There comes a time in a person’s life when we decide to be true to our own heart. For me that time came a few years ago when I found myself opening to the understanding that life can be truly happy and fulfilling and I made a decision to find that for myself.
Eckart Tolle helped me realize that my unhappiness was rooted in the chatter of my own mind, and how addicting negativity is. Then Joe Dispenza’s story helped me see further into this truth. If our mind can make us sick, can it also hold the capacity for our healing? Coming from a man who was run over by a truck in a bicycle race and left with six broken vertebrae and who chose the unconventional path of healing his broken body with his mind, his story is very compelling. Every expert told him that he had to get surgery or he would never walk again, but he didn’t feel it was true for him. So he rebuilt his spine with his mind, with meditation and healthy lifestyle choices, and was back practicing at his chiropractic office in ten weeks and living without any pain. He went on to study all the people he could find who had immediate remission from something life threatening, and they all said something similar, I just made my mind up to do it. Then he studied the placebo effect and discovered that about 70 percent of the people who were given a placebo would heal. Again, we witness the power of the human mind to create healing.
These stories catapulted my life into something new. I started practicing the Blessing of the Energy Centers meditation every morning and found myself feeling really happy and whole in a way I never had. But I would still get so thrown off when I experienced adversity in my life, plummeting me back into negativity and feeling like a victim.
Then I discovered a New Earth Movement. This really answered my heart’s desire to be connected to a spiritual community that is rooted in the heart and to the old wisdom of the indigenous Elders.
In ANEM’s Mentorship Program we were taught to stalk our minds. To become familiar with our own patterns, which ultimately helps us to see our addiction to our own suffering. It’s fascinating to unwind that and to do it as a group. With the loving and patient presence of Nina guiding us, we all changed so dramatically. It was really beautiful to witness 25 participants all profoundly changing their relationship to their selves and finding the immense love that is always present inside of our own hearts.
Everyone emerged so much brighter, so much more confident and connected to truth. We always started class with a meditation to get us into our hearts and I got to feel the transformation that simple practice offers us. Then would come the prompt, a simple yet profound question that we would each answer one by one, and get to experience our own authentic expression held in a container of love and oneness. We all really got to learn and experience how there is no “other”. The wars we wage inside of our own minds that cloud the quiet wisdom of the heart became so apparent to all of us. We all got to really come to know that truth and chose to live a life of awareness, charity, compassion, commitment, humility, impeccability of the word, kindness, patience, respect, reciprocity, selfless service, and spiritual devotional practice. These are the principles of A New Earth Movement, each one holding a key for our transformation and freedom.
For me the Mentorship Program completely changed my relationship with myself. My psyche now feels clear and uncluttered, my heart feels lifted and unable to fall into the old low frequency feelings of shame and confusion, and there is a new lightness of being inside of me. I really noticed it one day walking out on the land, there was a new freedom in my step. Like I knew that I had crossed a threshold and there was no turning back.
I felt really inspired to keep growing in these ways, and so I then joined ANEM’s Advanced Mentorship Program, where I was able to put these new skills into practice mentoring others. My relationship with people really changed. I learned how to deeply listen with my heart and an open my focus, offering guidance and support in a way that is empowering to the individual. I learned so much doing those sessions and got to experience the way helping others to become a good friend to themselves really uplifted me. I would feel exuberant after. I’m so grateful for the brilliant ways this program slowly cracked open the shell I had built around myself and I got to come out of hiding and feel the warmth of my own heart.
It’s a beautiful thing to find teachers we can trust. I think we all yearn for spiritual food, even if we don’t know it. We all yearn for oneness and peace, and if we are willing to make the journey from the head to the heart, we all will surely find it, and bask in the ever widening circle of love.
With love, Kristal
