Points to Live By

From Anatomy of the Spirit by Caroline Myss, come these points to live by:

• All circumstances can be changed in a moment, and all illness can be healed. The Divine is not limited by human time, space, or physical concerns.
  


• Be consistent: live what you believe.
  


• Change is constant. Every life goes through phases of difficult change as well as peace. Learn to go with the flow of change rather than try to stop change from occuring.
  


• Never look to another person to make you happy - happiness is an internal, personal attitude and responsibility.
  


• Life is essentially a learning experience. Every situation, challenge and relationship contains some message worth learning or teaching to others.
  


• Positive energy works more effecively than negative energy in each and every situation.
  


• Live in the present moment, and practice forgiveness of others.

Redirecting power

Once we make conscious our emotional needs, it's impossible to forget them. Once we become aware of the source of our unhappiness we cannot expunge that awareness. We have to make choices. The ability to choose is an active power - and the sensation of having active power is both thrilling and threatening, because it makes us want to change those parts of our lives that are no longer appropriate. And changing those parts inspires us to challenge other aspects of our lives that are not satisfactory.

Changing our lives is often difficult because of our existing loyalties. Usually we learn about loyalty within our family structure and as a connection toward our family. Loyalty to oneself, however, is an entirely different virtue, and adhering to it can cause tremendous upheaval in a family.

In truth, there are not many ways to successfully introduce your personal needs into a circumstance that was created before you realized what your personal needs were.

The necessity of change makes healing a terrifying experience for many people. These individuals know, consciously or unconsciously, that unplugging their energy circuits from a power target is the same as saying good-bye to it. They enter into an unsettling limbo where they want simultaneously to unplug from their power target and to hang on to it. Some people end up trying to live in the two worlds simultaneously, not entirely inhabiting the one that no longer suits them, yet never quite moving on to the next either. Thus it is that many people journey to the well of healing but find, once they get there, that they cannot actually drink.

from: Anatomy of the Spirit by Caroline Myss

Acquisitioners

An Acquisitioner is a person who has only passive power. This kind of dependent person feels she must acquire power from her external environment and from or through someone else. She thinks, consciously or unconsciously, "Alone, I am nothing." Such a person seeks to acquire power through money; social status; political, social, military, or religious authority; and relationships with influential people. She does not directly express her own needs but becomes skilled at tolerating or manipulating unsatisfactory situations.

In the human energy system, our individual interactions with our environment can be thought of symbolically as electromagnetic circuits. These circuits run through our bodies and connect us to external objects and other people. We are drawn to power objects or people, or "power targets," so that we can draw their power into our system. Our connection with a power target, however, draws some power away from our own field and into the target.

The targets to which acquisitioners connect their energy circuits are people or objects to which they have surrendered their power - specifically, the power to control them. When a person is unaccustomed to making empowering choices for themselves, they get tied into a pattern of releasing their energy into the hands of others. This puts healing out of reach because the power now exists outside the boundaries of that person's physical body.

It is not the mind, but our emotional needs that control our attachment to our power targets.

Since healing is nonnegotiable, acquisitioners find healing a more formidable challenge than people who have a sense of active power. Healing is, above all, a solo task. No one can heal on behalf of another person. We can assist others, to be sure, but no one can, for instance, forgive someone on behalf of someone else. Nor can any of us cause someone to release the painful memories or experiences that he needs to release in order to heal. Because the very nature of passive poser is "power through attachments," it runs contrary to an acquisitioner's entire biology to release or detach himself from targets that are draining his energy.

from: Anatomy of the Spirit by Caroline Myss

You Alone Can Help Yourself Heal

Here we have the third principle of energy medicine from "Anatomy of the Spirit" by Caroline Myss. The first principle is Biography Becomes Biology and the second principle is Personal Power is Necessary for Health.

You Alone Can Help Yourself Heal

Healing is an active and internal process that includes investigating one's attitudes, memories, and beliefs with the desire to release all negative patterns that prevent one's full emotional and spiritual recovery. This internal review inevitably leads one to review one's external circumstances in an effort to recreate one's life in a way that serves activation of will - the will to see and accept truths about one's life and how one has used one's energies; and the will to begin to use energy for the creation of love, self-esteem, and health.

Healing requires taking action. It is not a passive event. We are meant to draw on our inner resources, to find the material strength to leave behind our outmoded beliefs and behaviors, and to see ourselves in new healthy ways - to take up our beds and walk.

Personal Power is Necessary for Health

This is the second principle of energy medicine from "Anatomy of the Spirit" by Caroline Myss. The first principle is Biography Becomes Biology and the third principle is You Alone Can Help Yourself Heal.

Personal Power is Necessary for Health.

Power is at the root of the human experience. Our attitudes and belief patterns, whether positive or negative, are all extensions of how we define, use, or do not use power. Not one of us is free from power issues. We may be trying to cope with feelings of inadequacy or powerlessness, or we may be trying to maintain control over people or situations that we believe empower us, or we may be trying to maintain a sense of security (a synonym for power) in personal relationships.

Many people who lose something that represents power to them - money, or a job, or a game - or who lose someone in whom their sense of self or power is vested - a spouse or lover, a parent or child - develop a disease. our relationship to power is at the core of our health.

Power mediates between our internal and external worlds, and as it does so, it communicates in a language of myth and symbol. Consider, for example, the most common symbol of power - money. When a person internalizes money as a symbol of power, its acquisition and control become symbolic of that person's health: when she acquires money, her biological system receives the signals that power is coming into her body. Her mind transmits the unconscious message "I have money. Therefore I am safe, I'm secure, I have power, and all is well." This positive message transmitted in the biological system generates health.

Each of us has numerous power symbols, and each such symbol has a biological counterpart. Our lives are structured around power symbols: money, authority, freedom, title, beauty, security. The people who fill our lives and the choices we make each moment are expressions and symbols of our personal power. We often hesitate to challenge a person who we believe holds more power than we do, and we frequently agree to things because we believe we haven't the power to refuse. In countless situations and relationships, the underlying dynamic at work is the negotiation of power: who has it, and how we can maintain our share of it.

Learning the symbolic language of energy means learning to evaluate the dynamics of power in yourself and others. Energy information is always truthful. Although a person may verbally agree to something in public, his energy will state how he really feels, and his real feelings will find their way into some symbolic statement. Our biological and spiritual systems always seek to express truth, and they will always find a way to do so.

You need to become conscious of what gives you power. Healing from any illness is facilitated by identifying your power symbols and your symbolic and physical relationship to those symbols, and heeding any messages your body and intuitions are sending you about them.

Biography Becomes Biology

I have been reading Anatomy of the Spirit by Caroline Myss. There are three basic principles. This is the first one the second one is Personal Power is Necessary for Health and the third one is You Alone Can Help Yourself Heal.
Biography Becomes Biology

According to energy medicine, we are all living history books. Our bodies contain our histories - every chapter, line, and verse of every event and relationship in our lives. As our lives unfold, our biological health becomes a living, breathing biographical statement that conveys our strengths, weaknesses, hopes, and fears.

Every thought you have had has traveled through your biological system and activated a physiological response. Some thoughts are like depth charges, causing a reaction throughout the body. Some thoughts are more subtle, and still others are unconscious. Many are meaningless and pass through the body like wind through a screen.

All our thoughts, regardless of their content, first enter our systems as energy. Those that carry emotional, mental, psychological, or spiritual energy produce biological responses that are then stored in our cellular memory. In this way our biographies are woven into our biological systems, gradually, slowly, every day.

Accepting the idea that every part of your life - from your physical history to your relationships to every attitude, opinion, and belief you carry inside yourself - affects your biological makeup is only part of the healing process, however. You also have to move from the mental level into the physical level, into your body, to feel the truth viscerally and cellularly and believe it wholly.

It is very easy to learn something new and apply that knowledge only casually. The idea that biography creates biology implies that we participate to some degree in the creation of illness. But - and this is a crucial point - we must not abuse this truth by blaming our selves for becoming ill. Illnesses develop as a consequence of behavioral patterns and attitudes that we do not realize are biologically toxic until they have already become so.

Energy is power, and transmitting energy into the past by dwelling on painful events drains power from your present-day body and can lead to illness. Power is essential for healing and for maintaining health. Attitudes that generate a feeling of powerlessness not only lead to low self-esteem, but also deplete the physical body of energy and weaken overall health.

Looks like it's time to recharge my batteries!

Ok... so today, when I did my "Living by the Book" meditation, I got the direct instruction to "Pay attention, this is serious." And it's been an enlightening day to say the least.

Here's what happened. I took my daughter to a Dr's appointment, and while I was waiting I flipped open "Anatomy of the Spirit" by Caroline Myss. She got my attention almost immediately with this statement:

Increasing and continual exhaustion that takes the edge of mental and emotional clarity is an energy symptom that indicates something is wrong in the body. Most people do not consider it a symptom because it is not actually painful. But when exhaustion continues, even when the person is getting more sleep, the body is trying to communicate that the person is "energetically ill." Responding to this message at the energy stage can often prevent the development of an illness.

Well, just yesterday, I was thinking about how low my energy levels have been. How it seems like I'm sleeping enough and yet I still don't have any real "umph" and I was wondering if maybe I'm enjoying a low grade depression. Caroline Myss had some stuff to say about that too!

Depression is another symptom that all is not well. Within the clinical world, depression is generally considered an emotional and mental disorder. But prolonged depression often precedes the development of a physical illness. In energy terms, depression literally is a release of energy - or life-force, if you will - without consciousness. If energy is like money, depression is like opening your wallet and announcing, "I don't care who takes my money or how it is spent." Prolonged depression inevitably creates chronic exhaustion. If you don't care who spends your money or how much, inevitably you will end up broke. Just so, without energy you cannot support your health.

Okay then! This really does sound serious! And I'm paying attention! Right away, I made a commitment to myself to recharge my energy batteries. The first thing that came to me was that it's time for me to start eating properly, and also to get serious about reclaiming my "power."

Face it - I'm a Coward

People must face that which they fear. Life is painful at times, and spiritually, we are meant to face the pains that life presents. In the Western world, however, we often misrepresent God's plan for us and expect life to be comfortable and free of trouble. We measure God's presence in our lives by our level of personal comfort; we believe God is here if our prayers are answered. But neither God nor Buddha nor any other spiritual leader or tradition guarantees or encourages a pain-free life. Spiritual teachings encourage us to grow past and through painful experiences, each of which is a spiritual lesson. This is what Caroline Myss says. And I do believe that to be true. I believe it totally and completely all the way up until it comes time for me to actually face one of my own fears. That's when it all breaks down. I get scared, and I freak out, and I start praying and visualizing and calling my friends. I pull out all the stops, magic - shamanism - religion - family - you name it, and I'll use it. Anything and everything that I think just might deliver me from whatever it is that I'm scared of. There's this old saying, "Feel the fear and do it anyway." I'd like to think that's how I live my life. I'd like to think that I actually have the courage to move through fear in a good way. I'd like to think that I have courage. Truth be told, I'm a coward. And since I really don't want to be a coward, and since I really do want to life a fearless life, I continually pull myself out of situations that seem "safe" and (therefore) boring and yet because I am actually a coward... I don't then put myself where I might actually get "hurt"... so I play around with the illusion of danger and the illusion of safety and it's all a big sham covering up the fact that I want to life a fearless life but I'm afraid to.

Getting Serious

Day 45 - Living by the book.

I sat down today with Sitting Bear. He fixed me with a vry intense look, and I could see that in his life there had been a lot of heartache and terrible things. And I was sure that his teeth were paining him.

He said to me, "This is serious. Pay attention." At first, I wasn't sure if I was just thinking that he looked serious or what. But he said it again, so I knew that he was telling me to pay attention. I wondered what was serious, but I didn't have time to really sit with it because I had to take my daughter to a Dr appointment and I was already running late.

So, I took that to be my "message for the day" and resolved to take the experiences of the day seriously. I grabbed a book so I'd have something to read while waiting for my daughter, and headed out the door. Interestingly, the book I grabbed was "Anatomy of the Spirit" by Carolyn Myss. I had read it before, but this time, what she had to say really spoke to me. And I took it seriously. So now, I've stepped up and am making some big changes!