Getting Out of Prison

Awakened Heart Ministries is devoted to the personal empowerment of people all over this planet, regardless of language, culture, religion or environment. Do you realize that literally billions of people are unknowingly "doing time" in a mental prison of their own construction? They yearn for something more; someone or something that will free them from the life they are living and make their dreams come true.

You may be one of these people, if so this blog is for you! If not, then you know someone who is a spiritual and mental prisoner of their past, their parents, their own guilt, there own self loathing and shame. Pass this page on to them by clicking the envelope at the end of the blog and e-mailing it straight to them.

To live the new life, you must leave behind the old one. I have often said that you cannot steer a boat by staring at the wake! Reliving the past, digging up the bones of your commissions and omissions and living in regret or guilt will never bring change; only more of the same. Neither can you live the life you were born to live trapped in a way of thinking, feeling and being that creates more and more of what you do not want.

I can assist you in seeing another possibility, another way of thinking and living but I cannot change your Mind and neither can God. Real change can only come from within you. Your life will change when you change and not one minute sooner. I, and others like me, can open your eyes but you must be willing to see.

What do you want? What does the life you long for look like? What are you doing for a living in your ideal life? Who is sleeping next to you at night? (OK, we are not talking about fantasy but your "real" life - the one you keep dreaming of and wishing you had). Yes, we have all had "movie star lover" dreams but that is not what we really want, it is idle fantasy designed to take us away for a while from the life we really live.

Don't you realize that if you create the life you want, you will not need to escape into daydreams or fantasy - you can live them! Let's get going! How do we begin?

Five Steps to a New You!

Step One: Look at the life you have now - take a tough minded inventory and really decide what you would change - if you had the power. Write down all the aspects of your current life: marriage or not; financial status; sex life or not; vocation you love, or not; live where you want, or not? Rate your life, give it an A, B, C, D or F. If you really have an A life, nice talking to you - you know more than I do about this stuff. Anything less - read on, we have work to do together.

Now I know that you may think this is a futile exercise, that you have been trapped in this life for years and years and nothing will change. Right you are, as long as you believe that. What we must do is change your thinking and your life WILL change - it is guaranteed in Scripture, in psychology and in life experience.

Step Two: Take that leap of faith that admits that maybe much of what you have believed about life, about people, about the opposite sex, about money and wealth, about God and spirituality, about work and most importantly, about you and who you are, has been responsible for the life you have right now. Continuing the thinking that has created what you have will give you more of what you have. For life to change your thinking has to change.

Step Three: Forgive yourself. We have all fallen short - Jesus did in the Temple and at Gethsemane and undoubtedly many other occasions unrecorded in Scripture. Who are you to beat yourself up for falling short of perfection when the Master Himself was human and acted human? "Should haves" and "could haves" and "ought to's" are the bars of your mental prison cell.

Until you forgive yourself you can never love yourself. Until you love yourself, you can never truly love anyone else or have a healthy relationship with your Creator. How can you know and love God if you do not love the you that God made? Not one person on this planet is a mistake. God is perfect Mind, perfect Spirit; all knowing and present at all places. From perfection can come only perfection. Admit your mistakes, ask forgiveness from yourself and God and then move on.

There is a spiritual technique called "revision". When you revise your life, you do not deny it, you just learn from it - then write another ending to that chapter, in the same way that a screen writer writes alternate endings to a script. You are the writer of your life script, the producer of the movie called "YOU", and the Director. When you use revision, take care not to succumb to denial. You do not deny the events of your past but you do forgive yourself, move on and write a new ending to that story. Wise use of revision can cut the bars of your cell of guilt and shame and set you free to create a new reality, a new you!

Step Four: Forgive all those who have hurt you or wronged you - particularly family. Anger and malice are poison to the soul, the spirit and the body. Resentment is as corrosive as acid on your heart and mind. Holding a grudge or harboring resentment is about as sensible as throwing dust at another person on a windy day!

Sorry to tell you this, but the people you resent or can't forgive have moved on; they probably don't even remember the offense that started it all.
Your anger does not hurt them a bit - but you are literally killing yourself.

Both theology and medicine are moving into agreement that the real cause of cancer is deeply, long held sorrow, regret, resentment or rage. Sure, smoking four packs a day will weaken your lungs; drinking a litre a day will weaken your liver, but the cancer appears in these weakened areas when the body is so full of spiritual poison that it turns against itself. Cancer is the effect - the anger, sorrow and resentment is the real cause of death.

For many years I taught just down hall from a fine and learned Mormon gentleman. As you may know, a good Mormon does not smoke, drink, or use caffeine. "Hutch" had never had a cigarette or been around "second hand smoke" for any extended time in his life and yet he died of lung cancer. What reaaly killed him was 12 years of sorrow and anger at the early death of his beloved wife; the cancer was just the delivery system. Most of us can think of people with similar stories.

Step Five: Have the courage and the mental and spiritual discipline to do the hard, day by day work to change your attitude, your beliefs, your consistent way of thinking. Change what you EXPECT out of life. You must change; if you cannot you will live as you are now living every day of your life.

You know one of the great truths of life is that you do not always get what you want, but you always get what you expect! So many people expect the worst and they generally get it! Your greatest fears will always come to pass. What you believe and expect are the real prayers that you are sending God and that is what comes back to you pressed down and shaken. God is not a "cosmic bell captain" who runs at your beck and call and gives you every idle wish and want. No, God responds to who you are inside, what you really expect and what you really believe. God operates by Divine Law - not whim or caprice.

We all have faith - even those with no faith have faith that there is no faith! The atheist has faith that there is no God. The question is: what do we have faith in? Do we have faith in what we really desire or what we fear? You receive what you believe, not one bit more, my friends.

God Bless you and and may She fill your opened mind with peace, joy and abundance.

Rev. Dore' Jacques Patlian

Independence Day

Tomorrow, July 4th, Americans will celebrate the 232nd birthday of this glorious and beautiful nation that I am proud to call my native land. Families from Maine to California, Alaska to Florida, Hawaii to the US Virgin Islands, will celebrate with good food, quite a lot of liquid refreshment and fireworks. Oh my, the fireworks - that is what the 4th signifies for many Americans. As I write this blog that is seen around the world, I wanted those readers beyond our shores to get a sense of what this day really means on a personal and national level and how it relates to spirituality.

Yes, tomorrow's holiday celebrates our Declaration of Independence from our Mother Country, Great Britain (UK), but July 4th was merely the creation of the idea of Indepndence, not its accomplishment. America was to fight a bloody, often seemingly hopeless, war for nearly 10 years. Finally, with great help from France, we secured our nationhood.

Independence could not have occured in 1756 or even 1766 because we were still Englishmen in our hearts and minds. The idea of nationhood, something called The United States of America, had not yet began to take root in the American consciousness. To be achieved, Independence had to be imagined, pictured and accepted in a large number of American minds before any action could be taken.

Even on the eve of the Declaration, more than 45% of Americans wanted reconciliation with Mother England and King. It was so hard for them to leave their comfort zone of Englishness, their well worn paths of thought and action; even when the economic and political situation was clearly untenable.

As any historian will tell you, Canada became the home for many of the 45% of Americans who could not give up their loyalty to the Crown and to the idea of being British. As a result, Canada, while appearing similiar in culture and custom, is a very different nation with very different ideas of the role of government than we hold in the US. Canadians are not Americans with strange accents - they are an entirely differnt people who have built a fine and wonderful land. They lived their dream; we in the US lived ours. Both of us have a God given right to live our dream.

My point is that no great change in a nation happens unless it happens first in the mind of one person, spreads to a critical mass of others (about 1/3) and becomes the accepted truth of that nation. It cannot be forced from the outside; it must come from the heart and mind outward into manifestation. Wouldn't our current government benefit from this wisdom?

What we can all learn from this 232nd Independence Day is that even the birth of this great nation began in the minds of a very few. So it is with our individual lives. Until we get a clear picture of what our personal Independence Day looks like and feels like; until we become this idea from the inside out, nothing lasting can be created in our personal lives or in our country. From Zimbabwe to Iraq, Bolivia to Tibet; people are giving birth to new ideas of nationhood. When at least a large minority believe in the new national vision, it must come to pass. First the mind must conceive, then believe - then the hand can build.

When a people decide that freedom is more precious than even life, nothing can stand in their way - no power on earth can prevail. What are you willing to do to create your dream, to transform your life; to free your people, and your nation from the bonds of apathy and old thinking? A nation's current circumstance is the mirror of the mind of its people; just as your life circumstance is the mirror of your mind and your heart.

Remember this: we create, promote or allow everything that happens in our lives or collectively in the life of our nation. What are you passively allowing and when will you declare your personal Independence?

Here in America we have allowed apathy and the pursuit of material well being to lull us into acceptance of that which should never be acceptable. We accept without a whimper the curtailing of our personal liberty in ways King George 3rd never dreamed of.

We meekly accept the idea of "political correctness", a Maoist idea about as foreign to the American mind as an idea can be. Free speech is no longer free if we cannot speak our mind, regardles of who might be offended or who might disagree. Political correctness has sapped our ability to speak out, to protest, to say, NO! Good heavens, we might offend someone and we can't do that, now can we? Offense is a choice, let those offended make another choice.

Are you accepting a life that you do not desire, a life that is not of your choosing? Are you living your parent's life, your church's plan for you, your government's idea of what you should do and be? My friends, God is in you. You and God are one. You are of royal blood, the blood of the King of the Universe is in your veins. Don't you know that you do not have to do or say or be anything that is not pleasing to you? You are the writer of your life script, the producer of your life's movie and you play the starring role.

You are not a "weak worm of the dust"; you are a Divine Creation of the Most High God. Did not one of this planet's greatest teachers, Jesus The Christ, say clearly: Greater things than I have done, will you do also - if you believe?

If your dreams die stillborn, who killed them? No one but you! Your unbelief and lack of faith keeps them just "wishes" which have no power at all. Belief and determined and tenacious action is the power that always prevails.

Want a new life? Get a clear picture of what you want your life to be, how you want to live and then believe it - regardless of the facts around you. Facts are the detrius of other people's thinking and you are not bound by them. Believe in your vision, tenaciously work toward the life you want as if that desire was already manifest in your life. It may take ten years, like the birthing of America; but won't it be worth every bit of the sacrifice? The more firm your belief and your will, the sooner the change will occur.

Do you want to help create a new vision for your homeland? Do you want your children and grandchildren to lay their heads down in peace at night, to know the wonderful feeling of a full stomach, loving arms about them and a bright future ahead? Wishing will never make it so! Get the picture of the life you want for you, your children and your country; share it with those you trust, spread the vision and then settle for nothing else, so help you God! And She will!

May God Bless and Keep you and may this be your personal Independence Day!

AND SO IT IS (21st Century Amen)