eCourse - "More (Love) Power to YOU"

"Life is a Struggle." "I Hate my Job." "I can't make ends meet."
"There's never enough time!"
How would your life change if you gave yourself and others a "dose" of the potent you?
That is, the happy, confident, energized you? Negative thoughts diminish your power and lead you to make unhealthy choices causing you to manifest illness, people, and situations that do not serve you. In this Self-Healing Expressions e-mail course, be supported and guided towards self-empowerment by learning to:

• Create, embrace and live your purpose.


• Shift from a reactive to a responsive mindset – use your power of response to create solutions in your dealings with difficult people and work situations.


• Acknowledge and alter the areas in your life in which you are overwhelmed.


• Examine what symptoms you are experiencing in your body, mind and life – replace cancerous thoughts with inner peace for a healthier you.


• Explore your relationship with God or The Universe – align with this spiritual power to recreate your life.


• Learn how to shift away from beliefs that sabotage and deplete your energy – embrace thoughts that support and empower you.


• Evaluate and reprogram negative programs set by your parents and teachers so you don't treat your children, employees, friends, and others this same way.


• Examine the words you speak to yourself and others. Grasp the power of your words on your reality.

Finally, discover and embrace your life's purpose to create a new beginning, starring a more
enriched, powerful, and potent YOU. Visit www.selfhealingexpressions.com to enroll in this Self-Healing Expressions e-course
now.

eCourse - "The Lord's Prayer"

A Healing Journey with the Aramaic Lord's Prayer: Reclaiming the Mysticism of Jesus through His Native Language
by Neil Douglas-Klotz and Elizabeth A. Reed



This 20-lesson online course, guides you on a journey of healing with the
Aramaic Lord's Prayer. Many of you grew up with a particular translation of The
Lord’s Prayer, a translation based on Greek manuscripts - translated over the
centuries from one language into another. However, Jesus did not teach in Greek,
Latin, German, or English. He spoke and taught in Aramaic. This course returns
you to this ancient pray and to Jesus' original language and original style of
prayer. Become a channel of Divine love, joy, delight, healing, and peace by
embracing the prayer of Jesus, as if for the first time. See what new meanings
await your life! Course includes interactive web features and audio of prayer in
Aramaic. Available through Self-Healing Expressions.
[Learn more]

Exotic Spiritual Retreats and Journeys--

Journeys of the Spirit ...with Sheri Rosenthal, DPM

Oct 6-17, '06... Peru and Macho Piccu "Merging with the Divine"

Dec 13-21, '06... Mayan Yucatan and Belize "Dreaming & Mastery Awareness Women's Retreat"

Feb 7-12, '07... Teotihuacan "The Place Where Man Becomes God"

May 19-25, '07... Bimini Islands "Swim with the Dolphins Women's Retreat"

July 19-24, '07... Teotihuacan "Photo Journey Back to Self"

Sept 23-29, '07... Sedona, AZ "Finding the Mystic Within"

Nov 9-19, '07... Egypt "Dreaming Ascension"

Click on the image below and you will be directed to Sheri's website for more details. Enjoy!

Meet your facilitator, Sheri Rosenthal, DPM ... a Master Toltec Teacher trained by don Miguel Ruiz, the author of The Four Agreements. She has apprenticed with him for the past eight years. She was a Podiatrist for 16 years in her pre-Toltec days and the director of a surgical residency program. From 2000 to 2002 she acted as Executive Director of Sixth Sun Foundation, a Toltec non-profit corporation. There Sheri had the opportunity and privilege to design and run don Miguel Ruiz's spiritual journeys, and co-teach with him at his workshops. She has also most recently been appointed as a Fellow of the Center of Spiritual Life at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida. Here she has the opportunity to share herself in a most wonderful way with the students, staff and community. Copyright Journey's of the Spirit

Part 1 - "The Stages of Love"

What is Love? --by Robert Elias Najemy

Love is our greatest need. Is it our highest most fulfilling state? Do we really love or are we simply attached to, identified with or dependent upon the persons we "love"? Is our love free and unconditional, or is it mixed with various needs, conditions and demands? What is unconditional love? Is it possible for us to cultivate it? What is the difference between love and attachment? How can we determine whether what we feel is love or attachment? How can we purify our love and move into a higher level of consciousness? These are some of the many questions that we need to answer in order to create happiness.


Defining Love--

Love is a very difficult word to define, perhaps because its reality approaches spiritual dimensions, which are beyond time and space, and thus, our comprehension. Love is perhaps more easily described by what it is not. Love is not fear, hurt, pain, jealousy, bitterness, hate, separateness, lust, attachment, aggressiveness, ego-centeredness, indifference, possessiveness, suppression - the list goes on.

Love, like God, peace and other spiritual realities, can be perceived more easily through the effects that it creates. We cannot see the wind, but we can see its effects, such as the leaves moving, branches swaying, or the sound of air rushing. We know wind exists by its various side effects. We know there is a Creator because we perceive its effect - creation itself.

What then are the effects of love? Love creates feelings of unity. We feel toward others as we feel towards ourselves. We are as interested in their welfare, happiness, success, health and spiritual growth as much as we are about our own. Loving others means wanting them to be happy in whatever ways they are guided to their happiness. It breeds understanding, compassion, forgiveness, happiness, excitement, peace, joy, fulfillment and a desire to be helpful in any way we can.

Love is expansion beyond our ego limitations. It is the ability to identify with the other, to let go of our self-interest and personal needs enough to really hear and understand the other's needs and interests. It means caring enough to sacrifice, when necessary, our own pleasures and desires when the other's needs are obviously more important.

Love is the force that brings about unity and harmony. It is the "glue" of the universe. It helps persons with different egos, desires, programmings and needs to overcome all those potentially repelling forces and unite. Love needs not so much to be learned or cultivated, but rather released or brought from within us to the surface. We are love. Our basic nature is love. However, our ignorance, fear and attachment have buried it so deeply within us that it is sometimes difficult to summon or maintain. Loving others steadily, independently of their behavior, is not an easy achievement.


Love versus Need--

The power of attraction which we call love is expressed on many levels and in countless ways. The most basic level is that of need. We often use the word love when we really mean, "need". We say, "I love you." But, if we analyze ourselves deeply, we realize we really mean, "I need you." This is the basic message of most love songs. They lament with sadness, pain, agony and cry out "you left me, I cannot live without you. I need you."

This is not the highest form of love. It is love mixed with need, attachment and addiction. If it were pure love and the other was happier by leaving us or even happier with someone else, we would be happy for him or her, not full of sadness for ourselves. Loving others means wanting them to be happy, healthy and successful in the ways that they are guided to be. Love does not create the pain we feel when someone leaves us or rejects us. That pain is generated by our dependency upon that person for our security, pleasure or affirmation.

Needs and attachments create fear, pain and suffering. Love creates happiness, fulfillment and the experience of our True Selves. --Be Well

About the Author of this six-part series: (Robert Elias Najemy's recently released book "The Psychology of Happiness" (ISBN 0-9710116-0-5) is available at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home/holisticharmo-20and http://www.HolisticHarmony.com/psychofhappiness.html

Part 2 - "The Stages of Love"

Love or Need for Security? --by Robert Elias Najemy


Our Love is Mixed With Need--

Our love is still mixed with a considerable amount of need. Love wants to give. Need wants to take. Sometimes what we are seeking to take is very subtle and requires deep inner inquiry. Whenever we feel pain, fear or anger in our relationships, it is because we believe that our needs are in "danger" of not being satisfied. When this happens, our "love" turns to hurt, disappointment, fear, loneliness, inferiority, or bitterness, and sometimes, anger, hate, rage and desire for revenge. How can love become all these negative emotions? It cannot. The simple truth is that our emotion never was pure love to begin with. It was an "attraction" based to some degree also on need. This does not mean that we should reject ourselves because we have seldom really loved purely. As we are not yet enlightened spiritual beings, how could we? It would be like rejecting ourselves because we do not yet have a university diploma when we are still in the first grade or because we are a flower bud, which has not yet blossomed. It is only natural that we cannot yet love unconditionally. This is our stage of evolution.

Freeing our Love from Need--

The first step towards opening our hearts to real love is to accept and love ourselves exactly as we are with all our weaknesses and faults. Only then can we proceed effectively. The second step is to begin observing the feelings that are stimulated in our transpersonal. Through objective self-observation, we can determine in which situations we love unconditionally and in which we are feeling "loving" with specific conditions. Following are some examples that will help.


Needing Those Who Make Us Feel Secure--

We look to others for security. We might seek security from our parents, spouses, siblings, children, employers, friends, ministers, spiritual teachers or others. We do feel love toward these beings, but often that love is based on the fact that they offer us a sense of security. If they start behaving in ways that obstruct our feelings of security or if they decide to leave or ignore us, will we still love them? If our employer fires us, will we still love him or her? If our parents throw us out onto the street, will we still love them? Or is our love tightly woven with the need for security? If as parents we dream that our children will become economically well off and socially accepted professionals, will we love them the same if they become street artists, beggars or anarchists? Some parents will be able to; others will not.

The basic question is whether or not our feelings of love are steady and consistent regardless of the various changing behaviors of those we "love". In each case where we perceive our heart closing, we need to discover what we fear in that situation. What might we believe is in danger? Most frequently we lose our love when we fear that our security, self-worth, freedom or pleasure are in danger. Only when we have realized total inner security, perhaps based on an inner spiritual awakening or on our faith in the Divine, will we be able to love without security attachments. Only when we know that we can live without others can we really love them steadily.

Society has caused us to completely confuse this matter. We believe that if we love others, then we must be totally dependent on them and should fear that our world would fall apart if something happens to them. This is insecurity. This is a lack of awareness of our inner spiritual nature and our ability to deal with life. It has nothing to do with love.

Perhaps this is why the Apostle John wrote, "Where there is perfect love, there can be no fear". --Be Well

Part 3 - "The Stages of Love"

Love, Pleasure or Affirmation? --by Robert Elias Najemy

Needing Others for Pleasure-- Let us examine how our needs for pleasure and affirmation can limit and distort our experience of love. We create relationships that give us pleasure and affirmation as well as security. We may be dependent upon the other for money, shelter, sex, travel, clothing, encouragement, compliments, humor, tasty food, a clean house, comforts, or even his or her beauty. Yet, if he or she stops providing these for us, or decides to provide them for someone else, do we continue loving that person or do we feel hurt, disillusioned, and overcome with feelings of injustice, anger and perhaps revenge? The condition here is that "I love as long as you provide me pleasure, happiness or excitement. If you stop, my feelings change." It is conditional love.

Needing Others for Affirmation-- We may also depend on someone for affirmation. This may take various forms.

1. We are affirmed when others obey us. "You listen to me and do what I say. I can control you. That makes me feel powerful and worthy. If, however, you stop doing whatever I say, I will stop feeling love and unity with you." This becomes a problem for parents when their children move into adolescence. This can also occur between spouses. In many countries a wife might be suppressed at first, and thus, the husband feels powerful and affirmed. If, however, she begins to think and act for herself, he begins to panic and can become angry and sometimes aggressive. The roles may also be reversed where the woman controls and feels affirmed.

2. We also feel affirmation when someone needs us or is dependent on us. This could occur between parent and child, teacher and student, friends, or between the "savior" and the "needy." In these cases, the "needed" feels affirmed by and perhaps superior to the "needy". This is one aspect of codependency. Some of us find meaning in life because someone needs us or depends on us. If however, the other doesn't want to be the child, the student or the needy one anymore, do we feel the same attraction and love? If not, our love is mixed with our need to be "needed". In such a case, we need to give, offer, and sacrifice in order to feel useful, worthy or boost our self-image. If this is the case, then all that we offer in these situations, all our sacrifices, are actually for ourselves and not for the others. That does not negate the fact that others may actually need us, or that we also simultaneously have feelings of altruistic love. We are often motivated by two or three motives simultaneously

3. A third aspect of this attraction for affirmation is the situation in which we "love" those "who affirm our rightness", either verbally by telling us we are right, or simply by belonging to the same social, political, religious or spiritual group and thus embrace a similar belief system. "I love you because you agree with me, you are like me, you affirm me". If they change beliefs and convert to another political party, religion, or spiritual group, will we feel the same closeness and "love?" Perhaps yes, perhaps no.

4. A fourth aspect of this affirmation principle is infatuation - called "Eros" (in Greek "erotas") or "falling in love". In this case there is a mutual (occasionally only one-sided) infatuation on the physical, sexual, emotional and sometimes mental level. This is a special attraction between two persons who excite, bring joy to and stimulate each other positively. This positive stimulation often has to do with the needs for security, pleasure and affirmation. This intensity of these feelings seldom lasts more than a few years. The couple then has the possibility of transforming their "Eros" into a steady form of unconditional love, or facing the sadness of conflict and / or separation. Sooner or later, we will come face to face with the other's various negative aspects, and if we cannot love them as they are, the relationship suffers.

Until we are able to love unconditionally, we will be unhappy, insecure and frequently in conflict with those around us. We will be able to do this only when we have matured sufficiently so as to experience inner security, inner satisfaction, inner freedom and a steady feeling of self-worth.

In other words, we can love purely only those who we do not need. When we need others, we cannot love them unconditionally. This might be difficult to comprehend at first, but deep thought and observation will prove it to be true. Being able to love without conditions is a basic prerequisite for both a happy life and spiritual evolution. --Be Well

Part 4 - "The Stages of Love"

Selfless Love for a Specific Person --by Robert Elias

An essential stage in the evolution of love is being able to love others regardless of their behavior. Probably the closest most of us have come to experiencing such love is towards our children. There are some parents who have totally selfless love for their children. They maintain steady love for "their child" even if he or she does not live up to the parents' expectations, even if he or she rejects and abuses the parents, and even if he or she becomes a dangerous criminal.

This love is not universal nor is it totally unconditional because there is one condition, that the other is "my child" and not someone else's. We might also experience this type of selfless love for a specific person when he or she is "our student" or under "our care or responsibility." This type of love often has to do with the role of protector or feeling responsibility for someone. It enables us to accept all types of behavior from others and continue accepting and loving them with understanding and compassion.

In some cases, we may also feel such love for persons who belong to the same grouping, i.e. nationality, religion or social class. In these cases, we do not gain something tangible from these individuals. We do not require anything from them. Our love is not dependent upon their abiding by a certain type of behavior or even reciprocating our love. Our love is more selfless but still specific and not universal.

Universal Self-less Love--

The next stage is to expand our feelings of unconditional love and acceptance to a wider circle of people and eventually to all beings - including animals, plants and insects. This love, however, is still directed toward form. We are focused on the temporary form being occupied by these beings; thus we feel a sense of sadness when they experience suffering or unhappiness, or if and when we loose them. We perceive their form as reality. We feel love and acceptance for that person, but we still live within the illusion that the form is the reality. We forget that behind that form there is an immortal ever-blissful consciousness, which is just temporarily projecting that form toward the earth plane level.

Universal consciousness is never in pain, never suffers, is never unhappy and can never die. That consciousness is the ultimate reality of the being or beings whom we love. Those who experience this universal selfless love often choose careers or lifestyles that allow them to serve the whole in some way. They may join service groups such as the Peace Corps or other voluntary service organizations. They feel a need to express that love through actions which better the quality of life for those around them, especially for those who are suffering, lonely or unhappy. Their interest expands beyond the limits of themselves and their immediate family.

They begin to realize that all beings are brothers and sisters in one spiritual family of all humanity. As their awareness grows, they perceive even animals, plants and insects as belonging to "their family." They seek to express this love through acts of service and care.
--Be Well

Part 5 - "The Stages of Love"

Spiritual Universal Love --by Robert Elias Najemy

A later stage in our spiritual maturation process is the development of spiritual universal love where wisdom or spiritual discrimination is now added to our love. We now perceive all forms as various manifestations of one unchanging, ever blissful, divine consciousness.

In this state we experience pure love in which we cannot distinguish between the other and ourselves. Christ referred to this state saying, "I am in you and you are in me." Although, as in the previous stage, we continue to help and serve wherever we can, we are not so affected by the pain and suffering we encounter. We realize that the real spiritual consciousness expressing itself through that form has chosen to pass through that experience because it is exactly the next stimulus, which he or she needs, for his or her spiritual growth process.

We are now aware that we are all passing through the precise experiences, pleasant and unpleasant, which we need, in order to wake up from our dream of this illusory material reality. Although we are not affected by the suffering we see, we are even more wholly dedicated toward eliminating it. Thus, we love and accept all beings as they are while we direct our energies toward facilitating this process of our mutual spiritual unfoldment.

Each of us moves forward in his or her own unique way. Previously we may have tried to solve people¹s problems for them. Now we realize that the most effective way we can others is to love and accept them as they are and empower them to find their own inner wisdom and strength in order to overcome their problems. We now realize that the main solution for the world's economic, political and social problems is education. We experience such "wise love" or "loving wisdom" from the highest spiritual teachers. It is sometimes difficult to understand their love and caring, which at times to the beginner, may seem like indifference, especially when we pass through tests and expect sympathy and emotional reactions. It is difficult for some to realize that it is sometimes more loving to allow someone to suffer a little more so he or she can find the solution him or herself and grow stronger and freer from ignorance.

Only a realized being can know, however, when "not to help" externally because this would be the most loving act for a specific person. Many parents would do well to learn this form of wise love. They might help their children far more if they refrain from solving their problems every time they are in trouble. No one should, however, misconceive that this text is suggesting that we should not help those who are in need. We must help, but we must also ask ourselves what the most appropriate help would be in each situation.

The greatest and most precious help we can offer to those we love, is to help them get in touch with their inner power and wisdom. This, at times, means helping, and at others, means letting them struggle by themselves while we mentally pray for them and visualize them in light. For an awakened spiritual being to see someone cry about some unhappy event in his or her life or fear some future possibility, might be like our watching a small child cry about a toy that has broken or express fear of the "boogie man." We sympathize with and understand the child's feelings. We love it and we want to help it, but we cannot really be worried.

Those who experience this level of love sometimes do not exhibit the emotional display which others may be used to interpreting as indications of love. As we grow spiritually, we begin to understand, however, that real love is a love for the soul within the other, which is seeking to free itself from ignorance and the illusion of weakness and fear.

These spiritually awakened beings offer help on other levels through their positive thought forms, prayers or sometimes, direct contact on the astral level, usually in dreams. In this way, help is given without undermining the others' self-confidence. --Be Well

Part 6 - "The Stages of Love"

Loving the Wave or the Ocean --by Robert Elias Najemy

When we limit our love to a specific person (we do not mean sexually, but rather emotionally, mentally and spiritually), it is difficult to experience love in its highest expression. We love this person and not others. We tend to focus on a specific person, "loving" them often because they offer us security, pleasure or affirmation; or because we consider them to be "ours."

Pure love is universal. It can express itself toward any particular being, but it cannot limit itself to that being or group of beings. If it does, then it is love mixed with conditions. Each individual is one of the countless waves on an ocean of consciousness. The ocean is the One Universal Consciousness, which is temporarily taking the form of those specific waves and then disappearing into the formlessness of the ocean again before reappearing as billions of others.

All waves are expressions of the one ocean. When we single out one specific wave from the ocean of beings and limit our love to that, we are, in essence, loving an illusion. That being which we love is just a temporary manifestation of the one Universal Being, which manifests as all the other beings simultaneously. That form on which we focus is a temporary physical, emotional, mental manifestation that will dissolve back into the ocean.

When we love the water in that wave, that is, its spiritual essence, the spirit within, we begin to love all waves. The same water is in all the waves. The same spiritual essence is in all beings. Then we love the spiritual essence in others and not only their form or the specific benefits that we receive from them. We love the spirit within. Our love now becomes both unconditional and universal. It is unconditional because it does not depend on what others do or do not do, and universal because we start to love more and more people independent of their appearance, character and other superficial factors. We love the spirit within them. We as spirit are one with the spirit, which is within them. So we can love the wave or we can love the ocean and thus all the waves.

This is our choice. Love is like the gold ore that is brought up from the earth; it is mixed with other metals (emotions, needs). Our job is to purify that gold through our efforts to love unconditionally in all of our relationships, no matter what the other does or does not do. Only then will we truly be happy.Only then will we experience our true Self. --Be Well

eCourse - "Laughter for the Heart"

Are you getting the proper amount of laughter each day?
Explore the theory of laughter therapy and apply it to your life to boost your immune system and relieve tension in this Self-Healing Expressions email course.

• Examine how much you think daily and be guided toward a state of being versus a state of thinking. Learn to find the Tee Hee in the moment.
• Discover how laughter can help reduce symptoms of allergies, abdominal pain and digestive problems -- to name a few. And help you manage anger and fear.
• Learn of the relationship between laughter and tears, and the role of both in healing grief.
• Link the spirit of laughter to your spiritual health.
• Finally, learn to embrace your uniqueness and share your laughing spirit with others for years to come.