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Three points to ponder:

1. Realize releasing impacts every area of our lives;   physically, mentally, psychologically and spiritually.
2. Releasing clutter isn’t only about things.
3. How to release IN love, not only with love.

1) Starting with the body first. Imagine how it would be to only take in our breathe and not let it go or how we would feel if we ate and never eliminated its waste.

Gregg Braden at a Science and Spirituality Conference I attended addressed letting go of our old story about who we have been taught to think we are as it keeps us locked in separation, competition, struggle, conflict and scarcity; it programs us to be victims and powerless. He reminded us that we are the only form of life that can choose to awaken, solve our problems, choose our relationships, heal our bodies and create our own sense of worth.

I maintain that our old story about ourselves is locked into old time religion that teaches guilt, blame and shame. Guilt being feelings associated with our behavior; shame being feeling inadequate, a sense of worthlessness, both precipitate self-rejection and blame.

Here are some of the distinctions between old time religion, OTR and new thought spirituality of the 21^st century, NTS.

OTR

• Scares with fear
• Controls with guilt, blame shame
• Need for rites, ceremonies to be connected to God and to be saved
• Punishment
• Discourages questioning
• Don’t think for yourself, we will tell you what to think
• Denial

NTS

• Fear and love can’t co-exist
• We are immersed in God and can never be separate; rites and ceremonies remind us of this
• Consequences
• Encourages questions and discussion
• Teaches how to think and and how the mind works Tell the truth

The following are some distinctions between Religion and Spirituality.

Religion

• Outward focus / what we DO
• Challenges us to a standard of BEHVIOUR
• Primarily addresses the realm of duality / positionality
• Can be sectarian / divides people into conflicting groups
• Comprised of concrete dogma
• Is man made

Spirituality

• Inward directed – is who we ARE
• Challenges us to a standard of BEING
• Addresses non-duality – oneness
• Unites, its central ideas hold the group

together with love, kindness, forgiveness, gratitude, acceptance, being non-judgemental and peaceful

• Comprised of direct realization of what is real
• Is not man made

Differences may and usually do exist among religions, but not among truly spiritual teachings. Spirituality can exist without religion, but healthy religion can not exist without spirituality.

I think what all of the above is pointing to is to relinquish all ways we treat ourselves lovelessly, unlovingly, whether in body, mind or spirit.

I recall a friend telling me in her Roman Catholic upbringing, when as a child, she was taught to kneel in church and thump her chest repeating: “I am not worthy, I am not worthly”.

2) Releasing clutter isn’t only about things

An energy drain happens whenever we think of it, (clutter), pass by it, whether a drawer, closet or the trunk of the car etc.

In watching a television program on hoarding for a few minutes, I was reminded that ultimately it indicates a high self-preservation urge with fear associated with dying underneath.

When my husband and I downsized from a large suburban home to a much smaller urban condo it surprised us when it took so many trips to the thrift stores, recycle shop and the number of suitcases filled with clothes that we donated to Our Place, an organization which helps the homeless. I think a good exercise would be to imagine you are moving across the country and you would be paying all the expenses. What would you release? It probably would be stuff you do not love or use.

Releasing clutter isn’t only about physical things, it includes the clutter of negative emotions. Many times people when asked how they are feeling without realizing it they answer with what they are thinking instead. That kind of sentence usually starts with “I’m feeling that” or” I’m feeling like”. Most of our emotions stem from four main feelings: mad, glad, sad or afraid.

When feeling angry or mad I like to suggest to go deeper. If done, then hurt is uncovered; but deeper still is fear. Telling the truth about feeling afraid to someone who is a committed listener is very healing. The person speaking is then validated.

No real healing happens unless there is forgiveness. Forgiveness is for you not the person you are forgiving. Not forgiving holds you as hostage and it is difficult if not impossible to go on with your life in a joyful way.

To release the clutter of resentment, to forgive others; to release regret, forgive yourself. Let go of criticizing; what we criticize we keep in our lives. The universe usually brings it back to us to educate us, if we are willing .

Other words for releasing and letting go are eliminating, renouncing and purifying. I like the words Radical Pastectomy, releasing the past which also includes doing our family of origin work. Important questions are: am I complete with my mother & father. Complete, not as in finished, but as in having those relationships restored to wholeness if there seemed to be anything in the past that distanced us.

I participated in numerous intensive workshops that gave me the opportunity to “complete” with my mother and father.  My father died of alcoholism and cancer at the age of 59 when I was 19. My undemonstrative mother died of cancer at the age of 46 when I was 16. She never told me that she loved me, even after I asked her to tell me so, she pushed me away. My father made me knell as punishment whenever I was a bad girl. He would say “Knell & think about how bad you were”.

A Radical Pastectomy includes anything we have been nursing, rehearsing, caressing, resisting, & refusing to release. Just think that if we released all of the above, we would have no more drama in our lives. If you think you can’t, you are addicted to it – the drama. and giving your power away.

Some people have difficulty releasing the clutter of past relationships, whether a split up, divorce or death.

I agree with author Barbara De Angelis when she wrote about the stages of recovering from a relationship. If we don’t heal from a past relationship we carry it to the next one.

So many people jump right into a new relationship without fully releasing and doing their recovery work.

Barbara suggests:

Separation / parting – takes 2weeks – 2 months

Adjusting / adapting – takes 2-6 months

Healing takes 6 months – 1 year

Recovery  / breakthrough takes 1-2 years.

Whether physical, mental, emotional, psychological or spiritual, know when we release that there is a superior alternative being prepared for us  – making room in your life for newness to flow in.

3) Let go in love; even if something is lost the other who found that thing needed it more than you. I say IN love rather than WITH love. WITH love would be feeling the emotion of love. IN love is realizing we are immersed in the power of love all the time whether we are aware of it or not. We are love at the core. I repeat, relinquish any and all ways we are treating ourselves unlovingly.

Two powerful exercises are to list anything you are currently tolerating and list any current petty annoyances: people, situations, circumstances, things and relationships.

Let go of who and what we think we are and remove any emotional attachment to it. Replace it with who, what we really are. Soul – choose soul, your new life awaits.

I love the following writing by Rev. Safire Rose:

“She let go. Without a thought or a word, she let go.She let go of the fear.  She let go of the judgments.  She let go of the confluence of opinions swarming around her head.  She let go of the committee of indecision within her.  She let go of all the ‘right’ reasons. Wholly and completely, without hesitation or worry, she just let go.

She didn’t ask anyone for advice. She didn’t read a book on how to let go.  She didn’t search the scriptures. She just let go.  She let go of all of the memories that held her back.  She let go of all of the anxiety that kept her from moving forward.  She let go of the planning and all of the calculations about how to do it just right.

She didn’t promise to let go. She didn’t journal about it. She didn’t write the projected date in her Day-Timer. She made no public announcement and put no ad in the paper. She didn’t check the weather report or read her daily horoscope. She just let go.

She didn’t analyze whether she should let go. She didn’t call her friends to discuss the matter. She didn’t do a five-step Spiritual Mind Treatment. She didn’t call the prayer line. She didn’t utter one word. She just let go.

No one was around when it happened. There was no applause or congratulations. No one thanked her or praised her. No one noticed a thing. Like a leaf falling from a tree, she just let go.

There was no effort. There was no struggle. It wasn’t good and it wasn’t bad. It was what it was, and it is just that.

In the space of letting go, she let it all be. A small smile came over her face. A light breeze blew through her. And the sun and the moon shone forevermore.

She let go. Without a thought or a word, she let go”.

I don’t share about this very often, but I’ve actually had three near-death experiences, two when I was quite young. One, as a result of sticking my finger into a socket. I won’t say electrocuted, but the shock made me unconscious. I was about two or three years old. A few years later when I was about six, I was at Winnipeg Beach – I was born and raised in Winnipeg and we used to go to Winnipeg Beach for the summer. I was on a big rubber tube, I went kind of far out even though I didn’t know how to swim and the tube burst! My mother who was eight months pregnant at the time pulled me out of the water. Somebody resuscitated me on the beach. I don’t remember much more about those two incidences.

The incident I want to share happened in 1977; it’s one that I do remember as it made a profound impact in my life. Several things that I’d like to address; first my near-death experience and second, my recollection of two out of body experiences while I was either on the operating table or in the intensive care unit.

My late husband Norman Schultz and I had gone out to New Sarepta, about 40km outside of Edmonton to visit his mother. We had just moved to our new dream home in Westridge Edmonton. We were used to taking a particular route home to another area of the city where we used to live in Dickensfield. We were having a conversation on the ride home when we both realized we missed our turnoff. We were going to Dickensfield instead of where now lived in Westridge. We had to find the next turnaround and double back.

It was about midnight and as we were coming through a green light, we were the third car in a row at the intersection, when a ¾ ton truck came racing through on his red light at 60 miles an hour into my door. We were very thankful as at the time we were driving a new Lincoln, which had a steel post between the front passenger & back doors. If the steel post hadn’t been there, we both would have been killed instantly.

I want to back up a little bit. Just a couple weeks before that, I was doing some gardening. Norman had a very traumatic stroke the year before, that the doctors thought he should have died from or at best wouldn’t recover from, which he did. I was in the garden and feeling so thankful that I had the privilege of being with him through his recovery, because he fully recovered in just three months, miraculously. I was also thinking about the International New Thought Alliance conference we had attended that year where we heard some incredible speakers. What I noticed was that many of them had near-death experiences in the past.

Prior to that I was working in my meditation with the statement, ‘I am becoming more unconsciously aware of my oneness with the Infinite.’ That was a key phrase for myself coming into and out of meditation. I am becoming more unconsciously aware of my oneness with the Infinite.

In the garden I had this flashing thought: ‘people that have near-death experiences really get this new thought philosophy Two or three weeks later…. The collision. I don’t remember it or being taken out of the car. The impact was so tremendous. When you have a brand new car the little spare tire in the trunk is bolted down. All those bolts were severed and the spare tire was rolling a half a block away. Norman, uninjured except for shock, was picking up carrots off the ground because Grandma Schultz had given us vegetables to take home.

I was rushed to emergency but I don’t remember that ride. However, for a number of years, I would get a bit shaken whenever I heard an ambulance siren. They worked on me for eight hours in surgery. After the surgeon came down and told Norman that they didn’t think that I would live the night, that all they could do was pack me with sponges. Because of the impact, my liver had broken almost in half and they had to resuscitate me two times on the operating table. Because of the loss of blood, they transfused me, totally and completely, two times over. They told Norman I would probably die within a few hours.

Two days later it was apology time. They had to take me back to the operating room because obviously I was alive and they needed to take out those sponges. They did warn him that possibly, a great probability was that when they took out the sponges, if the bleeding started again, there would be nothing they could do.

I don’t remember anything, any of that. What I do remember is moving through space at a very swift speed through blackness. I don’t recall having a body but I remember moving through that blackness, approaching a silver light. That’s the best way I can describe it, describing it was silver doesn’t do it. It was a very, very bright light that as I was speeding toward it, it became bigger and bigger and bigger. As I was almost going to be enveloped into the light, I remember the thought, ‘I want to live. I want to go back’. I didn’t think of my children, my husband, what I was doing, what I wanted to do. There was just that thought, there was that conscious choice.

I was in intensive care for 21 days. Norman at one time, said that he counted 18 tubes coming out of every orifice, (and some that they made), out of my body. When he brought my children to come visit me, my middle son Michael said, “Mom, I was almost hoping I didn’t go to see you because your face was like a balloon. You didn’t look like you.”

Just a few months before, we had decided that we were going to go to Hawaii with some very dear friends of ours, we had actually booked the flights and the reservation. My girlfriend, Frauwke lied to the nursing staff saying she was my sister so she could come and see me because in intensive care they only allow immediate family. I don’t remember her visiting, but she said she could tell that I recognized her as I grabbed her hand and made a motion holding up three fingers and I moving my hand over my chest, as though a plane was taking off. She got that I was telling her that in three months, we are going to Hawaii.

I remember when they moved me to a semi-private room after the three weeks in intensive care. One day I was sitting up in bed and looking through a door and I thought, “who is that person over there? They look awful.” Then I realized I was looking at myself in the mirror because it was our bathroom door and as I moved, the person moved …it was me. When other friends came to visit that day, I put a pillow over my face and said, “Don’t look at me, I look so awful.”

I discharged myself from the hospital very quickly as I had a not very nice room mate that I didn’t want to put up with any longer. The healing began. Our chiropractor at the time, a wonderful man, made a hospital visit to me, he drew all the drapes to adjust me plus he came and visited me several times at home. He was also into kinesiology and muscle testing for supplements. He put me on a huge regime of supplements. I think I was taking 40 tablets a day.

Of course Norman had let people know what had happened so there were many people praying for us and visualizing my complete recovery.. When I came home, the majority of my healing was visualizing and seeing myself doing all the things I could do before the automobile collision. I do not call it an accident. We had to turn around and take a wrong turn to be at that corner at that precise time for that driver to hit us. Instead I call it “my divine appointment”.

Three months later, I was 100% recovered, jogging down the beach of Hawaii. I thank God for New Thought in my life. I know that the healing power is within me. I thank God that I had attended so many classes that I had the sense that the healing power was within me. I remember once when they were putting in the tracheotomy tube for breathing, I started to regain consciousness on the operating table because I could hear them. I lifted my hand because I just wanted to touch my body but someone clamped my hand down.

I said the healing power resides in us; it is that we are immersed in God so therefore it resides within us. It is not like some people have it and some people don’t. God, the infinite presence and power, the ultimate reality is everywhere present therefore we are immersed in it, we are expressions of it, therefore the healing power resides in us.

When I came home I started to read a book and I thought, “oh my God, my mind isn’t working right” because I couldn’t understand any of what I was reading. Then I picked up a Joel Goldsmith book. Joel Goldsmith was quite a mystic. He has made his transition now, but he wrote totally from the fourth dimension, oneness, that there is no separation in consciousness. In the course of the three months healing at home, I read 21 of his books that’s all I could read.

I want to also share a little about the out of body experiences that I remember, at the time I didn’t know that is what they were called. I had what I thought was a dream while I was in intensive care where I was mostly unconscious and in a coma. I had a dream about Dr. Roder. Norman and I used to go to a lot of his intensive weekend classes. For several years. He used to fly out from Texas and Toronto and teach 23 hours of instruction at a time of Concept Therapy and Energy and Man. The “dream” was that he was in my hospital room, sitting kind of like slumped over while he meditated. He was wearing shorts and he was talking to me in his mind about me healing. A couple months later when I was recovered, I went to one of his classes and I said, “You know Harry, I had a real strange dream. I dreamed that you were in my hospital room.” He said, “Gail every day in my office at a particular time, (he is also a chiropractor) I would sit down in the corner in my mediation chair and I would meditate on you and I would speak to you.” I asked “What were you wearing?” He said, “I always wear shorts in my chiropractic office.” So was he there, or was I there?

The other incident was about a friend in Red Deer who is a poet and an artist. When they moved me from intensive care into the regular hospital room, a dozen roses came from her, each a different colour, along with it was a poem called, ‘A dozen roses that I send to you, each a different colour’ a beautiful poem. She came to visit me after I came home. I said, “Elsie, I had a strange dream when I was in intensive care. I dreamed I was in your studio, in the lower level.” They have a beautiful home overlooking Red Deer on a hill. I said, “but your room was all rearranged. You had a settee beside your big picture window overlooking the city and your easel, where you do your writing and painting, was moved beside the door. In this dream it was dark and you had kind of a gooseneck lamp over your easel, you weren’t painting, you were writing and the carpet in your room was blue.

She said, “That’s very interesting. The night that Norman called and said what had happened, I went down to my studio where we had placed a settee beside the picture window. We just installed new blue carpet and that’s exactly where the easel was beside the door. I was writing that poem to you that night.”

I remembered being there and thinking, “Elsie, if you’d just look over here you’d see that I am here” and in reflection I thought, ‘well, I transported myself to Red Deer, couldn’t I transport myself across the room?’ – that was kind of funny to me but I thought it was a dream until I told her about it and she responded.

What did all this teach me, what did I learn for sure? Many things. First of all, in the moving toward the light, there was absolutely no fear, none. It was peaceful and blissful even those words don’t describe it, it’s indescribable. I don’t have any sense of fear around my transition, whether its sooner or later.

In my first topic at the Centre for Self Awareness when we opened in Victoria I made the statement: ‘matter obeys the intent of consciousness.’ Remember I was declaring ‘I am becoming more consciously aware of my oneness with the Infinite.’ Nothing to that point in time in my lifetime brought me closer in conscious realization that I am one with God and God is one with me. I no longer say “with” I say “in”.

All this really made me see how powerful our thoughts are, even if they are just fleeting thoughts but it’s also the feeling. I was in the garden with such gratefulness and remembering the conference and remembering the people sharing that they had near-death experiences, also, being so thankful that I had been privileged to be Norman’s partner through his healing. There was the thought I had that when people have near-death experiences really get this New Thought philosophy.

The power of prayer, I cannot begin to share how many people were holding us in prayer, in affirmative prayer, not fearful prayer or supplication. They were holding me and seeing me and speaking as though I was whole, complete, perfect, spiritual, divine and fully healed, fully recovered. I also learned how absolutely magnificent my body is, our bodies are.

I remember the first time a home, Norman helped me in our large shower stall. He was holding me up because I had lost so much weight. As I was washing my body I was crying at the magnificence of my body and the healing power within it, how it had served me, and how thankful I was that I had not ever abused my body in any way.

I have read that Buckminster Fuller said that 99% of who we are is invisible, untouchable, we are primarily, spiritual beings. But, he continued, the remaining 1%, the body in which we live, is a miracle. Yet so often we take our bodies for granted.

I spoke to someone who said they were having a difficult year but had a breakthrough even though a year of challenge, it was a year of growth. Barbara Marks Hubbard has said that our crisis is our birth. I call it “a blessing in disguise”, my “divine appointment”. It was a rebirth into a new world for me because when I came home from the hospital and I was recovering, I said to Norman that I think the fall is my favourite time of year because it is so beautiful in Edmonton then plus we started the Center for Self Awareness in Edmonton in September and we started the Victoria Center for Self Awareness in September. I also said to Norman, “I don’t want to sell real estate anymore (we owned our own real estate company, just the two of us, not known for its size but for its people, him and I). I loved selling real estate and I was very good at it. I said, “I want to do what it takes to complete my training, so we can start a New Thought center in Edmonton.” So that people wouldn’t have to travel as far as I had to travel for courses, pay the kind of money that I had to pay and be away from the family for an extended period of time with the travel for the courses that I had to. So it was my divine appointment, it was a blessing in disguise. It empowered me to be a New Thought Minister for 27years

The other thing that it taught me is to have an intention to live. Do you have an intention to live no matter what anyone else is saying? ‘She’s not going to make it through the night. There’s little hope.’ Do you have an intention to live and do you have an intention to live to the highest and best that you are capable of right now in your own unfoldment of consciousness. Every experience you have had has brought you to right now, right now, right now and it’s made you who you are.

When I think of life now, I think of it as an acronym. Life or Love, Individualized, Fully Expressed and Experienced. That’s my story. I thank God that I didn’t die that night and it was my choice. Please don’t go in your mind, if you have had someone close to you in your life make their transition and you think, “Do you mean to say they didn’t’ want to stay with me?” They don’t even think about you at that point. All that they are doing is they are being immersed in that light. The realms of light from where we came from, our spirit, soul. We don’t have a soul, we are a soul, there’s a big difference.

We came from realms of light to be here on planet Earth, to experience what we need to experience for our next, our own individual unfoldment of consciousness. Each one of us has the free will and choice to go when it’s time for us to go, or to stay. What a blessing we have. We truly, truly have a blessing. I really acknowledged my husband Norman, for the gift that he had been in my life and for him always holding that I was going to walk out of that hospital whole.

I asked him, “What did you do in the eight hours I was being operated on?” He said, “I went to every nursing station and I told them that my wife was being operated on now, and she is going to walk out of here.” They were offering him valium and shots because they knew he was in shock, but he was living and speaking New Thought principles! Iam glad he did.

Bold definition: daring; courageous; not holding back.

Boldness – not hesitating in the face of active or possible danger or rebuff

Some people have too much “wishbone” & not enough “backbone”

Let us allow ourselves to take a quantum leap; let us surrender to a yearning;. Surrender is an unpopular word; I do not mean submit, resign to, loose or defeat. I mean surrender as in yielding and allowing, not giving up.

Examples in my life when I lived out of boldness:

*Although first in my family I got a divorce from my first husband. I later realized that had I stayed in the marriage I probably would have developed cancer.

* I then married a man that had 6 children; with my 3 that totaled 9. The blended family experience turned out to be one of my most difficult yet most rewarding experiences of my life.

* My late husband Norman & I started our own real estate company, Norman Realty Ltd.; not known for its size but for its people, just him and I. People said we would come crawling back to the firm we had both worked for. Not everyone will celebrate your victory; most criticism is based on jealousy.

* I accepted total recovery after my near death experience in 1977. More about that later

* I listened to my heart and left real estate and became a New Thought minister.

* I Founded the Edmonton Centre for Self Awareness

* We moved to Victoria where we only knew 2 people and I founded the Victoria Centre for Self Awareness.

Remember if people try to run you down or out of town, get in front and lead the parade.

Stewart Emery said “It’s remarkable how much mediocrity we live with, surrounding ourselves with daily reminders that the average is acceptable. Our world suffers from terminal normality. The first step to mastery is the removal of everything in your environment that represents mediocrity. Remove those things that are limiting. One way is to surround yourself with friends who ask more of you than you do”.

Walt Whitman boldly advised, “dismiss whatever insults your soul”. As you let go of what isn’t you some uncomfortable issues may surface. Others may say that you aren’t the person they thought you were. That is actually true.

One of my favourite authors is Alan Cohen who invited us to make waves around us; “Go ahead, an entire ocean awaits”.

Universal Intelligence didn’t make a mistake when extending itself in creativity and birthing you. Say yes to life and realize someday is not on the calendar. Face any obstacle with courage and boldness.

The Beatles were turned down by two recording companies before Capitol took them on. Richard Hookers who wrote the war novel “ Mash” was rejected by 21 publishers before Morrow published it. In 1959 Universal Pictures dismissed Clint Eastwood saying “your adam’s apple sticks out too far” and to Burt Reynolds “you have no talent”. In 1954 Jimmy Denny, the manager of the Grand Ole Opry fired Elvis Presley after one performance saying ”you ain’t going nowhere” Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, but President Hays said “It’s an amazing invention, but who would want to use one of these things”.

Neale Donald Walsh said “kill passion and you attempt to kill God. Passion is God wanting to say Hi”.

There is an enormous redwood tree in the Sequoia National Park in California called General Sherman. It is 276 feet 8 inches tall (that is taller than a 25 story building); and is 35 feet 9 inches across with a circumference of 103 feet, it would take 17 large men locking hands to encircle this tree. One branch reaches 135 feet in the air and is 7 feet in diameter. There is enough lumber in it to build 300, 5 room bungalows; it would take 110 railway train cars to haul all the foliage and lumber from General Sherman. It is estimated to be 3,000 years old yet it grew from a seed 3/1000th of an ounce, a seed so small that it could become lost in a crease in the palm of your hand.

Question: Do you think the Infinite Intelligence of the universe would give a greater potential to a tree than to you and me? The saying goes that within us is a great potential. I maintain that we are immersed in this great potential which can be developed and expressed.

One of my favourite quotations is from Anais Nin: ” and the day came when the risk it took to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom”. Kerry Stevens said something similar: “There comes a time when the fear of remaining the same becomes greater than the fear of changing”.

Rev. Marin Luther King Jr. said: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter”.

Stop living on the “Someday Isle”; the isle of it won’t be long now; it’s just around the corner; pretty soon; let us see what happens. Let “some day” and “one of these days” loose their grip on your vocabulary.

More examples of “someday”:

I’ll release weight; stop drinking; stop smoking; write a book; compose a song; play an instrument; paint a picture; take that course; go on that trip; when my ship comes in; when the kids are grown; when the car is paid; when the mortgage is paid; when I retire.

Someday I’ll let others know that I’m lonely. Someday I’ll get help, see a therapist. Someday I’ll end the relationship that is abusive. Someday I will start telling the absolute truth.

Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday, avoiding today and fearing the future. What you won’t walk away from is where you stop growing.

An indispensable and indisputable first step of getting, doing what you want is to decide what you really desire; what is in your heart and to tell the truth to yourself.

Don’t wait to fall in love to be loving; walk out of your home in love. My favourite affirmation that I speak every morning is “ I love the life I live and I live the life I love”.

If you are in relationship do not wait until Saturday night or when you and your partner go on vacation to be loving. Author Barbara de Angelis maintains that to make every day count, make love all the time, then you can be sure you will stay in love with each other.

After my Mother died when I was 16 I was sent to live with an uncle and aunt. They taught me a very important lesson. Whenever they would go out separately, whether to the corner store, across the city or province (or I might add anywhere in the world), they would always embrace and kiss. My husband Jon and I do that all the time. We also hug and kiss when we get up in the morning, even though I usually get up before him; when he comes into the room that I am in, we greet each other with a hug and kiss.

Dr. Bernie Siegle in his book Peace, Love and Healing said “men, women and children who have looked death in the face are often those who know the most about living. Their message is “I learned I was going to die and so I decided to live until I died”. They interpreted their diagnosis not as a sentence, but as a message to fully live.

Say Yes to life. When we are saying yes to life, we are saying no to something else. It is easy to say no when there is a burning yes hidden. Are you saying yes to living a vibrant, healthy, long life? Are you saying yes to more intimate relationships? Are you saying yes to a prosperous life? Are you saying yes to living free from barriers and restrictions? Are you saying yes to truly knowing yourself? These are all important questions to ask ourselves.

Have you let, allowed a disappointment or a seeming failure stop you in life? Let the doors of disappointment or seeming failure totally and completely close. Allow yourself to give birth to more in the future than you supposedly lost in the past; don’t look at those things as an ending; realize it means a new beginning. It is not about beginning again; it is about beginning anew. Even if all doors are closed; a window will open.

We all have areas where we can come up higher. Everything we need to live a victorious life of empowered relationships, healthy habits and the impetus to live abundantly are already innate within us and can take us to places in consciousness, in relationship and living fully Self expressed. We couldn’t have a dream in our hearts if we didn’t already have everything, already equipped to accomplish them. Tightrope walkers know how important it is to keep focused, their eyes are on where they are going, they never look down. The fastest and easiest way to bring anything you desire in your life is to feel and be happy. It is not selfish to be happy; it is your highest purpose.

I remember Dr. Bernie Siegle saying that if illness or disease comes, if someone else has been healed from it you can be healed too; if no one has been healed from it, you can be the first.

If a relationship has failed, if someone has left you (or even died), out of that rejection can come your greatest direction; it can stretch you to your next level, it can be a key for you to be all you can be. Your destiny isn’t contingent upon people that walk away or those that try to keep you small. When something is finished, no amount of glue can hold it together so let go and get ready for newness; realize that a superior alternative is being prepared.

Don’t let the size, the vastness of your dream that is calling you intimidate you. The dream in your heart may be bigger than the environment which you are in, (the relationship, place of work, even the friends you hang out with). You cannot hang out with negative people and expect to live a loving, positive, healthy, prosperous life. It is imperative that you place yourself into an environment that is conducive to your dream.

Remember that the only one who can limit your expression and experience is you, the small you that you think you are when you have forgotten who you really are. Live in direct alignment with the Infinite Principle of life – that it responds to you according to your beliefs, intention, and choices. Say yes to life; live in yesness. This important time on earth is calling us for new levels of mastery, of being Self aware. Extraordinary times demand extraordinary lives. Acknowledge the priceless seed of greatness within you; and realize it is never too late.

Walter Starke in his book It’s all God said that because of evolution, we are now able to digest greater bits of science, psychology and spiritual truths than ever before; it is possible now to mature spiritually in what would have taken lifetimes of effort before. Look at children now; they are way ahead of where we were when we were their age. They are becoming computer literate at the age when we were learning the ABCs.

It’s never too late; remember someday isn’t on the calendar. Grandma Moses painted masterpieces when she was 100; Bertrand Russell was 94 when he was active in international peace drives; Rubinstein was 92 when he gave his greatest recital at Carnegie Hall; Albert Schweitzer was 89 when he was head of a hospital in Africa; Sir Winston Churchill was 82 when he wrote the History of English Speaking People and The New World and Beethoven became totally deaf at 46 but wrote his greatest music in his later years.

We can’t have mastery if we think and feel that we don’t deserve it. Some people have had 20, 40 or 60 years of feeling unworthy. I remember years ago when attending the first seminar I had ever taken; it was in Edmonton, Xocess Seminars, led by Leland Val Van DeWall. He said “decide what you want and I’m going to show you exactly how to get it”. When I went home that night I cried because I realized I had never asked myself that question: ”What do I want”.

Become clear what is important in your life. What are your values, your priorities.? What do you savour and I don’t mean food.? Don’t just think these things – ink them, write them down. It’s a process, it takes time, energy and focused concentration.

Remain unperturbed in face of challenges. I think we have all heard to rename a problem a challenge; however imbedded within each challenge is a project.

Victor Frankl in his book Man’s Search for Meaning described his experience in a concentration camp. He stated that everything can be taken away except one thing: the freedom to choose our attitude, our response.

A little boy (with a mirror) on his dad’s lap; the dad had a serious look on his face. “Daddy, did God make you?” Dad answered yes. Daddy did God make me?” ;the dad answered yes. The boy looked in the mirror and said” Hum, God seems to be doing a better job these days.”

In closing I want to share with you what Alan Cohen in his wonderful book I had It All the Time shared about “The First Class Flying Ticket”. We could rename it First Class Living. Here it is:

• Cut down on scheduling
• Learn to say “no”
• Stop when you feel tired
• Take mini-retreats and vacations
• Soak in a hot tub
• Receive massages
• Listen to your favourite music
• Make love in the middle of the afternoon
• Dance ’til you’re giddy
• Honour your home as your personal renewal space
• Turn off your phone and computer for the day
• Meditate
• Spend time in nature and / or your garden
• Ask for what you really want
• Take a class in something you have never done before
• Make time with children & don’t change your plans
• Play more with your family and friends
• Call an old friend and talk at length about your lives
• Tell a deeper truth in your significant relationships
• Write a love letter to your favourite relative
• Write a love letter to your least favourite relative
• Release the person whose life you are trying to run or save
• Write a letter of appreciation to someone who inspires you
• Take a friend to dinner at your favourite restaurant
• Rent or choose from Netflex or a DVD, make popcorn and invite friends over
• Buy yourself a gift

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