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God Tag

Listening to Your Heart

Your heart is your center. It is connected to all that is. Your heart will provide you with hunches, guidance, and feelings about what to do, which way to go, and what you need - when you are quiet enough to listen to it. Everyone has this capability, because everyone’s heart comes from God. The trick is to honor it. That’s much more easily said than done!  When I began healing, I did not know that listening to my heart mattered or was important. In fact, I did everything I could not to listen to my heart, because I had been in so much pain. When I began healing, I did so because my heart was calling to me underneath the pain. Listening to my heart allowed me...

Loving your Story/Letting go of your Story

I’m getting this out to you a little late today because my daughter woke up way too early, right when I was starting to write. Thanks for your patience on this holiday weekend. Today I wanted to share about my story- how I’ve lived it, learned from it, and also how I’m able to let it go.  When I was thirteen I was raped by a group of four older boys while many onlookers watched. I believe I was drugged because I don’t remember how I got there. I spent years denying this trauma until I could no longer ignore it. I had several breakdowns and became suicidal in my early twenties. I then spent years talking about it, going to therapy, writing about it, and...

Loving Yourself

What does it mean to love yourself? It means to sit in a space of love for yourself and embrace yourself in all of your manifestations. Learning to love myself has been a vital part of my healing journey. It’s a step I often overlook and that I think seems a little selfish sometimes, if I’m being honest. But feeling love for myself in the face of difficulty, anger, sadness, and stress, helps me remember who I am. It helps me remember that God created me, and that I’m loved exactly the way I am. Some of the ways I practice loving myself include saying “I love myself” as a mantra, as well as saying “God loves me.” I also breathe and sit in stillness and...

I am That

At the workshop this past weekend, Neale taught us about a neat exercise to try. I can take no credit for it! In fact, his unnamed friend taught him this exercise, so even Neale can’t take credit for it. Here’s how it goes. Wherever you are, and whatever you’re doing, experience the truth of your oneness with all things by looking at everything around you and saying “I am that.” This includes people, animals, plants, and even objects. Walking down the street, look at the tree, and in your mind say, “I am that.” Passing by each person, say to yourself, “I am that.” Passing a car, a bicycle, a parking meter, say “I am that.” Since I’ve learned this exercise, I’ve been practicing it in particular...

Learning from Teachers, then Teaching Yourself

I was very fortunate this past weekend to have a chance to learn in person from Neale Donald Walsch, author of Conversations with God. It was a truly amazing experience after having read so many of his books over the past decade plus. I was brought to his books after my own experience of God, which I’ve shared about here. It was an awesome experience to be in the presence of this teacher who has meant so much to me, and a great reminder to trust myself even in the presence of a great teacher. As he teaches and I’ve learned, we are all a part of God, and we each have our own innate wisdom. I’ve learned so much from him and from other...

Letting Nature Guide You

As I write to you, I’m sitting outside in our pocket of the city, listening to birds begin their chirping and watching the sunlight begin to brighten the sky. Though we live in an industrial city, I’m grateful for the pocket of nature we’ve created for ourselves. It’s never far from my mind that this land was once a forest populated by First Peoples who lived in greater harmony with the land. Though I live in this now-industrial city in a capitalistic society, nature is still here. Nature comes from God. Following the breath of nature puts us in touch with the heart of God. Growing up, I did not know how out of touch I was with nature until I learned how to be in...

Seeing the Good

I admit that sometimes it is hard to see the good in people and things around us. We live in a beautiful world that is also full of pain, hardship, and suffering. Is it trite or even cruel to see the good when we know others are suffering? In my own life, I have found it’s always good to see the good, not in order to deny the bad or difficult, but to allow the good to grow. I would not have healed if everyone around me were only seeing the negative in the world. I needed visionaries who could see past pain and see beauty and love in me, and in the world around me. I held onto those people’s conceptions until I could walk...

Raising Your Vibration

To live in a high vibration means to be connected to your true heart- to love, joy, and peace. When I think of raising my vibration I think of times when I’ve felt very happy and free. It didn’t have much to do with my external surroundings. It mostly had to do with how much I was connecting my heart to the heart of God, and how much I was letting go of behaviors and thought patterns that distanced me from that peace. The truth of you, your soul and essence, already lives at a high vibration. How can you connect to your original God self? Different things work for different people. It always helps me to pray and meditate. It helps me to get an...

Making Sense of an Experience of the Divine

Before I had my experience, my life was pretty ok. I had done a lot of healing and while things weren’t perfect, I wasn’t really doing anything “wrong” in my life. I was in graduate school. I studied. I had friends. And then I had this beautiful and heart-opening experience of God that really changed my perspective, my heart and my life. It took me a long time to make sense of that experience. I struggled with it. I ignored it. I pretended it hadn’t happened. I got angry at God.  It wasn’t easy to make sense of an experience that is not talked or taught about in my culture. Not only was it not talked about, in my household I had been conditioned to believe...

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Learning to Love

In the years after my trauma, I did not know how to love myself or other people. I surrounded my heart with protective steel walls. No one could hurt me if I couldn’t feel anything. It felt safe, but it led to me hurting other people, and to me feeling sad and emotionally numb. I was still myself, but I wasn’t connected to the world or people around me. To look at pictures of me from that time, I still seem like myself, and I’m sure if you asked my friends from that time if I seemed cold, numb or depressed, they may not have noticed. But I noticed. It was a learned way of being that I’ve thankfully mostly unlearned. How did I learn to...