Topic: Discover Healthy Living

Affirmation: I am whole, well, and free through the loving presence of God in me. I am worthy of loving relationships, where I am cherished and my gifts are celebrated. I have chosen to be happy because it is good for my health.

What is it we are questing for? Let me suggest that it is the fulfillment of that which is potential in each of us. We all want to be successful. To find our purpose. This questing is not an ego trip; it is an adventure to bring into fulfillment your gift to the world, which is yourself. There is nothing you can do that’s more important than being fulfilled. You become a sign, you become a signal; in this way you will find, live, become a realization of your own personal myth.”

A.D. Williams said, “Take care of yourself. There is only one you. You are unique and precious.” And this is so true.

Finding your passion isn’t just about careers and money. It’s about finding your authentic self. Often the one you’ve buried beneath other person’s needs.

In 1 Corinthians 12:4 says “there are a variety of gifts, but of the same Spirit.”

What does this tell us? That we ALL have something to offer. From the waiter to the cook to the dish washer to the owner of the restaurant. Would the business work without the dishwasher? NO!

Later in 1 Corinthians, “for just as the body is one and has many members, and all of the members are of the one body, so it is with Christ.”

Just as the restaurant, any part of this world could not work without each one of us. So, the first thing we all must do to Discover Healthy Living is to change the way we look at ourselves.

When something unbelievably good is happening in your life and you don’t believe you are good enough to have it, you will consciously or unconsciously find a way to sabotage your dreams. Until and unless you know that you are enough just the way you are, you will always be driven to look for more.

We must make a CHOICE to take a CHANCE to make a CHANGE!

In “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” Sirius tells Harry, “There is no such thing as a good person or a bad person. It’s our choices that determine who and what we are to become.” I do love my Harry!

It’s these choices and actions that are what lead us in different directions, and it is through those choices and actions that we create our realities. Sometimes we choose to do something that takes us in the opposite direction of the reality we want to create for ourselves. When we do this, we might go so far as to label ourselves bad. Instead of labeling ourselves, though, we could simply acknowledge that we made a choice that lead us down a particular path, and then let it go, forgiving ourselves and preparing for our next opportunity to choose, and act, in ways that support our best intentions.

Many of us experienced childhoods in which the words good and bad were used as weapons to control us; you were good if you did what you were told and bad if you didn’t. If you were raised this way, you may find yourself feeling shockwaves of badness when you do something you were taught was wrong, even if now you don’t agree that it’s bad. Conversely, you may feel good when you do what you learned was right. Notice how this puts you in something of a straitjacket. An important part of our spiritual unfolding requires that we grow beyond what we learned and take responsibility for our own liberation in our own terms.

— Caroline Myss, “We are not meant to stay wounded. We are supposed to move through our tragedies and challenges and to help each other move through the many painful episodes of our lives. By remaining stuck in the power of our wounds, we block our own transformation. We overlook the greater gifts inherent in our wounds — the strength to overcome them and the lessons that we are meant to receive through them. Wounds are the means through which we enter the hearts of other people. They are meant to teach us to become compassionate and wise.”

One of the greatest challenges in creating a joyful, peaceful and abundant life is taking responsibility for what you do and how you do it. This is one of the tenets that Unity professes and I heartedly agree with. As long as you can blame someone else, be angry with someone else, point the finger at someone else, you are not taking responsibility for your life.

This can be a difficult thing. But a heart closed in on itself does not protect, it imprisons.

Susan Somerset Webb said, “Until we heal the wounds of our past, they will continue to show up in ways that will keep us from living a truly authentic and powerful life. We need to love ourselves enough to find the courage to heal these wounds.”

Today doctors are coming to accept as a fact of life the evidence that many ills are emotionally induced or, at least, influenced. It could be as much as 90 percent. Keep in mind that the world influences us in many ways, we mentioned the consciousness of the world and how we must counter that effect in our daily living. Remember: Peace begin with each of us. The secret of healing of any kind is to correct the conditions that are impeding the natural flow of life by altering states of consciousness, starting with our own and thus, affecting others.

In John 21:1-6, there is an episode in which Jesus teaches through a “living parable.” The disciples, who were mostly fisherman, were plying their trade on the Sea of Galilee. After a whole night of work, they had caught nothing. At daylight they returned to shore, tired and discouraged. They came upon Jesus who suggested they try again, but that this time they should “cast the net on the right side of the boat.” Just image their reaction! After all, they were experienced fisherman. What could the carpenter know? And yet, after all they’d seen with Jesus, how could they question his insights? So, they went out again and cast out their net as he suggested, and now they were not able to haul it in for all the fish.

The story dramatically symbolizes the different sides of life. …The disciples, in consciousness, were out of the flow of life. By the sheer act of casting from the other side of the boat, they had changed their whole experience. This means that by the device of turning in thought from negative to positive, from moods of insufficiency to attitudes of confidence, one may alter one’s whole experience from failure to success. “On the right side” of life you get in tune with the inexorable flow of good.

The story seems to imply that regardless of the experience or the techniques involved or even the fervency of the desire, if you are on the negative state of consciousness there is no help. The need is to get into the flow of the healing stream.

Let’s take a look at this healing stream, this universal flow of wholeness. Though we may not all be conscious of it, each of us is a flowering of the universal creative process. Each of us is a flow of wholeness. Each of us is whole wherever we are, and whatever may be the conditions of mind or body.

Once you catch the idea that you are a whole creature, a child of the universe, the very self-livingness of a universal stream of life, you will never again be satisfied until you find improvement in health. And that is health of every kind!

God is a circle that is centered in you. All the attributes of the Infinite are in focus as you, flowing forth through you. You are in this flow. You are this flow at the point where you are. Thus you are a child of the universe. It means that you are created in the image-likeness of an infinite idea. You are the only begotten of God from the standpoint that, no matter what other influences may have left their marks on you from the outside, there is that of you that is begotten only of God, which is forever the “flowering” of the divine flow from the inside. This is the fundamental Truth.

SO, now that we have affirmed that we are a child of the Universe, how do we put that thought into action?

Listen to your heart. It knows more about your spiritual well-being than your head does.

Make peace with those who have hurt you. If not by communicating with them in some way, then in your mind and heart.

You are a human being with every right to be here, learning and exploring. To label yourself good or bad is to think too small. What you are is a choice-maker and every moment provides you the opportunity to move in the direction of your higher self or in the direction of stagnation or degradation. In the end, only you know the difference. If you find yourself going into self-judgment, try to stop yourself as soon as you can and come back to center. Know that you are not good or bad, you are simply you.

“You must constantly ask yourself these questions: Who am I around? What are they doing to me? What have they got me reading? What have they got me saying? Where do they have me going? What do they have me thinking? And most important, what do they have me becoming? Then ask yourself the big question: Is that okay?”

Lent is a good time to work on ourselves, as we mentioned the other week. It’s not something we do to make God change. It’s something we do in response to God’s love, to bring about change within ourselves. Think of it this way. If your garage is full of clutter, and you’ve just bought a shiny new car and you want to use the garage for its intended purpose (to shelter your car rather than your stuff), then you have a job to do. You need to clean out the garage, or like me, get Jim and Marian to help you. Likewise, Lent is a time when we try to clean out the clutter in our hearts and minds and souls.

And putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow, and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately.”

Pema Chodron has said, “All the wars, all the hatred, all the ignorance in the world come out of being so invested in our opinions. And at bottom, those opinions are merely our efforts to escape the underlying uneasiness of being human, the uneasiness of feeling like we can’t get ground under our feet. So we hold on to our fixed ideas of this is how it is and disparage any opposing views. But imagine what the world would be like if we could come to see our likes and dislikes as merely likes and dislikes, and what we take to be intrinsically true as just our personal viewpoint.”

It’s simple, if it doesn’t nourish your soul, whatever IT is, get rid of it.

It’s your life. You’re responsible how you live it.