11 Ways To Lift Your Spirits

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If you’ve been interested in developing your spiritual growth for a while, you’ve probably read countless articles or books on the topic. While learning about chakras, karma cleansing, and the teachings of the Dalai Lama are fantastic ways to develop your spiritual knowledge on a metaphysical level, the knowledge is only useful if we are able to apply it on a practical, realistic earthly level in our day-to-day lives, as well.

There are challenging spiritual lessons we all must practice in order to master, such as learning to forgive your worst enemy or returning a rude driver’s angry glare with a smile - but there are also more fun ways to raise your spirits and feel great about life.

Here are things you can do to raise your spiritual vibration without joining a monastery, shaving your head, and taking a vow of silence.

1. Listen to great music. Music has been described as the language of the angels. Tuning into uplifting, feel good music from your favorite recording artist touches your soul and raises your spirit.
2. Dance, Dance, Dance. This, of course, ties in directly with step one. Turn your favorite boogie-woogie song UP, kick your shoes off, and dance around the living room in your underwear. Just be sure to close the window blinds first.
3. A Soothing Bath. Showers feel great, but when was the last time you relaxed your body in a nice, warm bubble bath? Be sure to light a few candles, turn off the lights and enjoy the ambience. Don’t forget some relaxing music and maybe a good book.
4. Bang on the drums. Don’t own a drum set? Get yourself a five gallon plastic bucket, turn it upside down, and grab a couple of sticks. Release stress and get your spirit groove on at the same time.
5. Laugh at yourself. A great way to lighten your mood is by not taking yourself too seriously. We’re all spiritual beings having a human experience, not the other way around. This life isn’t permanent and neither is your job title, your position as the softball team captain, or the chip in your car’s paint job. Get over the serious stuff and enjoy a good laugh!
6. Call an old friend. It’s been said that there is no friend like an old friend. Your oldest friends have seen you at your worst behavior, as well as your best, and still love and accept you anyhow. Feeling a little lost and alone? Best friends know just how to pull you out of your funk better than anyone.
7. Read a good book. What better way to connect with your spirit than by reading an entertaining book about spirituality? Lighten Up explains how to do just that, by teaching ways you can live more happily. 
8. Write down your thoughts. Got a heavy thought that’s been wracking your brain for weeks, months, or even years? Get it out of your head and onto paper. Writing is an excellent way to recapture the moment. Whether that moment was pleasant or unpleasant, revisiting the experience and putting pen to paper can help put the past behind you for good. There’s something magical about writing down your deepest thoughts and feelings and you feel better about yourself.
9. Play with your dog. Nobody enjoys playing the fool better than man’s best friend. Throw a stick, play hide and seek, or lay face down on the floor and play dead, while your fun-loving pet licks your ears and runs circles around you. You’ll soon forget your troubles, find yourself laughing at Bowser’s crazy antics, and literally feel your spirit lighten up like a Las Vegas billboard.
10. Nature calls. No, not in that way. Get outside and become one with nature for an hour or two. Find a state park and walk the nature trail or head for the beach, listen to the waves crashing and breathe in the smell of the salt air. I don’t know about you, but every time I stare at the ocean I want to put on an eye patch, a pirate hat and set sail for the Seven Seas. Arrggggh!
11. Chocolate. As you can see, we’ve saved the best for last. Eat chocolate in small bites. Take the time to allow your senses to savor the flavor and truly enjoy the moment. Here are a couple of fun facts about chocolate. It stimulates endorphin production, which gives a feeling of pleasure. Chocolate also contains serotonin, which acts as an anti-depressant. Plus, it tastes delicious, at least to us chocolate lovers. Combine the three and you’ve just scored a spirit lifting trifecta.

Much like pets and dancing and chocolate, life is to be enjoyed! Dance in your underwear with your dog while eating chocolate. Go ahead, you know you want to!

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Spiritual Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know

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 If you’ve had an intense, life-changing spiritual healing experience of your own, feel free to disregard this article. There’s a good chance you know all, or at least some of the following information. For those of you that have not experienced one and would like to learn what a spiritual experience is all about, you're not alone. Few of us have a clue about spiritual experiences or where to begin looking. It's not like it's being taught in the schools, after all. 

Here are some things you might not know you didn’t know about spiritual experiences.

Before we begin, it's worth noting that there would be no real need for spiritual healing if there were no spiritual dis-ease present to heal. The hyphen is used to differentiate between the spiritual dis-ease (or unease) that far more accurately describes the condition than does the word disease, which suggests the problem is of a biological nature. 

What is the root cause of spiritual dis-ease? For the vast majority of us, the condition stems from mental, physical, emotional or sexual abuse we’ve suffered at some point of our lives, usually during childhood and often at the hands of those we most love and trust. When trust is broken, the flow of love and joy that is meant to flow both from us and to us becomes blocked and our soul, where happiness is meant to reside, becomes damaged. We become spiritually disconnected. We gradually withdraw from others, emotionally, in order to protect ourselves from being hurt again. We build a wall around our inner self to keep the bad guys out, but become prisoners of those same walls.

How do we break free of those prison walls and learn to live happily again? We’ll get to that soon, but first let’s list some of the amazing changes you can expect to receive from a spiritual healing of your own.

Benefits Of Spiritual Healing

• An immediate, profound sense of calm, love and comfort within oneself
• Years of shame and guilt caused by abuse or trauma disappear
• Become less involved in self-centered thoughts
• Loneliness and self-loathing become things of the past
• A simple approach to life replaces stress and complications
• Fear is the first thing to go. This is a HUGE change to how we feel.
• Painful memories become just that – the past.
• Self-pity climbs aboard a one-way train heading out of town. Bye-bye and good riddance!
• Reduced stress leads to lower blood pressure, better sleep, improved health
• Improved relationships with our loved ones.
• Gratitude replaces discontent. The glass really is half full, not half empty.
• A knowing that all-will-be-well, no matter what life throws our way.
• Awareness beyond all doubt that a loving power greater than our own loves and protects us.
• Renewed sense of wonder, much as a child appreciates nature, people, and the world around him or her.

How To Get One

If more people knew just how amazing an intense spiritual experience feels, they would be lining up for one faster than you can say 90% off big screen TVs at Walmart on Black Friday. There are no words to describe the feeling. Nor do the benefits listed above begin to scratch the surface of the profound, life-changing transformation that takes place. It’s not to say that we spend the rest of our life in some magical La La Land, where all our problems magically disappear and everything becomes giggles, lollipops and bubble gum. Problems and challenges still rear their ugly heads, but the way we react to them changes in ways that are difficult to explain. Perhaps the best way to describe these changes is to say that a spiritual healing/awakening/experience replaces the sense of dis-ease within us with a quiet inner strength that never leaves us again. We feel happy to be alive in a silent, soothing, confident way. It is this happiness that has eluded so many of us for so long that is restored. Learning to live happily is the entire goal of spirituality, quite simply.

How do you get a life-changing spiritual healing of your own? 3 Steps To Spiritual Healing is an affordable, live, online two-part class you can sign up for that will teach you how to transform your life from the comfort of your own home. The 3 Steps go straight to the heart of spiritual healing in the simplest possible way and can change your entire view of life. To learn more, join our mailing list and we’ll keep you posted on upcoming classes, lots of useful spiritual articles, discounts and more.

All happiness results from a flow of love to you and from you. All emotional pain results from a blockage of love to you and from you. A spiritual healing restores the flow.

- Dan  

12 Ways To Simplify Your Life

“Simplify your life. You don't grow spiritual, you shrink spiritual.”

― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

As Cliff Claven, the postman character from the old Cheers sitcom might say, it’s a little known fact that ancient Mesopotamians knew the secret to happiness is living a simple life, which is why they carved dinosaur faces on cave walls.

If the first half of Cliff's claim is true, then logic would suggest that the secret to feeling miserable is living a complicated life. The truth is that we live in a complicated world, where technology has advanced far faster than our ability to keep up with it. It’s a hurry-and-scurry kind of lifestyle for most of us, full of traffic snarls, confusing tax forms and the race to the next blue light special advertised by one of the big box chain retailers on Black Friday. Advertisers scream at us in radio and television commercials as we wait in the fast food drive-through window on the way to drop the kids off for band practice. It’s enough to drive people to drink, literally, or at least drive them to seek anti-anxiety medication from their physicians.

There are some 100% natural, spirit-healing steps you can apply to reduce stress and soothe your soul, and that is to simplify life as much as possible. The following list includes 12 ways you can learn to relax, breathe a little easier, and enjoy life a lot more.

1)    Turn your cell phone off. How many of us will travel long distances on Thanksgiving, only to spend the day checking for Facebook updates, rather than focusing on family time? Our parents and grandparents got along just fine without carrying a mobile distraction device everywhere they went. There was no such thing as an answering machine or voice mail in their generation, yet everyone somehow managed to survive. Believe it or not, many people actually communicated face-to-face with friends and family and rumor has it that some even knew their neighbor’s names and even delivered text messages in person on one another’s front porch.

2)    Quit multi-tasking. Stop whatever you’re doing and focus on doing one thing at a time. Cooking spaghetti sauce on the stove while working on that office report on your computer is a great way to fail on two levels at once. You’ll end up with a burned dinner, a half-baked office report, and frazzled nerves, all of which will lead to more complications.

3)    Just say no. Don’t commit to donating your time and energy to the local charity bake sale unless you have both the time and the desire to participate. If you do have the time and desire, then do it. It’s that simple. Learn to say no and mean it. If the other person refuses to take no for an answer, let them know you have other obligations or are simply not interested. If they continue, repeat yourself only once, but use conviction. A simple “Thanks, but no thanks” will do just fine. 

4)    Apologize when necessary. We all make mistakes and we all step out of line at one time or another. When we do or say the wrong thing, we hurt the other person, and that hurt will grow into resentments on their part and guilt on our part over time. Bite the bullet, swallow your pride, and apologize in order to restore peace and to sleep with a clear conscience. Clean up the mess you’ve made on aisle 9 before someone gets hurt. The sooner the better, of course, but better late than never also applies.

5)    Don’t live in the past. When we re-visit the past, most of us tend to get stuck into woulda-coulda-shoulda mode. We convince ourselves we could and would do a lot of things differently, given the opportunity to turn the calendar back. This view of life only complicates our thoughts and leads to stress. Visit the past just long enough to learn how you will do things differently the next time and then get the hell out of there. Living in the present is a far simpler and vastly more satisfying place to spend your time.

6)    De-program from the status quo. Who amongst us is qualified to tell anyone else how they should live? Just because we’ve been told that a college education, working a 9-5 job, buying a big house and raising 2.5 kids are the keys to happiness, doesn’t necessarily make it so. Some of the happiest people on earth have never had a car payment or climbed the corporate ladder, but find great pleasure living the simple life.

7)    Accept people as they are. This can be a tough one, especially for a parent. We all want the best for our children. But what we think is best for our kids and what they want are not always one and the same. A simple way to accept their choices is to first accept that, while our children are a gift in our lives, they come with a birth certificate, not ownership papers. Guide them and love them the best you can, always, but accept that one day they will grow up to become adults with their own free will to live as they choose. Want to change someone? Start with the one person we can change, which is yourself.

8)    Prioritize. One of the best ways to simplify your life is to create a list of priorities and list them on paper, in order of importance. For example, your priorities might include continuing your education, finding a better paying job, and a dream vacation in Maui. Sit down, jot them down and decide which comes first. Will it be in the order listed here or will your priorities be different?

9)    Stop worrying about what others think. Not one of us walking the earth has all the answers, nor really knows any more about life than the next person, although some like to believe their knowledge is superior. Until God himself shows up to explain the meaning of life, it’s pointless to fret over others’ opinions. Listen to your own inner voice and follow your own path without fear of what others think. Keep it simple by not allowing anyone’s opinion of you to rent space in your head.

10) Make “me” time every day. Plug in your headphones and listen to your favorite music, spend a quiet hour at the library, or enjoy the pleasure of your own company by taking a long walk alone at the beach. Find a quiet spot to meditate, polish your nails, write a daily journal, or find other activities that will help you re-connect with your soul.

11) Cut ties with negative people. Most of us have heard of setting boundaries with people that would choose to trample on our privacy and destroy our peace of mind for their own selfish reasons. Boundaries are fantastic, but what do you do when those same people refuse to respect them? Unfortunately, there’s not much you can do in that situation, except to cut all ties and keep on walking without looking back. Until you do, your life will be anything but simple.

12) Think before you speak. A wonderful way to avoid stress, misunderstandings and the resulting complications is to stop and think before you speak. This is not difficult to do if we are truly listening, rather than planning our reply before the other person has even finished talking. Thinking from the heart, as well as the head, is a wonderful way to keep your words (and your life) simple.

All happiness results from a flow of love to you and from you. All emotional pain results from a blockage of love to you and from you.

- me

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6 Ways You Can Make A Spiritual Connection

-->Throughout history, Native American tribes taught that we are all made of three parts – the mind, the body, and the spirit/soul. They believed that if one of the three were out of balance, the other two would suffer and so the tribal members made a daily effort to maintain harmony and inner peace by paying equal attention to the three basic elements of life.

Here are 6 practical ways you can learn to connect with your own spiritual side.

1. Understand Your Soul/Spirit Connection. Most of us have heard words like spirit, soul, and enlightenment. There are all sorts of mystical new age explanations of spirituality and spiritual topics. It’s easy to scratch your head and find yourself confused when learning about spirit and just as easy to conjure up images of ghostly visitors and angelic entities hovering above us. Forget all that, though, as you read the following simple definition of spirit.

Simply stated, spirit and soul are said to be separate entities, yet connected. The soul is the essence of our being; it is who we are. Spirit is the flow of energy that connects our soul with our Higher Power.

Our soul is our inner-self; it is the essence of our being. Spirit is the telephone line that connects our soul and a Higher Power and allows divine love to flow to us.

2. Trust Your Intuition. If you listen very closely, you can hear it calling you. There is a silent voice that whispers gently in our ear telling us there is more to life than what we see and hear in this world. Learn to listen to your own inner voice. It is how we listen from the heart, as well as with our mind. When we learn to do both, we are picking up the telephone that connects our soul with our Higher Power.

3. Find The Perfect Spot To Meditate. Whether we use the word meditation or prayer, what we are really doing is learning to listen to pick up the telephone and communicate. When we want to make an important phone call, most of us find a quiet spot before dialing the number, away from noise and other distractions. Find a comfortable spot to meditate, where you feel free to focus only on a two party conversation.

4. Learn How To Meditate. Most people think of communicating with a Higher Power in terms of prayer or meditation. Personally, I prefer to use the term intense relaxation when connecting with a Higher Power. Intense relaxation sounds like two entirely different things, but it is not. We are relaxing our body and our mind in order to focus intensely on making a spiritual connection. To focus properly, breathe deeply in order to relax your muscles. Find the most comfortable position for you, which allows us to release physical tension and the “busy” thoughts that constantly flood our brains. If you find yourself drifting back to random thoughts – and we all do – take some more deep breaths and imagine sending unwanted thoughts off in a balloon filled with helium. The goal is to share an informal, intimate mental conversation with our Higher Power. It helps to imagine your Higher Power as a close and trusted friend, whom you’ve known all your life. The kind of friend you can share anything with, including your deepest secrets and darkest fears, knowing that your best friend will never judge you or betray your trust. This is exactly how meditation works – your Higher Power is always there waiting to connect with you. The more you practice, the stronger your spiritual connection will become.

5. Meet Your Spirit Guides. This step requires an open mind. If you’re still reading this far down the page, there’s a good chance your mind is open to the concept of an afterlife. Faith and willingness to believe that you have a spirit guide are the keys to connecting with your own. While some people have reported communicating directly with their spirit guide, most of us have experienced a feeling that we are being guided, loved, and protected by an unseen energy at one time or another. Learning to meditate and trusting your intuition are two ways you can develop a relationship with your spirit guide or Higher Power, which many people have used to deepen their own spiritual awareness.

6. Visualize Your Own Spiritual Connection. As you practice the 5 steps listed above, it helps to create a mental picture of the connection between your inner self and the universe of which you are a part. Imagine divine love as the source of everything that exists. Think of love as the molecules that fill the spaces of everything you see on a daily basis, ranging from the car you drive to the stars in the sky. The carpenter that built the walls of your home used his love to create a safe, warm shelter for others to enjoy. This love comes from the same source that created the flowers, the oceans, and the food we eat. You can feel your soul, even if you can’t see it. We can’t see the air we breathe, either, but we know it exists. Imagine your soul as one telephone, your Higher Power as the other, and spirit as the wires of love that connect us all.

All happiness stems from a flow of love to you and from you. All emotional pain stems from a blockage of love to you and from you.

Join our mailing list on the right-hand of this page to get free info, tips and articles to show you how to re-connect with your happiness.

Have questions, comments, or feel like telling me to take a long walk off a short pier? I’d love to hear from you.

10 Steps To Improve Your Own Spiritual Happiness

 

“Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”

- Aristotle

We hear a lot about spiritual healing, spiritual awakenings, and a new shift in spiritual consciousness that many people believe is taking place as we speak. If you’ve heard that a person appeared to be in “good spirits”, it’s a sure sign the person was a happy camper at the time.

The bottom line is that any steps we take to increase our spiritual awareness are designed to make us happier people. But you don’t have to schedule a one-on-one appointment with God to learn how to live more happily, although we could all benefit immensely from such an encounter.

There are 10 Steps To Happiness that you can apply starting today. Some will take a little practice at first, but each one is simple to apply and can change your entire view of life in no time at all.

1. Beware The Energy Vampire. We all know the type. Intentionally or otherwise, some people have a real knack for sucking the life out of others. Their main theme is complaining about everything, closely followed by criticism and gossip. If you pay attention, you can actually feel your good spirits dropping like a one-winged cargo plane. Eliminate negative people from your life whenever possible and apply the other steps listed here when you must deal with them.
2. Identify What Makes You Unhappy. Sometimes the best way to identify what something is first involves identifying what it is not. The same principle applies with happiness. Sit down and write a list of things that you’d simply rather not do anymore, given the choice. Then realize you have a choice. Hate long supermarket lines? Find a 24-hour supermarket and shop when most people are asleep. You’ll meet a few like-minded people there and might even make a new friend. Does the evening television news make you frown? Stop watching it. Yes, it’s that simple.
3. The Gratitude Attitude. We’ve all been guilty of this one. How many times have we viewed the cup as half empty instead of half full? We should be grateful just to have a cup. If there’s a roof over your head, food on the table, and two legs to walk around with, be very grateful. Some people have none of the above. If you’re blessed with family or friends to call your own, let them know you are grateful to have them in your life. They’ll be happier people because you shared a kind word and will do their best to make you happy, too.
4. Acceptance. A simple definition of acceptance – it is what it is and that’s okay. Life throws us a lot of curve balls. How we deal with challenges determines our happiness or lack of it. Imagine an ant demanding that an elephant does things his way. That’s what we do when we demand that life goes our way. Happy people know there will be both good and bad times and learn to accept both.
5. Exercise. Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin found that people suffering from depression who walked on a treadmill for 30 minutes reported feeling more vigorous and had a greater sense of psychological well-being than those that don’t exercise. Want to feel even happier? Join a volleyball team, a local walking group, or a family football game in the back yard. You can’t help but feel happy when combining physical activity and social gatherings at the same time.
6. Avoid Judgment. If you want to be happy, learn to stop judging others. Learn is the keyword here, because it’s something we’re all guilty of to some degree. Think about how you feel after you’ve silently cursed the slow driver in front of you. Probably not too good. Which of us is perfect, after all? Have you ever walked out of a restaurant with spinach stuck to your tooth or suddenly realized you’re not wearing matching socks? If someone judged us for every mistake we’ve ever made, we wouldn’t feel too good about ourselves. On a spiritual level, every judgment we’ve ever made has become negative energy sent out to the universe. Happy people look for the positives in people and things.
7. Accept Personal Responsibility. We not only have a right to live happily, we have an obligation to do so – if not for our own sake, then for the sake of others. Our thoughts and actions affect not only us, but also leave an impression on our children, co-workers, friends, neighbors and everyone we meet in the course of our day. Project negativity, we breed more of the same. The opposite holds true, as well. Happy people don’t blame others for their problems. The future of this world belongs to you as much as it belongs to anyone else. Take responsibility for making the world a happier place for everyone you meet. Remember, even one grain of sand is part of a huge beach.
8. Simplify Your Life. “Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.” – Ernest Hemingway. Some people could complicate the recipe for ice cubes. The more we over think things, the larger they become, and the more frustrated we become. Turning a molehill into a mountain is a great way to ruin your day. Some of the happiest people in the world also own the fewest possessions, work simple jobs, and find great pleasure in the simple things in life. A stroll in the park, a picnic at the beach, or listening to music are all simple pleasures that make us feel happy. 3 Steps To Recovery is an excellent book that describes the author’s amazing spiritual experience and teaches 3 simple steps anyone can follow to do the same. If you’re feeling stressed before you even leave for work in the morning, slow down and simplify your life.
9. Do Something Nice Every Day. When we do show kindness to others, we feel great about ourselves. You don’t need to join a monastery or become the next Mother Teresa to help people. Hold a door for the next elderly person you see, stop and let another driver pull out of a busy parking lot, or simply share a smile and a kind word with your local convenience store cashier. It becomes a win-win situation for everyone involved. You’ve made someone else happy, you feel happy, and your kindness has begun a ripple effect for everyone they meet, as well. Again, one grain of sand is still part of a huge beach.
10. Live In The Present Moment. This is my personal favorite step to happiness. One of my favorite quotes comes from a famous Chinese philosopher named Lao Tzu. He said if you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present. Inner peace, of course, is the true definition of happiness. An amazing thing happens when you focus only on the present moment. Step away from yesterday and tomorrow, or even five minutes ago, and look around you. Here you are, one small, but important part of everything in existence. Pick up a fountain pen and realize that the inventor created this simple tool out of love for his fellow man. Observe a flower closely for the first time in a very long time. Understand that you and the flower were created by the same source, which is divine love, and marvel at the magnificence of the flower’s soft petals, knowing that although not one human on earth could create a flower from scratch, yet billions of flowers appear as if by magic. Stop and listen to your own breath. Know that all is well with you at this very moment and you will understand the true essence of spiritual and personal happiness.

All happiness stems from a flow of love both to you and from you. All emotional pain stems from a blockage of love both to you and from you. Join our mailing list at http://3stepstospiritualhealing.blogspot.com/ and get free info, tips and articles to show you how to re-connect with your happiness.