Sunday, October 30, 2011

BE THE SOLUTION

This following article is part of a series that has just been relaunched. Enjoy!

Be the Solution is Back
 Be the Solution, a self-coaching opportunity to support you in clearing out that which stands between your current experience and your desired experience, is back from a very long sabbatical. You can choose to sign up for this program by sending an email to BE THE SOLUTION, or by signing up on Sundays at the Center. The Science of Mind© is referred to by many as Practical Spirituality. This program is to support readers in applying the tools and principles that we teach.

Making a commitment to the application of these principles in your daily life is what separates this teaching from a “Sunday only” religion. If what we teach matters, then it is worthy of your time, attention and practice. And remember, practice doesn’t really make perfect if you are practicing imperfectly; however, practicing perfectly makes perfect. What is perfect? Any practice that keeps you and your life in a constant state of evolution and revealing.
So to re-launch Be the Solution, we bring to you: Practice No Complaining.

In addition to being an annoying quality, complaining is simply not effective. It will never get you where you want to be—ever. In other words, you can’t get there from here. Why? Because complaining is a mechanism of destruction, and not a mechanism of creativity and possibility. Think of your thoughts as a path being laid out before you to support you reaching your ultimate goal. Does it make sense that complaining could ever reveal to you a path of peace, harmony and possibility? Not to me. Only a path laid out through harmony, love and graciousness can provide a path that will carry me to where I want to be.

Let me share my influences on this matter so you can do further research yourself. My quest to rise above the complaining habit began with Emma Curtis Hopkins and her book Scientific Christian Mental Science; it continued with Eckart Tolle and his book The New Earth, and, finally, the piece of work which drove the point over the top was by a brilliant metaphysician, Christian Larson, in his book The Ideal Made Real.  If you have to choose only one to read, choose the latter; it says it all within the first two chapters.
Taking on this life transforming habit took me into a lot of practice and contemplation, and I came to realize that my mother, God bless her heart, had two main languages: gossiping and complaining. Now I am not complaining or blaming, but I did have to accept that I had known these two languages way too intimately for too long. No wonder my life wasn’t working smoothly.

So this is a simple—ha!—task. Stop it. Yes, that’s my entire spiel; stop the complaining. Catch it every time; cease the action both out loud and in your mind. Begin with a 30-day commitment to NO LONGER COMPLAIN ABOUT ANYONE OR ANYTHING TO ANYONE, not even to yourself. Here’s the gift. Every time you stop you will feel a sense of relief, and in no time, you will begin to retrieve a boatload of energy—the type of energy needed to feel better, to be happier, and to have better relationships. Yes, this is a promise. If you take on this practice today, you will feel so much better so quickly that you will lose your taste for it, and it will cease.

A great point that Eckart Tolle makes in his book is that every time we complain, we assume ourselves to be a victim. Victim consciousness is extremely limiting, and does promote a life experience that leads to happiness. As with each practice, let’s remember that the practice is to support our individual shift in consciousness to Life is good, Life is grand, and I am deserving of my full measure.  

Live in a household of people who are moaners and complainers? See if you can engage them in this 30-day challenge. Enroll them in the possibility of greater freedom and newly found energy. You can even make it a game with a prize at the end. Do this and watch what transforms in your home. I have created a PDF that you can download and hang on your front door to forewarn visitors as they enter, which is located on: www.cslnj.org
 Also, hang it on your refrigerator and bathroom mirrors—all the important places. Imagine what a great holiday practice and gift this would be to change the energy in your home through this No-Complaining Practice.

As always, do your best each and every day. Be loving, gentle and forgiving with yourself and if you make a mistake, simply begin anew.
Enjoy your practice. Enjoy your life,
Michelle

Friday, October 28, 2011

A prayer for my family

Living a Life of Abundance

Dedicated to my family by Mom, Michelle

    There is One Life.

    This One Life is everywhere present, always available, always flowing and always creating out of the Good that It is.

    This One Life is wherever I am, in every moment, of any day.

    There is no separation, never has been and never will be.

    Today I step into full availability with this all good, all love and all creativity.

    I accept my birthright of this full measure of good.

    Through my acceptance Life shows up on my doorstep with ease, grace and wonderful prosperity. Yes, I accept who I am, exactly as I am and as I am not, knowing that I am worthy of an extraordinary Life, fully expressed, fully prospered.

    There are no prior thoughts, ideas, beliefs that have any power over me or distract me from my good. Any ideas of fear, doubt, lack or limitation are neutralized now and forever.

    Yes, I say yes to all of my life unfolding naturally and effortlessly.

    I act and speak faithfully. Not having faith of something outside of me, but faith of that Ever-present Good within me. My mind is steady and on target as I set my intentions to live a fully prospered and abundant life. Not a life of materialism but one of generosity and flow. I give from my overflow and reap the benefits of this flow as love, as good as ease and grace.

    With bountiful gratitude for the abundance that I see and experience all around me, my gratitude activates even more good and I accept this activity through me.

    Trusting that I have just spoken the truth, I let it be so. And so it is. Amen.

                                                                                                        






Thursday, October 6, 2011

Nice Guys Finish Last!

Ranting again - enter at your own risk

Don't you just hate that statement or at least the idea of that statement? And it has taken forever for me to actually make sense of it. I normally like to at least assume that a motto like this one was originally based in some kind of reality that was worthy of understanding. So I take time with statements like this to try and back into the wisdom or the logic that created it in the first place.
According to dictionary.com nice means: pleasing; agreeable; delightful; amiably pleasant; kind etc.
If you look it up in a thesaurus, it offers: admirable, amiable, approved, attractive; peachy, pleasant, pleasurable, or polite.
We'll come back to this.
I know some nice people, really, some very, very nice people who would open their home to you, give up their bed for you and give you the shirt off their back. I like these people; I aspire at times to be thought of as nice because of how much I like certain people. Are you hearing the but coming. . .
Nice is very good in many places but nice can very definitely get in the way when being nice interrupts progress, productivity or for individuals who want to climb out of the world of mediocrity. Very often an individual will sabotage their own personal desire for greatness, order and success to maintain a composure of niceness. Might this sound familiar to you? Am I speaking about you?
Back to the definition. Nice is nice but I personally want more then nice. Nice is good but it doesn't motivate me. Integrity, success, clarity motivates me. I am inspired by individuals who do not settle for mediocrity and are always reaching for EXCELLENCE. So nice is nice, but I want more.

Let's take a look: imagine you are dealing with someone who agreed to do something but they didn't follow through. Unfortunately for you, you really needed them to do what they said they would do and in not doing so, you cannot complete your part of the project. So you find yourself standing in front of this person asking them about their agreement and they begin to offer you their explanation (code for excuse) and instead of holding them to their agreement, you smile and say you understand. Why? Because you’re NICE! Yikes, how is that working?

What happens when this happens? What happens is that you collude with that individual's self image as less then. What happens is that you sacrifice your desire for order, success and greatness in order to be nice. What happens is, you walk away with a false smile on your face, and this person thinks you’re nice but you are stuck in the loop of mediocrity.

As a graduate of Landmark Education's Forum and Advance course, I was deeply moved by their focus on clarity, greatness and integrity. The influence of this education left me reaching for a greater experience of my leadership and what has become crystal clear is being nice is a form of self-sabotage. Greatness, potency, accomplishment and excellence are a different mindset and standard then nice. Thank God I have also now learned that you can hold someone to their agreement in support of their greatness. This means that when I choose to collude with greatness sometimes the idea of just being nice has got to go. So in a way, I am taking a stand for them more than they are for themselves. Because the norm is comfortable and greatness makes us stretch.

Nice guys finish last because they take the crumbs, they want to be nice more then they want to experience their greatness, because they don't want to push people and leave a bad taste in any one's mouth. But there is salvation, you can be nice and be clear; you can be nice and collude with the greatness of others; you can be nice and live a life beyond mediocrity.

Nice guys can finish first! How? Be nice and clear. Be nice and definite. Be nice and collude with your highest and best and the highest and best of others. Don't let people let you down because they can't do that without letting others down. Take a stand for greatness, yours and others!