.  Ask yourself what will happen and what you’re most afraid will happen if you don’t resolve the conflict – are both of these the same?

5.  Imagine a truly peaceful resolution to the conflict as completely and fully as possible and record your experience in the present tense.

6.  Complete the following sentence: If I loved myself even more greatly than I do now, I would ____________________________ to strengthen myself through this experience.

7.  Imagine five years has passed, and then you look back at the conflict.  How do you see it and how do you feel about it all?

8.  Draw a picture of all the elements you consider to make up the conflict, and then draw successive pictures, taking one element out at a time until there is nothing left.

9.  Complete the following sentence:  IF a higher power forgave anything at all involving this conflict, the forgiveness would be . . . “

10. Take ten deep, full breaths; and with each inhalation say the phrase, “Let be ____________________ (regarding the conflict)”, and with each exhalation say the phrase, “Let go ___________________  (regarding the conflict) . . .

And then, through completing all ten steps, see what happens!     

Can You Give Up Drama for Something Better?

Perpetuating Drama Is The Nature Of Dysfunction And Hopelessness

I hear lots of stories involving big dramas from clients that I see individually, in partnerships, small groups,  and large workshops – within organizations and from halfway around the world.  We can experience a lot of terrible and extended suffering in our lives – a lot of complicated and unresolved pain – a lot of “stuck” experiences that can unfortunately thematically continue for a long, long time.

The format, in theatrical terms, of all of these kinds of stories is what we call drama.  Stuck drama clinically is called dysfunction. 

This Creates Addiction, Which Destroys

In popular cultural terms we call it soap operas – endlessly repeating unsolvable struggling themes, that extensively engage and entangle all the participants in corresponding and repeated crises, with no evolution or resolution.  Without question we are at risk, as this kind of pattern occurs, to get “hooked” on it; and therefore unwittingly become perpetrators of it.

Can we give up drama for something better?  Something without the “rush”, infantile “hook”, and repeated unsatisfactory courses and outcomes?  In addictions recovery and Centering Tools terms the alternative to all this is called sober, functioning, achieving, sustaining, healthy living that allows greater personal freedom, heightens awareness, and results in significant growth and true fulfillment.

Access Your Own Vision to Become As Your Mission for Recovery

Those results are the vision and mission of my Centering Tools practice – the substance of my Centering Tools Home Study Course that I extensively laid out in the journaling workbook and accompanying six guided meditation audios.  What I consistently hear from clients as I propose experimenting with these techniques to be able to successfully shift out of endless drama, and shift into recovering one’s soul and a correspondingly new and better life is, “It’s hard work”.

I always heartily agree with them and share my opinion, which is that the Universe or higher power, or whatever we want to call it, doesn’t especially care about whether a particular life plan or organic set of cohesive choices involves what an individual decides at the time is “hard work”, or not.  The Universe, like our culture, cares about results, and that involves finding and going, with full commitment, in the right direction.

Divine Purpose Always Supports What Is Best For Individuals And The Greater Good

Discovering this – which also is popularly called “purpose”, can be a challenge, because it requires a fundamental and inner-connected integrity without distraction nor ending detours to access and literally become, through experiencing a heroic odyssey, one’s higher purpose.  How can we know what to choose and how to respond, in order to shut down drama and decide to experience something better?

I’ll start with the last two words of the last sentence I wrote, “something better”.  This occurs when we discover and commit no matter what to, with all our hearts, souls and might, choose that which supports what is good for us and the greater good.

Key Feelings Confirm Right Direction

Here’s the truth – there are no “either-or” situations.  It may take awhile for both to reveal themselves fully, but it always happens.

Now I’ll go back to the rest of that paragraph.  We know we’re going in the right direction to shut down drama when, in experiencing our feelings in response to particular choices, we feel any or all of the following sensations:  peaceful, clear, oddly calm, light, more aware; and feel a greater sense of hope and personal power. 

Core Fears Have a Core Purpose

All of that is “something better” than perpetuating endless drama, which is, after all, as an addiction, potentially a terminal disease.  When clients struggle with determining and committing to making and carrying out the right choice – always for most understandable and extensive reasons – I tell them to describe with all the choices they’re considering what they are most afraid of.

Then I advise them to choose what option they’re most afraid to not choose, which is the path to revealing and supporting the right choice.  We are here to fundamentally and more highly transform; and we live in most challenging times that seem at the moment to pretty much insist on that – as always, we end up “riding the waves” that present where we are.

Visionary Ways to Restructure the Past to Reset the Future

It’s interesting to note the number of sci-fi movies that focus on what shaman’s would call shapeshifting ways to alter the past and future.  This has long been a recommended metaphysical technique to energetically change how we view and “code” our experience and responses.

In therapeutic practices the above is a key goal in both behavioral and insight-oriented approaches to fundamentally transform.  Here are some meditative and journaling techniques I’ve greatly expanded in my guide to personal transformation, The Centering Tools Guided Meditation and Journaling Workbook to Heal Yourself and Create the Life You Choose:

Exercise One – Become Your Greater Self

The Meditation:  Settle back in a comfortable, supported, relaxed, open position, eyes closed, and count to yourself twenty full, deep, even breaths.  Begin to imagine yourself enveloped in your infinite breath as if you were held so gracefully and endlessly in a shimmering, radiant cocoon, floating higher and higher.  Begin to sense a much larger, fully compassionate, keenly-knowing, unconditionally loving being drawing you closer and closer until at last you are merging, fully and completely, into this person.  You begin to understand this being is your Becoming Greater Self with a central focus to inspire you to choose beyond fear and conditioning from a higher awareness of evolved and infinitely caring trust, delighting in your evolving free Will, to create for the greater good.  Experience now an unfolding vision of what your heart wants and needs to be set free, and what your mind is endlessly curious about to shape and choose.

When you return to full, waking consciousness, record your entire experience using the present tense.  Then title this How I Become My Greater Self.  

Exercise Two – How to Create Your Present Plan

Part I – Three Recommended References to Draw From

I immediately think of a decades-old and a current movie that offer some interesting dimensions about creating your present and experiencing unfolding processes of transformation – which in this context becomes your evolving plan – as well as a continued foundational how-to metaphysical book to fundamentally transform your life.  So here’s my threesome line-up:

1.  Groundhog’s Day hugely and most entertainingly drives home the point, through Bill Murray’s terrific portrayal of the world’s most narcissistic anchorman, that we exactly become happy and fulfilled through extending ourselves to both create what pleases our own hearts and fundamentally expresses how we evolve to care for and support others.

2.  Limitless tells us that success occurs in amazing and evolving segments when we open ourselves to access the full capacity of our brain, which profoundly builds personal power and capacity to greatly achieve.

3.  The Nature of Personal Reality: A Seth Book, by Jane Roberts most extensively in metaphysical and significantly practical creative terms discusses how, as spiritual beings of multidimensional infinite consciousness, we create and energetically “code” our experience, both individually and through what she calls “mass consciousness” – with a tremendous amount of related “how-to’s” thrown in. 

Part II – Defining and Integrating Three Essential and Universal Elements of Soul Creating

My distilled fundamental elements that are foundations to then envision and, in your day-to-day life, commit to, step by unfolding step, carry out are:

1.  Imagine you and your life are limitless.  In this deep reflective space, ask your heart what it desires to have and how it wants you to be.  Create a specific and detailed list of whatever happens as the response.  Then review your list and, with all specifics, translate each into a core theme (i.e. if you’ve listed having a certain amount of money, the them you would then record as the “translation” could be ongoing abundance to effortlessly meet all your necessary needs and heartfelt desires to be well provided for in your life).

2.  Then reflect on your sense of your soul.  Ask your soul to tell you its sense of what is right regarding human behavior – core choices and responses , and list all those.

3.  Combine steps one and two with these universal truths to create your present plan to become your greater Self and create the life you freely and wholly choose without condition:

*All actions bring consequences

*Adults are never victims – they always have free will and the personal power to choose

*Everyone is completely equal to everyone else – no one has any more power

*No one can “make/fix” anyone else

*Nothing “works” with an attached agenda/expectation

*Results come from all the elements that begin a course of action – and stay unless they are correctly identified and erased

Commit to Carry Out and Complete

Now you have all the “puzzle pieces” to experiment with clearing the past to freely and wholly create the future.  Happy exploring – and may you experience all fruitful and heartfelt-desired results! 

Keep me posted – Namaste, Marjorie

How to Interpret Your Dreams for Healing and Success

The Three Main Dimensions to Successfully Interpret Your Dreams

I have been fascinated with dreams.  I work a lot in my Centering Tools practice with clients to unlock the power of their dreams for deeper insight, guidance and therapeutic as well as intuitive and creative answers to their key problems.

I typically interpret dreams within three major holistic dimensions: physical, emotional-mental, and intuitive/spiritual.  Dreams offer us messages through their creative metaphors to better make sense out of life challenges, even foretell the future as they have reportedly done in all the great myths and spiritual traditions throughout our history, in all cultures.

Dreams Offer Powerful and Critical Insight for Better Choice-Making

When we are ill or about to become ill we can have disturbing dreams.  When we have buried trauma we can have nightmares.

When we are about to experience a new chapter in our lives our dreams can offer us powerful clues and support critical insights to guide us into better choices.  They can even play out probable outcomes to help us feel more confident in facing the unfamiliar.

Record Your Dreams to Build Recall and Ability to More Greatly Interpret

Dreams transcend the physical laws of time and space.  We determine, from deeper levels of consciousness, what is most important to us, what we link together because of its related meaning, and who and what we care about most.

I always recommend recording whatever you remember about dreams as soon as possible after waking.  Sometimes we think we don’t remember what we dream and then during the day are strangely stimulated to recall at least one portion of a dream.  It is important to note also how we feel throughout a dream and especially when we wake up.

Experience the Power of Lucid Dreaming

It is quite possible to reenter a dream as a meditative exercise and allow it to continue to unfold and deliver its profound messages to you.  This is called lucid dreaming.

We can dream of other lifetimes and of other people in situations we don’t know anything about in places we’ve never been to, especially key world events.  Here are some general metaphorical meanings of key elements in dreams:

Some Key Meanings of Common Elements in Dreams

*Death means transformation, rebirth

*Babies can mean a new chapter in your life or new project

*Dreaming about the home you grew up in reflects the resurgence of a key theme from childhood, perhaps played out again with a present concern

*Cars are metaphors for what, thematically, metaphorically, you “drive” yourself around in presently – also note who is driving

*Going upstairs can reflect moving to a higher state of consciousness – ditto going up in an elevator

*Being chased can be an attempt by your subconscious to bring up unresolved fears to understand and be able to heal and resolve them

We always Express Our Greater Path of Becoming Through Our Dreams

We can also set an intent for our dreams, which is particularly effective when we do so in a meditative, open state.  Dreams reflect at deepest levels our soul’s unconditional caring and support of our becoming, greater selves.

They are our creative and expressive, integrated visions – a beckoning mystery always looking to complete and develop our greater abilities.    

Inception Radio Interview with Jamie Havican

Click on the link below for an audio recording of a recent radio interview with Jamie Havican.

• Inception Radio Interview 3/25/2011