The Art of Letting Go

`Wayne Dyer put it well. "Living in the past is like trying to steer a boat while staring at the wake!" So it is with life.

Millions and millions of us are trying to steer our lives while fixated on events long gone, dead - never to return. Many of us have set our hearts and minds on an event or series of events in our lives that were particularly shattering to our sense of self and our personality. It may have been the loss of a loved one through death or divorce; it may have been a sexual assault, or a sudden and traumatic loss of wealth or position.

However, the life altering event does not have to be tragic or criminal - it can be anything that abruptly changes forever our way of life and our sense of self. It might be as simple as a family move in childhood that took you far from friends and activities that you loved. The healthy mind moves on and finds other joys; the fixated mind mourns the loss for years and years and becomes obsessed with what is gone, never allowing something better to appear.

So often these episodes in our life seem to create the "story" of our life that we play over and over and over again until it becomes the reason why we are the way we are. We have all heard the story of the star quarterback on the high school football team who is hurt in his senior year and is never able to be come the collegiate or pro star that he seemed certain to become before the life changing injury. Twenty years later he sits in the local bar and replays his role in the championship game, reliving "the glory days". This is the stuff of Hollywood movies but all too often it's real life. We can't seem to put it behind us and just move on. There is an art to letting go and I believe its time to talk about it!

Among the multitude of gifts that our Creator has given us, we posess innate abilities to heal our bodies, our minds and our hearts, if we will learn to put these abilities to work consciously. We are hard wired to "get over it". We are made from the factory with the ability to move on, to take a blow and keep on keepin' on. We are the Timex watches of the Universe, able to take a terrific physical, emotional, or spiritual beating and keep moving forward toward our highest life, our best life; if we have the desire, the will and the faith in ourselves and in God.

The desire to heal is the key component. If wallowing in the shallows of past hurts or failures, nursing old shattered dreams and replaying our "story" over and over sounds like the life you want; then you will not change, you will not heal and nothing new or good or fine can come into your life. You have left no room for a better life; your mental and spiritual "closet" is stuffed with the dirty laundry of old failure and hurt. If we are in a helpless "it can't happen for me my time is passed" state of mind then that will be our truth until our state of mind changes. No outside offer of help, no outside opportunity - no matter how good, will be allowed to interfer with the daily running of our "story".

Have you noticed that when people are committed to their "story", there seems to be a million good reasons why things can't change, why life can't get back on track for them? Their "story"has become them; it's their sense of who they are. To "get over it" and get rid of "the story" would mean a new way of life - total change - and that means work! Why do people choose a life of regret and failure over the life they can and should live? Usually it comes down to a comfort zone that we just aren't willing to move beyond.

If you want to move out of the "story" that you have been telling, perhaps for decades, to explain why you are ill; why you haven't realized your dream; why you are alone; why you just aren't living the life you say that you want; why you have never made the money you wanted; here is a simple formula for change.

In order to change your life you must be willing to let the old life die! That's right, your old life must be killed in order for the new life to take its place; you cannot rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic of your life and not continue to sink! That means leaving behind all the negative people who sympathize with you and enable your "story". That means making room in your life for that man or woman. That might mean going back to school if that's what it takes to get the credentials to get a better job. It might mean allowing yourself to be well in body and spirit and thus giving up the sympathy and attention that sickness brings to us. It might mean a move to a new town or city but beware: "The Geographic Cure" only works if you change you along with the scenery!

You are where you are in your life because you choose to stay there! It must feel good on some level or you would move on and up. There is always an emotional payoff for any state of mind, body or spirit that we inhabit and refuse to leave. Your state of mind is like a room in which you live. The Bible tells us that "in my Father's House are many mansions (rooms), would I not tell you if it were not so?" This means there are endless states of mind available to you; the choice is totally yours. Each state of mind creates a certain life experience. Your life is a direct result of the state of mind in which you habitually find yourself.

You will never create a better life by staying in the state of mind that you have inhabited in the old life. "You cannot put new wine into old wineskins". Yet, we all try to have the life we want without changing the inner person. Without change, nothing changes! It is rather like the old joke that we all want to get to Heaven but no one wants to die! The old you must die before the new you can be born and only a transformed state of mind can produce a new you.

Romans 12:22 tells us this clearly: "Be you transformed by the renewal of your mind". All comes from mind - yours and by extension God's. God will agree to give you any thing you desire, even misery, poverty, illness, lonliness. God is like the Genie in the bottle, you get what you truly desire but you get to pay the consequences of your desires. If you did not desire it, you would not be experiencing it! Simple, stunning truth! Want a new life? Change your thinking, change your speaking, change your choices and change your life! Sounds too simple? All Truth is simple but it is never easy.

The Art of Letting Go is the art of saying: I created this life I am living, this is my state I am living in, no one did this to me - I can change it and by God I will. Start imagining the new life, put yourself in it in your mind's eye. Smell it, taste it, wear it, live it in your mind and you will live it in your reality. Just that simple - do the work, dear ones and be healed.

May God bless your every moment!

The Secret - New Age Hype or Truth?

The Secret, it seems is the next big thing to hit the web, the blogs, the television, Newsweek Magazine and even your neighborhood video rental store.

Oprah has gotten behind The Secret and given it the highest visibility possible; bringing its message into potentially every home in America. Newsweek did a feature article on The Secret, as did the New York Times. Their contributions were to bash soundly what they so obviously did not understand.

Is The Secret hokum or spiritual truth? In my view the basic principle of the Law of Attraction is total truth. Having said that, I believe that The Secret suffers from being written and marketed by a total spiritual amateur, Rhonda Byrne, an Australian TV producer who got her inspiration from a 1911 book on how to get rich. She literally fell in love with the book and as a result The Secret is unabashedly materialistic and simplistic. Too bad she had not discovered The Science of Mind by Ernest Holmes instead! The Law of Attraction is not about BMW's or 5 Karat necklaces. Its about the creation of the life you want and deserve for you and for those around you. You use this Law by changing what's inside of you.

Dr. Michael Beckwith, a panelist on the video and the Oprah presentation of The Secret is one of the most successful and talented Science of Mind ministers in America and when he speaks about The Secret he clearly and powerfully emphasizes the spiritual components of the Law. Ms. Byrne apparently hasn't discovered that side yet but I believe that she will.

As I read the Newsweek article I was aghast that the author, Jerry Adler, trivialized and poked fun at what is simple common sense and the basis of the teachings of Jesus, with which Mr. Adler perhaps may be unfamiliar.

Of course your thinking creates your life - what else could? You are the only one in your world that has been present every moment of your life. You are the prime mover of your life! It is not about blame, its about responsibility. You are what you think, speak and believe. What you focus on, what you expect, what you fear, what you believe is what you draw to you. Your inner life is the magnet that draws the experience of your outer world to you. It is not hugga bugga or the ravings of some New Age cult, it is basic Spiritual Law - as a man thinks so he is.

We are nothing but our thinking, speaking and choosing. We are not what we eat or what we wear or what we drive - we are what we think and what we allow into our minds. We imprison those who poison a body but do nothing to those who poison minds and souls every day with incredible filth and violence on TV, Cable and the Internet each day and night in this nation.

The Secret teaches that the Law of Attraction draws to you what you think and believe. That is true, "as within, so without", but that is not all there is to it. The Secret teaches a truth but only a small part of that truth. The rest must be told-a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

In Science of Mind we teach that you Treat (affirmative prayer) then move your feet. You move your feet by taking action in alignment with the Truth you have just created with your prayer work. You act with an assumption that its done!You don't just visualize what you want and it falls into your lap as The Secret implies.

You create a living, vibrant mental picture of what you want to experience or how you want to live and then you move in. You mentally take occupancy of this new state of mind you have just created. You cannot use The Secret effectively unless you think FROM THE END. Think of the quality, thing or feeling you desire as already done - get your mind into it and the body must follow. Idle daydreaming or simple visualization will not cut it. You have to own your desire, you have to claim it as your birthright as a creation of the most high God.

The great weakness of The Secret is that God is absent for the most part and so the intention behind it appears shallow and somehow crass. Put God at the heart of The Secret, use it for Good for all around you, not just the almighty YOU, and you will have discovered the Kingdom of Heaven.

The great strength of The Secret and the debt we owe Ms. Byrne is that she got the Word and the Truth of The Law of Attraction to the masses in a way that 180 years of New Thought teaching has not done. She is a brilliant marketer and packager and we all owe her a debt of gratitude.

Now let's take this basic "you can have it all" tool and put some spiritual meat on it. Let's give it a heart and a soul and then Ms. Byrne will have something to be really proud of. She could be the woman who began the great change of Mind and Heart that this land and this planet so desperately needs. Let's send her a copy of "The Science of Mind" and suggest she read it, then she can go back out and really teach!