Making Ripples

There is a downside to being connected to all of humanity through the Internet. Anyone with a cell phone can now view scenes of incredible horror, depraved behavior, and mind-bending outrage by tapping a screen and asking for access to whatever bizarre activity comes to mind. And that’s just the mainstream news on AP, ABC, BBC, MSN, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal!

Your opinion may differ, especially if you have been fed a diet of news from these sources for a few years, but has any of this news brought you a sense of peaceful enlightenment? Almost all news from the mainstream media is written with a purpose to push a certain point of view and not to inform or enlighten. You are being coached to view a particular segment of society as villains, rather than people handling difficult situations with inadequate resources.

News articles written for their shock value do not provide you with information to build a future on. You can tell who among your friends are readers of the mainstream media because they parrot the latest atrocity headline as though it was holy writ. And why not? We all look for stability in a fast-changing and threatening world. Having concise answers to puzzling situations gives us a feeling of being in charge in an otherwise confusing and threatening world.

Finding someone else to blame for rising crime, threats to our safety, homelessness, riots, and our own helplessness in the face of looming unemployment and rising costs, makes us feel less responsible for our lack of control in our lives.

The only way out of this trap is to find sources of information that give you a balanced view of issues and to observe for yourself what the actual facts are for any situation. If you can’t get facts you can verify with several reliable sources, ignore that news and the news source. Try avoiding mainstream media because they coordinate their stories and often use the same language to spread their version of the news.

Try to find news sources that offer positive viewpoints as well as exposure of illegal or undesirable activities so that you get a balance of things to be wary of and things to look forward to. If the news sources give you data to improve your life, that helps your survival also.

You need accurate data to manage your life and your future. Don’t put your health or sanity in danger by wallowing in bad news. Look for people and news sources with positive solutions.

David St Lawrence

Can you allow yourself to think about that, or does the mere thought make you shudder? In most of the situations I see as a spiritual counselor, you have resigned yourself to cope with the situation you find yourself in and do whatever you can to suffer on through it. You have not yet decided to create an ideal scene.

We go through life making one decision after another, in the best way we can, and we often end up in situations we could not envision in our worst nightmares. We do the best we can, but we can’t seem to find a way out of our situation. The solution is not to do more of the same, but to take an exterior viewpoint and to imagine an ideal scene in which you could be happy and achieve your goals.

If this was easy, everyone would be doing it, so prepare yourself to change almost everything you are doing now and set up new assumptions for how you are going to live your life so that you are winning and having the best time of your life.

You need to start with the basics needs of being happy and productive and add the actions and conditions that would support those first two needs. If you choose the right items to start with, your next choices will become easier. Consider what you will be producing and what you will get in exchange so that you will be happy producing a valuable product or service and will benefit everyone you know by doing this.

Your ideal scene could include provision for future expansion, so that as you add partners and responsibilities, there are others to pick up the load and continue the effort into the far future. However, your ideal scene must conform to your personal goals and not be altered to fit other’s intentions. You may find yourself changing the ideal scene as things change in your life, but the primary goal is to create an existence where you are winning and having the best time of your life.

David St Lawrence

This is not a substitute for first aid or medical attention. An assist helps the person heal themselves when they are injured or ill and don’t feel well.

When a person does not feel well, they withdraw their life energy from areas of their body, and healing does not occur. When a body part is hurt or injured, the body attempts to heal the injury, but the shock can interfere with the person’s ability to put attention on the area, and as a result that area seems to shut down.

When a person suppresses the pain or sensation in an area, he goes out of communication with that area, and circulation, nerve flows, and life energy are withdrawn from the area. Putting the person back in communication with the affected area increases all of the healing activities of the body.

When a healer puts his attention on a person’s body and touches it and invites the injured person to feel his touch, he is making the person aware of that area of the body, and that heightened awareness puts the person back in communication with his body.

No matter what part of the body is being helped, the areas being touched should include the extremities (hands and feet) and the spine. Furthermore, the touching must be balanced to both the left and right sides of the body. The assist process is continued until the person has a realization and feels better.

This practice is ancient and dates back to the “laying on of hands” used by healers throughout the centuries.  For a full discussion of this and other actions to assist in healing, you can refer to this online handbook, which contains many different actions you can perform to alleviate suffering and speed healing.

I have used all of the processes mentioned in the handbook to assist sick and injured people and have found them to be workable and straightforward to use, regardless of your spiritual awareness. All you need is a desire to help others and a willingness to follow instructions.

David St Lawrence

One of the most powerful actions you can perform is to envision an ideal scene for some part of your life. It is the spiritual equivalent to going exterior to your current activity and looking at your life from a higher perspective. If you have been storming along, handling obstacles, and trying to meet schedules and obligations with every bit of will-power at your command, you have probably left any hope of a joyful existence behind.

Your work, your relationships, and your personal life, are taking up all of your attention and it has been some time since you experienced any joy in your life. You are being responsible and doing what you feel needs to be done, but you are not enthusiastic about how things are going. You would like things to be better, but you do not see a simple solution to your problems. You are in a situation which is a result of some choices you made and you don’t see an easy way to resolve it and be happy again.

You should take a break and bring yourself into present time by meditating in whatever way works for you. I find that 15 minutes examining the space I am in works for me, but you need to use whatever calms you down and lets you experience the present moment in a peaceful way.

To get the most relief, think of the part of your life that is most troublesome and envision how it should be for you to enjoy it and be happy about it. You will find that thinking about what you want and writing it down will immediately start to bring relief. Banish all negative thoughts while you are doing this and continue writing until you feel you have described an ideal future situation.

You will know when your ideal scene is complete when you see how you can accomplish it.

We will be discussing ideal scenes and how to envision them in our workshop tomorrow. Some of you will find that you can immediately start working on them, while others may need some additional coaching to overcome self-imposed barriers. We will be discussing all of the alternatives in our workshop tomorrow so join us if you need to make changes in your life.

We will be using the usual link for joining our workshop on Zoom tomorrow. If you do not have the link, send me an email at srtcounseling@gmail.com

David St Lawrence