"To be angry with someone is easy...but to be angry with the right person, at the right time, for the right reason and to the correct degree...that is difficult." - Aristotle paraphrased

When I read the news these days and most especially when I read comments by people on these stories, I am amazed by the ferocity of their anger and frustration.

But what all of these people do not understand is where the source of this anger comes from. They mistakenly believe that they have nothing to do with the state of what is happening and they are completely unaware that what is happening is a perfect creation in which every single one of us are responsible.

Yet we want someone else to blame. As long as we have someone else to blame, we do not have to take responsibility for our part in the creation of the world as it is. We do not understand that because so many of us have repressed our own unconscious pain, that what we see in our world IS a perfect creation.

When we heal ourselves, we do not see dysfunction any longer. We see perfection.

Where many see a reason to fear, I now see an opportunity for us to heal.

I was once on the other side of the fence. I had so much fear and pain trapped inside of me that I was an aggressively vocal opponent of what I felt was "wrong" with our government and the way it was being run. I numbed my pain with alcohol for many years and even once I quit drinking for the most part, I still had anger inside of me that I couldn't see.

So I went about my life and I just reacted to what I saw. I used the actions of others whether they were on the news or in traffic to justify and rationalize my angers and frustrations.

I had spent most of my life studying spiritual and religious topics and because I knew so much, I "thought" I was justified to feel what I felt. I thought God felt the same way I did and yet...well I didn't know as much as I thought I did.

I did know a lot. I just didn't know how to apply much of it.

I didn't know that there was a layer of experiential knowledge buried beneath what I did know and that once I started learning how to do that, I found that there was SO much more to all that I had learned than I ever realized. I just wasn't able to see it before.

My arrogance of "I already know that" blocked me from being able to see it. My stubbornness to change was borne out of fear. The truth was I was afraid to face what I knew was the real problem.

I had rationalized (rational lie) that it wouldn't do any good to dig that stuff up. And so I drove to work every day and yelled at drivers who cut me off or who tailgated me. I couldn't understand why it happened to me so much.

I read the news every day and got more and more frustrated by all the ways I thought our government was ruining our country. I got frustrated when my favorite sports teams lost and I got hurt when my family and friends didn't understand me.

And I did not understand that all of it...ALL OF IT...is a perfect creation. I did not understand that I am a spiritual being who has never made a mistake. I did not understand that everything I have ever done was created as a learning experience for my soul...for me to decide what to do and what not to do.

I did not understand that "I have no enemies...just lessons" and that every person who comes into my life in any way is there to show me something. They are either there to reflect back to me the best parts of myself or the parts I still need to heal. I did not understand that my own feelings were what told me which that was. I had always thought that when I felt bad, it meant I needed to avoid someone...or get them to change somehow. I did not understand that everyone, EVERYONE is "God in drag" and that their God-self was showing up in my life to show me what I most needed to heal.

I did not understand what Forgiveness really was and how to use it effectively. I "thought" I knew how to forgive people before, but the way I knew didn't heal me and that is the whole point. Forgiveness is there to help me heal...not someone else. Because when I heal, my perception of my world changes.

I did not understand that 80-95% of my beliefs were buried in my sub-conscious and completely hidden from me. I didn't know that they were continuing to create a life that angered me, frustrated me and worried me. I didn't know that over 80% of these beliefs were fear based. I had forgotten from my studies in school that everything is energy and that even my emotions (energy in motion) had a specific vibrational frequency attached to them.

I did not realize that I had repressed so much low vibrational energy as a child...because I lived in a world where everyone did that and it was considered normal. I did not realize that all of this pain was still there. I didn't realize that every culture did this all over the world and that emotional pain had been passed down from generation to generation for millennia. I had no idea that my parents had passed down their pain both directly and indirectly...even though I saw some of it when it came out of me.

Most of all, I did not know that there was a way to heal it...to heal all of it and how easy it was to learn how to do that. In looking back at my journey through it, it was scary to do it, but I was able to do it because I had help.

And because I have healed most of it, I no longer fear the world any longer. I am no longer angry at my government or my community leaders or business leaders. I understand now how I played my part in all of that and I take responsibility for that.

It is only by taking responsibility that I can be empowered to change it. As long as it stayed "out there" somewhere, I was powerless to effect any real change. I stayed in a victim role.

But I am no longer a victim. I am an empowered being who understands why the world is the way it is. And I am no longer just killing time in life, playing the part that I "thought" I was supposed to play. I am fulfilling my dream by being of service to others and helping them wake up from the illusory life they have been living.

I am helping them understand how to "live in the world, but not be of it." There is far more meaning to that than one can get without healing.

Most of the world has the emotional maturity of a 14 year old. We just never get beyond that because of all of the pain we carry. And so we live in a world where our desires and pleasures are driven by what makes a teenager happy and what makes them sad.

There is more to be had.  But it starts with healing and creating a new awareness.

It is not easy and it may not be a path that all of us will take in our lifetime. There will be many who will stubbornly go through the rest of their lives refusing to experience who and what they are...holding onto their anger and blaming the rest of the world for it.

But it doesn't have to be that way.

They can live a life of peace, happiness and joy beyond anything they can currently imagine. It is only when we start stretching the envelope that we can see more.

My role is to help others see more of the light that resides within them, to help them shed their pain and in doing so awaken to their purpose in life...how they will help heal our world.

Because anger won't do it.

Namaste

Jeff

http://www.learningtoflow.com/

© 2009. All rights reserved

We are in a phase of enlightenment. What "enlightenment" means is that light is brought to the darkness.

As many of my clients can attest, when we start a spiritual journey our lives seem to fall apart before they get better. Our lives seem to fall apart because all of our pain is rising to the surface so we can heal it. But it has been buried way down deep for a long time and with it buried down that far, we couldn't feel how painful it all was. But when one starts to heal emotionally, all of that energy has to come up. All of that energy that we have repressed, avoided, denied for all of our lives comes to the surface.

What is happening in the world right now is that all of our darkness is coming to the surface so that we can heal it. Things that have been hidden will continue to come to light. This has already been happening for the past several years. Remember Enron and now we have Bernie Madoff. More will come to the surface...much more.

Many things that our government and business leaders will continue to come into the light. When these things happen, it is easy to look outwards and blame others for their betrayal of our trust.

But if we only blame others, we are failing to take responsibility for what is happening in our world. There will be many who do not understand this concept, who are simply not capable of hearing it right now...and this is okay.

This is just where some of us are at on our journey. Many still believe they are separate from others and God. They have not yet awakened to the truth of who and what they are.

But there will be a mass shift coming soon. My sources tell me that we should see a significant increase for people seeking their spiritual awakening later this year.

Most of us go into this change kicking and screaming. Change is scary. But at some point, we decide that whatever is on the other side of our awakening HAS to be better than the way we are living now. When a person gets to that point, they are ready to do the work necessary to let go of who and what they thought they were. They are ready to awaken to their Spiritual Self and they are ready to fulfill their dharmic purpose for living.

We each have a part to play in the healing of our world and it will take a significant percentage of us to awaken to accomplish it. We have to reach critical mass. I believe we will make it and that we are on schedule to get there. That doesn't mean that there isn't a sense of urgency and many of us are starting to feel it.

We confuse the feeling though with what is happening outside of us in our world. We confuse the anxiety we feel within us with what we see as a disintegration of all that we know.

Many have said that the world will end in December 2012, but it will not. The world as we know it will end.

For those people who accept their call to awaken and move through the shift, the ride will get a little bumpy, but in understanding what part we play in creation we will be able to adapt to it.

For those who do not, who cannot let go of who they think they are and what they think the world is about, well, I believe Revelations called it "weeping and gnashing of teeth." In other words, the ride is going to be one heck of a roller coaster.  As one teacher told me, you can learn to throw up your hands and make it as much fun as you can or you can just hold on tight. Either way, it's coming.

I'm a healer, so I normally don't write much on warnings and caution.

But this is what I'm being guided to write about now. We are at a critical point in our history and the more we understand it, the wiser our choices can be.

Namaste

Jeff

I've had some people ask me over the past few years, "What if I don't want to grow?" My answer to them before was, "Then don't. You don't have to grow if you don't want to." That was the answer I had at the time and it was incorrect.

My answer now is, "You already are growing. It is impossible not to. We are all growing whether we want to or not. All of us are connected through Spirit. Our very souls are pulling us forward and the pressure you feel is not coming from outside of you. It is coming from inside of you. Your resistance to growth is the cause of the pressure."

A good analogy is like being in a river. Choosing not to grow is like swimming upstream...and what is happening now is that the current is getting stronger and stronger. We look downstream and we think we don't want to go that way because we have always been swimming upstream. We know it's hard, but we have been able to make progress this way before. We have convinced ourselves that the best rewards come from working very hard at something. The problem now is that it is getting much harder to make the same amount of progress. We no longer see our dreams working out using the methods we have been using, so we tell ourselves that it must be someone else's fault that we cannot create what we want. We tell ourselves that others are cheating us, that our government isn't serving us; that we have drifted from our values, etc. And all of that is a rationalization...meaning it is a rational lie.

The problem is that we have so identified with our mind and body as who we are that we believe we are that. We believe we are separate from others and separate from God.

We allow our ego minds to convince us that we don't have to grow, that nothing will change for us if we do. We tell ourselves that we can just avoid it, that the "enlightened" people are crazy...anything to avoid growing. We want to stay in our anger, in our frustrations. While it is not our dream, it is "the devil we know." It is ALL we know and if we allow ourselves even the slightest possibility that all we know is incorrect, we panic and feel like if what I know isn't true, then my life means nothing. This is also incorrect, because so much of what we know IS true...just not the way we think it is right now. What that means is that there are several layers of deeper truth that we can realize and apply in our lives if we are willing to give up what we "think" we know.

There is a story of a rich man asking Christ what was required to be a Master. Christ told him to "Give up everything and follow me." What we have to give up is our identity of who and what we think we are. We have to completely give up our judgments of others, our anger and frustrations, every slightest grudge we hold against anyone, all of the sadness and sorrow we carry and even our own embarrassments and shame. We have to forgive everyone, allow everyone to forgive us and to forgive ourselves. We must understand that all of our lives have been an illusion and yet that it has all served a purpose in the evolution of our soul.

All of us are on this journey at various places right now. There are many who are not even able to hear this kind of message right now because they are still so enmeshed in the illusion that they cannot hear what we're saying. Some are further along and able to hear, but not able to understand. More are further along and understand it, but not yet able to apply it. A few can hear it, understand it, apply it, but have not mastered it, so they teach it to others so that they can master it. There are a few masters who use their high vibrations to help all of us.

We no longer have to leave our bodies in order to awaken to the truth of who we are. We can consciously release everything that separates us from the truth of who we are. Once we release it all, we don't have to try to be who we are. We don't have to try to be a good person. Good flows from us effortlessly. We don't have to try to be abundant. We follow the bliss of our natural talents, serving others and abundance flows to us easily. We don't have to try to find love...because we ARE Love and what flows out of us returns to us many times over.

What we cannot do is stop this process from happening. We can choose to continue swimming upstream, but the current is only going to get stronger from here. We are growing whether we like it or not and whether we want to or not.

In Conversations with God, it notes that the words, Change, Life, Growth and God can all be used interchangeably. So saying, "I don't want to grow" is like saying, "I don't want to live" or "I don't want to change" or "I am separate from others and God."

These things cannot be. We are connected. We are One with God. We can live from this place of knowing and our world can be a place of joy.

We can fight against the current...or accept it and flow merrily down the stream.

Namaste

Jeff

© 2009. Learning To Flow

In having been to a couple of therapists on my own and in talking with many of my clients about their therapy, I thought it would be a good idea to clarify some of the primary difference between traditional psychological / psychiatric therapy and Spiritual Life Coaching.

So for one thing, traditional therapies like to diagnose a person and give them a label. Common psychological disorders include: ADHD, Anxiety, Addictions, Bipolar, Borderline Personality, Dissociative Identity, Depression, Eating Disorders, etc.

In Spiritual Life Coaching, we start out with the premise that every person is a Divine Spiritual Being. We know this to be true and our role is to help the client realize this for themselves.

Traditional therapy prescribes drugs to treat the various disorders.

In Spiritual Life Coaching, we know that the disorder itself is an illusion created by the mind. While we do not interfere with anyone under a doctor's care and cannot/will not tell anyone to stop taking drugs if they are on them, the client themselves will eventually stop because they realize they feel much better without the drugs than with them. We will have to peel away the layers of emotional pain to get to that point though.

Traditional therapy gives clients ways to cope with their "disorder."

We give our clients a way to permanently heal their pain and this creates permanent behavioral change in their lives.

Traditional therapy quite often goes on for years, sometimes decades.

With Spiritual Life Coaching, the average client experiences a 35% improvement in how they feel in 15 sessions. The average client completes their coaching in 30 sessions. Some clients opt to go beyond that to have help to work on some isolated issues, but the average client will heal 80% of their repressed emotional pain in 30 sessions...if they do the work.

Now that's the kicker.

In traditional therapy, the onus is on the therapist to do all of the work. While there can be homework sometimes, typically the client just comes in every week and the therapist tells them what to do next, sometimes even guiding them to make life choices in their relationships. This isn't supposed to happen, but the client can become so enmeshed with the therapist that it does happen sometimes.

As a Spiritual Life Coach, I never guide my clients to make life choices. But all of my clients must do the work if they are going to heal. I teach them how to master each step of the process and how to use all of the tools they are given so that they understand why things are happening and how to heal it long after our work together is completed.

In traditional therapy, the therapist themselves may have completed a degree, studied the disorders, therapeutic treatments and learned how to be a great counselor. But they also likely never healed their own emotional issues. Many therapists are attracted by the field unconsciously because they want to heal their own stuff.

But one cannot heal simply by studying healing. You have to do it. You cannot give away that which you don't have.

As a Spiritual Life Coach, I had to go through my own course before I could learn to teach it to others. I healed the first 80% in my own coursework. Then I started teaching it to others and have been doing so for the past 4 years. I have healed so much of my remaining pain that I am able to live most of my time in the present moment now because I have very few negative emotional anchors to my past. I have given them up...healed them.

I teach this to others because I know what it like to carry so much pain, anger, disappointment, frustration, fear, embarrassment and shame around. I know how all of that energy attacks the body and creates dis-ease within it. I know how the repression of emotional energies impacts relationships, careers and one's sense of self-worth / well-being.

Having healed most of my own pain, I am able to help others peel away their layers of emotional pain. I help them to realize themselves as the Spiritual Beings that they truly are and live their lives from that perspective.

I don't just offer hope...I provide a way to heal permanently for anyone who has reached the point where they know they have to find a way to change and are willing to do whatever it takes to do that.

I am there as your guide every step of the way, leading you to healing, leading you home to your Self.

All you have to do is reach out your hand for help.

Namaste

Jeff

Jeff Scholl

Certified Spiritual Life Coach

Learning to Flow

http://www.learningtoflow.com/

I spent the past couple of years growing, but not growing as fast as I knew I could. There was a part of me that was afraid to grow faster. In having shed much of my emotional baggage and being at a different place spiritually, emotionally and vibrationally now than many of my friends and family, I felt a much wider divide there than I had ever felt before.

For most of my life I had felt different, but when they complained about the issues of the day or their bodies or their relationships, I was there to empathize and share my own lamentations. However now in having released the source of many of those reflections and in understanding that it was I who was creating my own reality, I no longer had anything to share. And if I did share, they looked at me like I was crazy. If I tried to share with them that focusing on their problems just made it worse or tried to talk to them about possible solutions, it was if I was now speaking a different language. I realized over time that I had outgrown people and I was sad about that. And so I slowed my growth down in the hopes that many could "catch" up.

Now not only did that not happen, but I started to be depressed because I wasn't allowing myself to be what I am. In essence, I didn't accept myself...my new self. I started living in this new "limbo" kind of area, somewhere between where I could be and where I had been. It was my own private purgatory.

I had recently married and some of the skirmishes we were having early one stemmed from the disparate perspectives we had on how to resolve differences. I felt she wanted me to change in order for her to feel better. Good or bad, right or wrong, I was reflecting back to her what she most needed to heal. But I misunderstood the signs I was seeing. I thought the fights we were having were because I was too far ahead of her in my growth, but in reality it was because I was not far enough. If I had been further along, I would have been able to just validate what she was feeling and help her to understand why she was feeling that. Instead I was being triggered as well, feeling that I was somehow responsible for her feelings and feeling resentful for that. You see, I was being triggered as well and I couldn't see it. She was also reflecting back to me what I most needed to heal.

I had been afraid to grow because I thought I would outgrow those people I loved the most. Yet what had happened was exactly the opposite. The more I restricted my growth, the more my world seemed to fall apart. I experienced more health issues, more weight issues, more abundance issues and more relationship issues. I now I had new tools to handle all of these things, but I wasn't living the joyous life I thought my spiritual growth would bring. I had allowed myself to fall back into some of those same illusions that had kept me stuck for so long in the first place.

What happened to me is a question I get from clients quite often. They ask, "What if I outgrow my family, my wife, my husband, my children?" And then because they fear it, they create exactly that situation and "think" (like I did) that their growth is the problem, when their FEAR is the problem.

They, like I, must be willing to face that fear and let it go. They will learn to realize and recognize like I did, that others are simply reflecting their own fear back to them. They are looking for support and validation from their family and what they see is their own fear reflected back to them. The divide they feel is their own doubt...it is the last ditch effort from their ego mind to stay in control. And then if they dwell on it too much, it will create dis-ease within their bodies, within their relationships, their career and ultimately erode their overall sense of self-worth and satisfaction with life.

It is normal to fear outgrowing people. But I finally did recognize that this was just a fear...False Evidence Appearing Real. Once I saw the fear out there in front of me, I knew that this was just a belief laced with fear that I needed to let go. Because what happened when I began to grow is that people around me either supported my desire to grow by helping me or growing with me. I realized that by increasing my connection to my Higher Self, I was bringing more light and love into the world for everyone to benefit. And the more they grew, the more I benefited.

I realized that I was never helping anyone by not growing. Now that doesn't mean that my ego doesn't find some piece of false evidence from time to time. But the more I meditate, the more I strengthen my connection with my Higher Self, with my guides and with the angels that apparently watch over me, the easier my life becomes.

If you feel stuck, afraid to grow for whatever reason, afraid to leave behind all that you've ever known, I can tell you that your fears can never be conquered by letting them control your life. While you may not get that sharp pang of fear by ignoring your soul's call for you to grow, you will also not be able to experience deep peace and happiness. There will always be that subtle feeling in the back of your mind and the pit of your stomach; a feeling that you are comfortable with the "devil you know." The very fears you don't want to face are the ones you have to face and let go of in order to find the peace within you. Yet you do not have to let go of the fear in order to find the peace. This was how I used to think things had to be and it restricted my growth. I will be writing more about this later.

You CAN find that peace and use that feeling of peace to let go of the fear and all the problems that fear creates. If you need help with that, contact me and let's face your fear together.

Namaste

Jeff

© 2009. All rights reserved

www.learningtoflow.com

I read recently that we have a mass consciousness belief of having to grow through pain and struggle. I have really given that a lot of though in the past week since I read it and I can now see how that belief permeates not only our history, but also our lives.

On a personal level in growing up, my parents punished me for my "bad" behavior. Much of how I was raised centered more on what would happen if I did not behave as expected than it did for what would happen if I behaved well. More attention was put on punishments than rewards. So in growing up, I continued to learn mostly from my pain. I created pain in my life again and again through dis-ease, injury, divorce, job loss, lack of abundance, etc.

The focus on what is going wrong in our behavior is not just at the tribal family level, but also at every level of our society. If we look at what our media reports, they focus almost exclusively on what is NOT going well, what is NOT working, what they DON'T like and give almost no attention to all of the news out there of what IS working.

In business, most of corporations focus more on what is going wrong than what is going right. If they are a manufacturing company, their business metrics are set up to track things like, Cost of Poor Quality, First Time Failure Rate, Field Quality Failure Rate, Out of Box Failure Rate, Supplier Defect Rate, etc. Even if they are measuring for the positive such as, On Time Delivery or On Time Departures, there is a list of Issues, Actions and Owners targeted specifically for the problems.

From a historical perspective, humanity as a whole has grown from our most significant times of pain...wars, plagues, natural disasters, economic struggles, etc.

At what point though do we determine both individually and collectively that we no longer want to grow through pain and struggle? At what point do we decide that we want to work together to heal and grow through joy instead of pain?

On a personal level, that means we must learn to forgive ourselves and others. We must learn to love and accept ourselves for who we truly are right now in this moment. We must come to accept that most of the pain we are creating is at a level that we cannot see and heal on our own. If we could see it, we would have healed it already.

What we have to recognize is that our future is created by who we choose to be and what we decide to feel...right now, but it is also created by the enormous amount of energy buried both within our individual and collective sub-conscious. If we are going to change our world, we have to be willing to let all of that go. It serves no purpose other than to create more of that in our lives.

We have to be willing to forgive all those we feel have harmed us. We must be willing to put aside our differences and focus on what it is that we want to create. We must focus ONLY on what it is that we INTEND to create together and work together to create that.

Our power does not lie in our separateness and individuality. Our power lies in the unification of all of our talents and abilities. We all have a part to play in the healing and growth of this world. We must stop and ask ourselves what we want to create. If we want to create global peace, we will not create that through war. If we want to ensure that all have access to the resources they need to live, we must stop our power struggles over resources. We must be willing to take responsibility for all that we have created and be willing to forgive ourselves for it. We must be willing to take that next step forward in our growth by focusing on what would feel good if we could create it in our world.

What we do now is we look at the world and say, "Well, I would like to create peace, but since I see all of the things to fear in the world, I have to defend myself and I may even have to attack others so I can be safe." This is not the path to peace. When we focus on creating peace, our actions will be inspired and we will find new actions to take. These actions will be something so obvious we will be stunned that we never thought of it or believed it would actually work.

Saying war will create peace is like saying rape can create love. It simply cannot be. The motivations for war are similar to the motivations for rape or any other violent crime. The motivations come from anger and fear...not love and compassion.

We must wake up from the violent dream we have been living. We must stop supporting any form of violence. The end does NOT justify the means.

The means justifies the end...which means when we come from a place of love and compassion, our actions will be guided by love and our results will be a reflection of love.

Our relationships can be a source of our greatest joy in life, rather than the source of our greatest sadness, pain, fear, embarrassment, shame and frustration. But we must learn to heal not only our pain, but the generations of pain that have been passed down. When we do so, we are able to see the world through a completely different perception. Our reality is created by our perceptions-and now we have to start changing our perceptions.

When you're ready to start growing through joy, let me know.

Namaste

Jeff

© 2009. All rights reserved.

http://www.learningtoflow.com/