A tiny planet
It suddenly struck me
that that tiny pea, pretty and blue,
was the Earth.I put up my thumb and shut one eye,
and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth.
I didn’t feel like a giant.
I felt very, very small.
- Neil Armstrong
It suddenly struck me
that that tiny pea, pretty and blue,
was the Earth.I put up my thumb and shut one eye,
and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth.
I didn’t feel like a giant.
I felt very, very small.
- Neil Armstrong
If a nation or an individual values
anything more than freedom,
it will lose its freedom;
and the irony is
that if it is comfort or money
it values more,
it will lose that too.
W. Somerset Maugham, 1874 - 1965
Do you know what you value in your life? What is your vision?
If you want to get clearer on your priorities, the free course on FINDING YOUR VISION AND LIVING YOUR LIFE’S PURPOSE may be of help.
The course provides you with information, instructions and tips on
To give up our story means taking responsibility for our life, for all that has happened to us, and for all that we have made out of it. To do this, it is often necessary to broaden our perspectives from the level of the personality to that of the soul, which is the higher plan that guides our fate.
To see the events in a new light, you must give up your story. The first step is to trace how you produce the events that happen over and over again. This requires some practice, especially when your life’s guiding principle is that others are responsible for your suffering.
The second step is to find out how you produce the situations that happen to you over and over again. People tend to evade the answer to this question by making general statements. The devil sits in the details, particularly in the feelings that are connected to the details. Feelings are the glue that holds together painful and unpleasant memories. We would like to bypass them by making general statements.
The third step is to move back into the situations that lie at the root of the ‘evil’. In my sessions with clients, I invite their Higher Self to join me. The Higher Self is a bridge between soul and mind and is an expression of the True Self or core of the person. It is closer to the truth than our Ego, for whom it is more important to save face than know the truth.
I ask the Higher Self to lead us back into the situation where we can find the key for the present experience. This key opens the door to what lies underneath the outward symptoms, diseases or problematic life strategies. Such a situation could be a familiar repetitive incident from childhood, which now appears in a new light, or a traumatizing experience that has been repressed from consciousness or classified as unimportant.
One such example is the story of a young man who felt that his mother had restricted his spontaneity and vibrant self-expression to the point where he had physical sensations of paralysis and being crushed. In an inner image, this situation presented itself as a large round stone that had been rolled over a tiger and buried its body. As we looked closer, the stone changed into topsoil, which carried a new germ, the germ of a large tree, which was now ready to grow. All the oppressive and constricting forces, which the stone symbolically represented, were at the same time the mother-ground for the unfolding of his potential.
You cannot recognize this side of the story if you look at it from the perspective of the victim. Only if you put the story into a larger context, if you shift your perspective, can you value the gift that is hidden in it. When you acknowledge and appreciate the positive intent, you can liberate yourself from the entanglements of the past.
In cases where the experiences cut so deeply and were so painful that they are repressed from consciousness, it will take longer to reach the source. You will probably need some guidance, or undertake your own training and practice. Our inner wisdom opens the door to the unconscious only when we are one hundred percent ready to see the truth. A part of the work is just bringing our resistance into conscious awareness. Resistance is another word for fear. Fear has many faces: Fear of the unknown, fear of responsibility or of being held responsible. We are afraid to change our life and to let go of attachments. And we fear that we will not know who we are without our familiar story.
All these fears are legitimate because they carry a grain of truth. It is important to acknowledge and appreciate them, without getting trapped by them or surrendering our power to them. If we dare to look at them, they lose their power and terror. Upon closer inspection, we find out that underneath the threatening fantasies are events which, seen in the light of day, are human. The knowledge relieves and liberates us.
A child interprets events according to the mental capacities that are available at the time when traumatic experiences occur. As adults we are more able to accept human limits. To the degree to which we develop understanding and sympathy for our own weaknesses, we can also accept that our parents or the other important people of our childhood were not perfect. At this point we allow ourselves to see the larger truth and say good-bye to our story. At this point we attain the freedom to bring about overdue changes, to dare the new and to take responsibility for our life.
If you want to larn more about it, check out my Ebook ‘Beyond Suffering’
It will help you to discover the four pillars of how to grow joy in your life
Expect the best,
plan for the worst,
and prepare to be surprised.
Denis Waitley
A friend who is far away
is sometimes much nearer
than one who is at hand.Is not the mountain
far more awe-inspiring
and more clearly visible to one
passing through the valley
than to those who inhabit the mountain?
Kahlil Gibran, 1883 - 1931
Holding and appreciating someone in our heart for many people feels to be harder than having physical closeness. This has to do with your understanding of relationships.
If you want to check out how healthy your perceptions are, use thefree course on Creating healthy relationships
The course provides you with information, instructions and tips on
A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer,
it sings because it has a song.
Maya Angelou
Are you singing your song?
The book Growing through Joy provides you with the necessary tools.
To sing your song, learn to
It is so easy to see the world in terms of black and white. Our leaders tell us it is so, given that they can do no wrong and that all challengers would be a disaster.
Our media tell us it is so, by pitting extremes against one another.
Multiple choice questions throughout our school days lead us to believe there is only one right answer to every question (and that all the others are wrong).
But the real world just is not like that. I have met a lot of people in my life, just as you have. I don’t think I have met a genuinely evil person yet. Nor have I met anyone who is faultless.
And when I think something is right or wrong, I know that someone else can always make a persuasive article to the contrary. That does not mean I will change my mind, but it does mean that the other person and his “wrong” opinion deserve respect.
Imagine a world in shades of gray, where we can see the good in everybody. Isn’t gray (and grey!) a beautiful color?
The danger of the past was
that men became slaves.
The danger of the future is
that men may become robots.
Eric Fromm
The following text is taken from the book: Growing through Joy. You can buy this book as a printed version (in Europe) or as an ebook overseas
If you pay attention to repetitive patterns in your life, you will probably notice that a particular theme keeps coming back and that it extends from small to big events. For example, if your challenge is to feel betrayed or taken advantage of by others, you may encounter such situations when you go to the bakery to pick up rolls, and also in your personal relationships and in financial agreements with business partners.
In the course of life, you throw light on such a pattern from different angles until you deeply understand them and are willing to let them go.
Earlier in my life, I had often wondered why the same kind of incidents continued to happen to me, despite all my precautions, insights and changes. My personal story was a chain of wrecked relationships with men.
In the course of time, as I pondered on the repetitive nature of these events, I became aware that life confronts us with particular lessons, which appear in different guises. They are key events, which point us the way to our inner core. Since these events are often painful and entail a lot of suffering, I found it first impossible and then difficult to perceive them as positive. From my own work with many clients, I know how resistant people are to the idea that their material, emotional or mental misery may be a reflection of their world within and a signpost to the true self. It seems much simpler to blame others for it.
However blaming others does not save us from the suffering. If we take on responsibility for our agony and misery, if we therefore accept ourselves as the creator of this condition, then we may accept that we can just as well create a good and fulfilled life. We can choose to do this with grace and ease or effort and torment.
Many people in our culture believe that something is only worthwhile if it takes effort and work. It is as if they need sufficient agony stamps before they can grant themselves the good things of life.
We need to become aware that this thinking is part of our Christian inheritance and is not the law of the Universal Mind. In the conscious universe, the responsibility is laid in our own hands.
In this context, responsibility means freedom, the freedom of choice.
That depends entirely on you. There are many things that happen in your life, some good, some bad, some easy, some hard. But your life is about you and the choices you make. It is not about what happens to you and around you; it is about how you react to those events.
I offer a free course on POSITIVE AFFIRMATIONS FOR MONEY, LOVE AND HEALTH
The course provides you with information, instructions and tips on
Have you ever wondered why people hold on to attitudes and habits that are not good for them? Although life has proven it to them?
I have wondered about it a lot in my life, esp. as I saw myself doing it, as well.
The resistance to do what’s good for us has many reasons. There are three major reasons that I have come across
1. Christian values program you for suffering.
They are so deeply rooted that they are hard to see and even harder to overcome.
My Ebook “Beyond Suffering” gives you deep insights why we are so stuck on suffering
2. The faster, the better. Our consumer society trains you for ‘quickies’.
In my experience, changing deep-rooted beliefs and habits cannot be done in minutes. It takes a focused and continuous effort.
The Ebook provides the tools how to build your physical and inner strength so that you develop the necessary stamina to move beyond suffering.
3. Our medical and psychotherapeutic system are based on Newtonian principles.
Have you ever wondered why all your work on the physical, emotional and mental level hasn’t really changed basic patterns in your life?
The reason is that energetic patterns hold physical symptoms, emotional disturbances and negative belief systems in place.
For basic shifts to happen your body-mind-system needs rewiring so that all your work gets integrated and synthesised on a higher level of frequency.
The Ebook provides the understanding and the tools how to shift the resonance with life-depleting energy patterns and create a higher level of coherence that we experience as well-being, joy and fulfilment
Christian values, consumer values and Newtonian principles for our health are the bad news.
The good news is: We got other choices.
You want to know which ones? Read more
In working with life purposes I use the technique of setting goals that are clear images of a desired result:
For example, if you desire money, ask yourself what you would like to do with it? Is it security or recognition that you hope money will give you? If so, then security or recognition would be the result. You may receive that even without the money.
If you have the clear picture of a desired result, summarise it in a few key words and form a picture in your mind that represents it. This process is called visualisation. It engages your left and right brain, your conscious and unconscious self, and unites its combined forces behind a common goal.
Gail Sheehy points out that we grow through in challenges of life into leadership
The secret of a leader
lies in the tests he has faced
over the whole course of his life
and the habit of action
he develops in meeting those tests.
This takes continuous practice.
In my book Growing through Joy I offer many tools that will help you to face the tests and turn them into your treasures
Hands-on instructions teach you how to
There are people
who put their dreams in a little box
and say, Yes, I’ve got dreams,
of course I’ve got dreams.Then they put the box away
and bring it out once in awhile
to look in it,
and yep, they’re still there.
Erma Louise Bombeck, 1927 - 1996
The sense of having failed in life can affect all areas of life. It may lead to work stress and failure in the job, relationship stress and loneliness, depression, and, as a consequence, an increased danger of drug and alcohol abuse.
Building self esteem means to learn to realistically acknowledge your strengths and limitations.
Building self esteem means to learn to differentiate between less than perfect actions and your Self so that you can accept yourself as worthy and worthwhile even if you make mistakes.
Building self esteem means to take the authority back that you have given to others in making judgements about your accomplishments and your value as a human being.
The winter time is the perfect season to take account of how you have been doing this year and what you would like to improve next year.
You wonder how?
Read more in my Ebook ‘Beyond Suffering’
Here you can get a taste of it
Or choose the free course on Overcoming Depression and Improving Self-Esteem.
The course provides you with information, instructions and tips on
Do you have a life purpose? Are you aware of your goals and dreams and do you know how to achieve them?
A life purpose is like a light that helps you to focus your energy towards a distant goal and to overcome hindrances and blockages on the way.
A life purpose may be like a key word that runs like a red thread through many of your experiences.
In my seminars I found out, that many people could put their life under such a motto. For some is it love, for other trust, justice, hope, fairness, openness, wisdom, luck, wealth, fulfillment, integrity, truth, creativity, beauty, humanness, harmony, health or freedom.
What is the motto of your life or your present phase of life? Could you name it without having to think about it? If not, I suggest a little exercise, that you can use for free if you click on the link at the end. It’s part of a free course of how to find your vision and live your life’s purpose.
Writing down your life purpose is like a commitment to yourself to reach your goals. A goal focuses your energy and directs it. A goal allows you to overcome difficult situations.
It’s hard enough to write a good drama,
it’s much harder to write a good comedy,
and it’s hardest of all to write a drama with comedy.
Which is what life is.
Jack Lemmon, 1925 - 2001
How often do you sink into the drama and wonder where the homour is?
I went through this myself in my life and researched how we can move beyond suffering.
The outcome is the the Growing through Joy . It provides you with tools for transformation on the mental, emotional and physical level.
To move beyond suffering, learn to
Check here for the Ebook version ‘Beyond Suffering’ that you can download directly
To create a garden is to search for a better world.
In our effort to improve on nature,
we are guided by a vision of paradise.
Whether the result is a horticultural masterpiece
or only a modest vegetable patch,
it is based on the expectation of a glorious future.
This hope for the future is
at the heart of all gardening.
Marina Schinz
The course provides you with information, instructions and tips on
The following text is taken from the book: Growing through Joy. You can buy this book as a printed version (in Europe) or as an ebook overseas
You may need to mature inner images that are associated with painful childhood memories to shift your frequency from suffering to joy.
These inner images or holograms consist of thoughts, feelings and body sensations that we associate with certain people or situations. They steer the course of life from the Unconscious, in despite of all our good intents and keep us in a familiar chain of suffering and stagnation.
You may know the story of the man who was fed up with carrying his cross around any longer. He went to a shop, which had many different crosses in its stock, and offered his cross in exchange.
“That’s okay”, said the shopkeeper, “Just look around and select a new one.” He walked around and tried many crosses. One pressed here, another pressed there, one was too heavy, the next too thin, the third too worn, the fourth too new. After a long search, he finally found a cross that was tailor-made. Glowing, he went to the shopkeeper.
“I’ll take that one”, he said happily.
The shopkeeper agreed, nodding his head.” This is the cross you came in with.”
Powered by WordPress