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Author: Rebecca

Doing Things you Love

When the world seems to be mired in suffering, it can feel selfish and a little pointless to do the things you love, but it is at those times that your joy is most important. The world benefits as much as you do from your healing, loving, shining heart. What brings you to that place of joy? What helps you feel love? When I was at my most depressed, I didn’t even know what joy felt like, much less what could help me feel it. I remember for a while, the only thing that helped me feel better was singing Christmas carols. So I did that. Over time I’ve found more and more things that bring me joy. Healing has been an interplay of moving towards joy,...

Forgiving Yourself

What does it mean to forgive yourself? In my life, forgiving myself means returning my heart to the true love of God, stopping the negative self-talk reels that can loop again and again in my mind, and having a soft approach to myself and my heart. It can be so easy to be so hard on ourselves when we’re faced with past mistakes and let downs, but we all need to remember that we’re all here to learn, grow, and become. We weren’t born knowing everything – that’s why we were born. “Hurt people, hurt people.” – Will Bowen This wise quote has truly helped me to remember that the times when I’d acted out and hurt others in the past were truly out of my own...

Tools of the Spirit

I recently had someone reach out to me feeling overwhelmed about the world of healing. She said that she had purchased some crystals and books on chakras, but felt out of her league. I totally identified because I had definitely been there when I started healing. There are so many facets of spirituality and healing, so many schools of thought, and seemingly so much to learn, that it can feel daunting. What if I do it wrong? What if I’m not good at healing? Other people seemed to know so much more than I, and I often felt confused about what was up and what was down in the beginning. It took me many turns, many hiccups and some confusion to return to the truth of...

Rest in Peace

The recent kidnapping and discovery of the body of three-year-old Kamille “Cupcake” McKinney in my city has been a tragedy of the highest order. It’s all I can think about this morning as I sit down to write. She was only three years old, kidnapped blocks from my home while playing at a birthday party. This is one of those times when it’s easy to ask “where was God?” It’s terrifying to think that someone would act so cruelly towards a precious, innocent child. I can’t make sense of it even though I’ve read and learned so much about God. Some thoughts come to mind, though. God’s world is perfect, I felt that in my experience. It was so beautiful and so full of love. When...

Going with the Flow/Staying the Course

“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” – Tao Te Ching There are times in life where we need to let go and flow in the river of life: yielding, releasing, and allowing. Other times we need to stay firm and direct our intentions and actions in the way we wish them to go. There’s a balance in this movement through life – yielding, then pushing, then yielding again – that helps us move towards our goals while allowing life to work through us. It can be hard to find this balance. As a child I had no sense of what it meant to go with the flow. After my trauma I compensated for the sad state of my inner...

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Psychology and Spirituality

I’ve been thinking a lot about the intersection of psychology and spirituality. I know the field of psychology has many facets, branches, and offshoots, so I’m not speaking about all of psychology, merely the approach with which I am most familiar. You probably know that I was raised by a psychologist and spent a lot of my youth in therapy. I appreciate greatly the help I received from the field of psychology and from psychologists. In fact, I’m considering studying psychology at a graduate level. And yet, when it comes to healing, I felt there was no talk or exploration, at least in my experience, of the aspect of my journey which healed me most of all – that of connecting to God and a spiritual...

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Being True to Yourself

“This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.” – Shakespeare “Betrayal of yourself in order not to betray another is betrayal nonetheless. Indeed, it is the highest betrayal.” – Conversations with God What does it mean to be true to yourself? It seems like such a simple concept, and at its heart, it is. Being true to yourself means honoring your own heart and living in your truth, even if it’s different from those around you. God created you, and you are just as you are meant to be. By living out your truth in this lifetime, you let your light shine as you were meant to do, and...

How I learned to Trust my Heart: Some Ideas and Inspiration

If you’re reading this, you may be searching for a way to listen to yourself, and your heart. Trusting your heart seems like a simple proclamation, but in our world of separation, it may be one of the hardest things you’ll ever do. The first question that must be asked is, why trust your heart? What is the point of it? In my upbringing, I was raised to trust my mind. I had no awareness of my heart or inner self until breakdowns forced me to get to know myself from the inside. I learned that trusting your heart is truly the way to a happy life. Your heart holds your inner wisdom and is your connection to God or Source. Your heart is where love...

Healing and Nature

I write this today a few days ahead of the massive climate walk-outs being planned this Friday across my country. For the past several weeks we’ve had temperatures in the mid-nineties. I’ve been at a point of panic about our environment and experiencing a bit of hopelessness. Today’s blog is about how I approach these topics in balance with my spiritual life. When I first had my experiences of God and light, nature became much more alive to me. I was raised in a culture that disregarded nature. As a child I loved nature but had no language with which to approach it, and eventually stopped noticing it or feeling a part of it. My experience changed all of that. Nature pulsed with the beauty of...

Creating a Dream or a Nightmare

It’s possible for each of us to create a dream or a nightmare out of our lives. Though it seems we are at the whims of fate, we each have the power within us to veer our lives into territory of love or of fear. Much of this has to do with our thoughts and how centered we are in our hearts. Thinking the highest thoughts and focusing on love allows us to bring more love into our lives, like an internal feedback loop. The reverse is true with fear and fearful thoughts. I write about this because I’ve experienced both in my life. I entered into huge fear territory after my trauma. I didn’t only create a waking nightmare in my life, I had terrifying...