growing faith to heal

Emotional healing is both simple and difficult. Simple because it's easy to understand. Forgiveness. Repentance. Turning your burdens over to a higher power. These are things that are easy to conceptualize... but are often difficult to implement. Why is this?

Why is it so difficult to forgive? To repent? To let go of the burdens we grip with whitened knuckles? Why do we hold onto our grudges, our gripes, our pains, our complaints?

I believe it comes down to faith. "Letting go and letting God" takes an enormous amount of faith.

How do we develop enough faith to let go of the darkness in our hearts? How do we develop the faith necessary to trust that when we let go, something better will come into its place?

A Just God and 2,000 Stripling Warriors

A famous Book of Mormon story involves 2,000 "stripling warriors." These stripling warriors were young men whose parents had covenanted with God never to shed blood--so when their land was attacked, the parents could not defend themselves. These boys agreed to fight instead. The story is well-known because of its tribute to mothers: every single one of the 2,000 stripling warriors survived their major battle, even as their counterparts from neighboring towns--other believers in Christ--died around them, and these boys attributed their miraculous unanimous survival to the teachings of their mothers.

But what did their mothers teach them that the mothers of the other believers didn't?

The answer is in Alma 57:26:

26 And now, their preservation was astonishing to our whole army, yea, that they should be spared while there was a thousand of our brethren who were slain. And we do justly ascribe it to the miraculous power of God, because of their exceeding faith in that which they had been taught to believe—that there was a just God, and whosoever did not doubt, that they should be preserved by his marvelous power. 

There is a just God. Whosoever does not doubt, will be preserved by his marvelous power.

This doubtless faith saved the life of every single one of those 2,000 boys.

What a Having a Just God Means Today

Why is it important to have faith in a just God? Why does that matter?

Knowing there is a just God makes forgiveness easy.

It is easy to forgive when we have a knowledge of the justness of God, because we know that by forgiving a person of their sins against us, they are not off the hook. We can take comfort in knowing that even the most abhorrent of wrongs will be avenged in complete perfection by a perfectly just God; we do not have to worry about taking revenge ourselves.

We can let it go, because God does not let it go. That's why the Atonement has to come in.

At the same time, knowing that there is a just God helps us to understand that our unforgiveness counts as a sin against us, and that a just God will hold us accountable for the trespasses against us that we did not forgive. Faith in a just God is both a carrot and a stick when it comes to repentance and forgiveness. We can rejoice in the knowledge that those who have wronged us will eventually pay in the way God deems fit, and we can take a lot of motivation from the fact that we, too, will pay for the things we don't repent of and/or forgive.

When you know there is a just God, it is easy to turn burdens over to Him, because you can trust with 100% certainty that He will take care of it in the most ultimately fair way possible.


How do we build faith in a just God?

Where does faith come from? How can we develop the faith in God's justice that we need in order to fully heal?

Faith is a gift of the Spirit. The first thing to do in the search for faith is ask for it in prayer. Even if you're not sure God exists, the act of praying to Him in the name of Jesus Christ is an act of faith that will be rewarded.

Faith is a principle of action. This means that faith IS action, that action grows faith, that action and faith go hand in hand. If you want more faith, you have to ACT!

What kind of actions build faith in a just God?

- daily scripture reading exercises faith in the promise that searching God's word will bless our lives
- daily prayer exercises faith in the reality of God and His ability to answer prayer
- paying tithing exercises faith in God's ability to provide for us financially and temporally

Basically, what we used to call "the seminary answers" in my seminary class. Pray. Read your scriptures. Keep the commandments. These things build our faith in God. If we don't have enough faith to do the little things, we're not going to have enough faith to do the big things.

Forgiving someone who has truly, deeply hurt you is a big thing.

It takes a lot of faith.

 Do you know there is a just God? 

Did you grow your faith in Him today?

Growing Faith Every Day

I have been coming to the conclusion that one of the most important things we can do in life is commit to build our faith in a just God every day. Theoretically we make that commitment at baptism. It's part of enduring to the end. In order to endure the end, one's faith has to grow every day. Stagnant faith simply cannot survive. If faith doesn't grow, it dies instead.

So, here is a challenge.

You may have already committed to grow your faith every day; maybe you've committed and forgotten. Maybe you've never committed.

Maybe you don't even believe in faith.

I challenge you to grow your faith. And not just to grow it, but to work to grow it every day.

Take a "leap of faith." Do something that requires some courage and trust in God's work. Trust your intuitions today. Do something illogical that just feels right and see what happens.

Pay your tithing.

Read your scriptures.

Pray.

Grow your faith today. Make it a part of your life. Commit to grow that faith every single day.

If your faith isn't growing, it's dying.

addictions and the pituitary gland

I've started writing a post about addicts and addiction a bunch of times, but I can't ever get it perfect, so it's still a draft. But I work with addicts almost every day in my healing work. I love it. I have so much love and respect for the addicts and their spouses that seek help.

Over time, I have begun to view addiction as primarily a brain injury. Last night I had an interesting experience I wanted to share.

I was working on the subconscious work necessary for a particular addiction. I started by pulling all cravings for this item/behavior, and replacing them with freedom from cravings. I uploaded a number of subconscious beliefs, such as "I am fulfilled without this" and "I know how to be happy without that."

Yuck.

And then, I thought to ask God if He might show me where in the brain this injury of addiction was. I watched as He took me to this one sort of knob, and I noted how swollen and red and black it was. It kind of looked like this picture.

Then I asked if He would heal it while I watched. I watched as He seemed to vacuum the blackness away, and then reduce the swelling, so it wasn't red but pinkish-gray, and about 10x smaller than it had been.

When it was over, I thanked Him.

And now I've been researching like crazy to find out what it was that I saw.

I finally happened across this picture:

Image here. Part of a fascinating article. Read it.

The pituitary gland seems to fit with where I saw the knob geographically in the brain. Kind of toward the bottom, to the side a bit, yet also central.

In my research, I've been finding information about the role of the pituitary gland in the creation of endorphins, but not many papers linking pituitary hyperactivity to addiction. There's stuff about dopamine addiction--which is probably the true addiction all addicts have, with food or sex or drugs being the instrument to achieve the true end goal of dopamine creation--and how dopamine is created by the pituitary. But the only stuff I have found that kind of addresses the role of the pituitary in addictions are here and here--not exactly scientific studies. The first link is to 3HO, a kundalini meditation and yoga organization--interesting because I independently felt led to my kundalini meditation practice!--and the second link is to a page on the role of neurochemicals in pornography addiction, which was, incidentally, the particular addiction I was working on at the time.

Anyway, it's only been a few hours since I witnessed the healing, and I have no idea if it went through to the client--was working remotely while he was asleep and half the country away--but I am so interested to see if this works.

It's easy to view addiction as something utterly beyond our control. But if it is more akin to a brain injury... brains can heal. I am so fascinated to see what happens with this.

As a side note, the 3HO article I linked explains how in kundalini meditation, there is this concept that addiction is a lack of communication between the pineal gland and the pituitary gland. Go read it. So fascinating. If a healer could command the restoration of the link between the two glands, and heal the corresponding brain injury... I don't know. This seems very cool.

I am hopeful.

5 ways to get grounded

Being grounded is crucial to accurate muscle testing and to being able to fall asleep easily at night. Whenever your brain seems to be going into overdrive, it's a good idea to ground. Grounding helps you feel calm, centered, and competent. The more grounded you are, the better able you are to handle the stressful stuff that comes up in life every day.

So how do you do get grounded?

Grounding basically is the art of reconnecting your body's energy to the earth's energy. So one easy way to do this is to go interact with nature.

But if you're not able to go hug a tree or take a walk, there are other ways to ground.

1. Eagle Pose 

In Eagle Pose, you cross your legs and ankles and arms and hands. This gets the right and left sides of the brain working together.

This fancy picture I found is good, but for our purposes you don't need to do it exactly the way described. No squeezing legs or ribs sucked in. Just crossing the arms and legs. You can do it sitting. Sometimes I do it in bed, lying down.

Do it one way, then uncross and do it the other way, 20 seconds on each side, with deep breaths. Keep muscle testing for if you are grounded in between. Usually a few cycles of this will ground you well.

2. Visualize roots. 

One thing I often do is visualize myself growing roots into the earth. Okay, I am not a very visual person, actually. How it really works for me is, I close my eyes and decide that I am now growing roots into the earth, and then I attempt to picture something like this:

From someone's pinterest.

You don't have to be sitting, though. Sometimes while standing I imagine roots growing out of my feet into the floor. It works!

3. Cocoon in the earth. 

I just started doing this in the past week, but I already love it! It's perfect for when you're trying to sleep but just can't. I imagine my energy wrapping around me like a cocoon, and then I imagine me in my cocoon, in the middle of the earth, underground. It's very calming. If I were a better artist I'd draw you a picture of what I envision. It's beautiful.

4. Command yourself to ground.

Sometimes I just say out loud, with intention: "I command myself to be grounded now." Say it three times and re-test. Sometimes this works.

5. Do something that reconnects your body to your mind.

For example, I've read of people who ground by mindfully putting on lotion, or taking a bath. It all comes down to connecting your body and mind to each other and to the earth. So living more mindfully will help you spend more of your time grounded.

Next time you muscle test, go ahead and ask if you're grounded. If you're not, try out one of these techniques! Find what works for you. It's a good thing!

what I do

I recently found myself in the position of trying to explain what I do! It's not that simple. Also, it is that simple. It's both very simple and very complicated.

The short version: I help people discover exactly what traumas and subconscious programs are causing physical, mental, and spiritual problems, so that we know what to let go.

Here is the long version.

I mostly do emotional trauma release and subconscious programming work. I mention a little bit how emotional trauma release works in this post.

Emotional trauma release

Basically,  every emotion we feel is a chemical reaction in our brain. But sometimes we manufacture more chemical than our brain can or wants to handle. In that case, the excess molecules of the chemical that were supposed to go towards making you feel a certain way get stored in your body instead. There they can cause physical pain, as well as emotional pain--every time your body has an opportunity to process any of those chemicals, your body shoves as many of those chemicals into your brain as possible for processing, because it's trying to help you out. 

This is what's happening if you have, say, a chronic anger problem. There's a backup of anger molecules in your body, and every time there's a possibility that it could make sense for some of them to process, your body lets them out. So you spend your time angry at all sorts of little things, because your body is just trying to get out these emotions that were trapped from past traumas.

So I work with those. I identify them and command them to release all at once, so they can get out of your system. Emotional processing takes no longer than a week, and often takes shorter than that. Side effects can include things like headaches or stomachaches, bad dreams or weird memories of the event that caused the emotion to get stuck. I personally have only ever gotten one headache from it. A lot of times the only side effect is feeling a weight being lifted from you. That's an exciting feeling!

Subconscious programming

Subconscious mind. Image here.

Our subconscious minds all hold beliefs on how life should be. These beliefs influence how we interpret events in our lives and the choices we make, for better or worse. So it's good to identify what belief programs you might be running that might be making your life harder than it needs to be.

For example, say you muscle test and get an answer of yes for the belief "life should be hard" or "I don't deserve to be happy." If your subconscious mind is running those beliefs, it's going to do its darnedest to make sure that your beliefs are reinforced. So your life will be hard and you will not be
happy! In the case of addicts, which I work with a lot, I often find subconscious programs like "I NEED [insert addictive behavior or substance here]." So it is no surprise that they are addicted! Their subconscious believes the addictive behavior or substance is a necessity to survival.

So we identify these beliefs and then choose things to replace them (for example, I usually am asked to replace the belief "I am a victim" to "I am empowered.").

Conclusion

My role is pretty simple. I help people see their problems with their spiritual eyes instead of their physical ones. I help people identify and release hidden traumas so they can fully enjoy life. 

And I love it.

the myth of inconsequential choices

The idea of inconsequential choices has been on my mind for at least a week now. Time to blog!

Examine the following quote from LDS.org (emphasis mine):

 Every day you have choices to make. Some of those choices don’t have much to do with your eternal salvation (“What color shirt should I wear?”), and some of them have everything to do with it (“Should I break this commandment?”). You may sometimes wonder, “Do my choices really matter?” Or you may even think, “If no one knows what I’m doing, do my decisions really affect anyone?” The answer is yes! Decisions do matter.

 "Some choices don't have much to do with your eternal salvation." That is the concept I've been pondering for days now. Or longer.

This is what I have noticed: even our seemingly inconsequential choices affect others.

I offer an example. The other day, I was having a hard day, and I was praying for some kind of answer or encouragement, and I turned onto the highway, and immediately a truck passed me with the message I needed written on the side of it.

A different day, I was struggling with my change of heart crisis, and a woman I didn't know just walked up to me and made an offhand comment that completely validated everything I thought I had been feeling, revelation-wise. To her, it was probably just another sentence that she said that day. To me, it was this huge big deal.

Years ago, a friend passed me in the hall at church and asked if I might be willing to attend a different Sunday School class for once. I agreed. And it totally changed my life. I recently wrote that friend a thank you note, because that one decision on his part so drastically altered my life path (long story). And he was just befuddled, because to him this was a minor decision. 

I've had answers to prayers come on other people's T-shirts. I've had my life changed by little moments I've observed from other people's normal lives. These tiny choices, the ones that appear not to affect our eternal salvation, can actually be pivotally important--if not in our own lives, than in the lives of others.

Consider the story that starts off this article on dreams: here, the author recounts a moment from a sacrament meeting talk that the speaker clearly meant as kind of a throwaway joke. And yet, the speaker's offhand story about a dream he had impacted the author months later. Even the tiny things we do are noticed--if not by us, than by others, and they can have much, much larger effects than we could ever realize.

I guess this is related to the Butterfly Effect. But I don't know that many people associate the Butterfly Effect with, say, the decision to wear a red shirt instead of a blue shirt today.

But what if you passed someone today who had been praying, who had told God that the sign they needed to make the right choice was to see someone in a red shirt. And then they saw you, who chose to wear a red shirt just because you felt like it. But it changed the other person's life forever.

This stuff happens. I know it happens because I pray for signs like this all the time, and I always get them, and the other people involved don't even know.

So are there really any inconsequential choices?

Are there really any choices that don't affect our eternal life?

Because someday, I'm going to find the guy who decided to write those words on the back of his truck, and thank him for sending me the message that changed my life that day. And someday I'll thank that woman who came up to me and commented on the day in such a way that it perfectly aligned with my personal struggles.

There are so many people in my life who were only there for a few seconds, people whose names I don't even know, whose seemingly-minor life choices have permanently altered the way I view the world. I owe them debts of gratitude and in the eternities I will find them and thank them.

In the meantime, though, this has some implications--namely, that every thing we do, even the small stuff, has the potential to radically alter the lives of others.

What does this mean? Should we stress over every choice of clothing? Every thing we say?

My personal opinion on it all is this: no, we should not stress about those seemingly trivial choices.

However, we should be actively striving to live our lives so close to Christ that even our seemingly trivial decisions can be easily affected by our association with Him.

We can never know what seemingly minor decisions can affect others in profound ways.

meditation: 34 days in

I wrote before about taking a 40-day Meditation Challenge. Well, I'm almost done with it. It's been kind of a sacrifice--it requires planning ahead and remembering to do it--but it's been good so far.

Meditation is a cleansing thing. It's like this quote that Buddha never said (haha!):

Someone once asked the Buddha skeptically, “What have you gained through meditation.”
The Buddha replied, “Nothing at all.”
“Then, Blessed One, what good is it.”
“Let me tell you what I lost through meditation: sickness, anger, depression, insecurity, the burden of old age, the fear of death. That is the good of meditation, which leads to nirvana.”

Did Buddha really say that? Apparently not! But the idea behind it appears to be solid enough.

In kundalini meditation, you chant things. All these chants are designed to stimulate the roof of your mouth, and the roof of your mouth apparently has endings for all 12 major organ meridians in it, along with a connection to your hypothalamus gland. So just by making the sounds, you encourage your body to jump-start its processes. This leads to a physical cleansing of sorts.

For me, the day after I started meditating--or maybe it was two days after--I got a canker sore for the first time in a long, long time. I've also gotten acne for the first time in several years. I'm hoping that as I continue my meditations my skin calms down again! We'll see.

For my 40-day meditation, I've been doing the Kirtan Kriya. The chant for this one is "Sa Ta Na Ma," which means birth, life, death, and rebirth. I always think of rebirth as resurrection, though. The chant is, to me, about Jesus Christ.

Also in kundalini meditation, you talk about the Guru a lot. Turns out "Guru" comes from two words, "Gu" and "Ru," meaning light and darkness--the Guru is the one who enlightens the darkness. Examine:

• John 9:5

  5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.
  

• Doctrine and Covenants 39:2

  2 The light and the life of the world; a light which shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehendeth it not;
  

• Mosiah 16:9

  9 He is the light and the life of the world; yea, a light that is endless, that can never be darkened; yea, and also a life which is endless, that there can be no more death.
  

• John 12:46

  46 I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness.
  

• John 8:12

  12 ¶Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.
   

The Bible, Book of Mormon, and Doctrine and Covenants constantly refer to Christ as the light of the world--the one who brings light to the darkness.

In other words, the Guru.

Last night I doubled my meditation time for the first time. I was having a hard night. But during my meditation, I just focused everything on Jesus Christ, and envisioned Him before me.

And it was incredible. The clearer I sought His image in my mind, the closer I felt to Him, until I could see Him so clearly and felt just enveloped in His love. Just remembering it is so powerful to me. It was like getting this spiritual hug from my Savior. It was beautiful. I cried.

If you're seeking peace in your life, and moments like that, where you just wholly feel God's love for you so clearly, I do have to recommend taking up Christ-centered kundalini meditation. Here. Use this website. It is great.