When Thoughts Go Bump in the Night

Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and find that your mind is filled with worry and fear?  Even those of us that work hard to eradicate fear thoughts during the day may find that our mind sometimes floods with upsetting thoughts in that state between waking and sleep.

The Witching Hour

This is a sign that we have some clean up work to do in our mind.  A forgiveness lifestyle will help lessen the fear.

In the meantime, what can we do when we wake to find ourselves in the dark shadow of the night?  We have two choices.  We can elect to deal with the subjects that are coming up right then and there.  If we are willing to just go with it and lose a few hours of sleep, this is a perfect time to do some forgiveness work.  The Feel the Feelings process which can be found in Chapter 3 of "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness" is perfect for these times.  (There is also a downloadable audio meditation of this process available here for $2.99.  Why not just slip the headphones on and do the work right in bed?)

Or, for those of us that have to be up early in the mornings to deal with jobs or kids, getting back to peace so that we can sleep is essential.  It's important to "flip the switch" in our minds from fear to love.  One way to do this is with affirmations.  When we concentrate on repeating positive words over and over, there is no room left in our minds for the fear thoughts.

Flip the Switch from Fear to Love

Before starting the affirmations, it is a good idea to give the fear thinking over to Spirit.  You can just say in your mind, "I am giving this over to you, Spirit."  Or, if you are visual, you can create a beautiful white and gleaming marble altar in your mind.  Make it all lit up, glowing and gorgeously bright.  Place your fear thoughts on the altar and watch them be consumed with white flames of Infinite love.

What affirmations are best?  I like "I accept the love of God" or "Thank you God, for creating me."  An affirmation I'm currently working with is "I accept the happiness that God intends me to have."  Of course, you can choose any affirmation that works for you personally and flips you over from fear to love.

I once read someplace that an hour of meditation is equal to three hours of sleep.  Is this true? If this is so, you can calmly enjoy your affirmations, knowing that each moment you spend with them is contributing to a positive, powerful and energetic day tomorrow.

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We're the Ones That Feel Bad

When we don't forgive, we're only creating more suffering for ourselves.  Leaving negative emotions unresolved eats away at us.  It damages out bodies physically and it damages our minds.  When we allow grievances to accumulate in our mind, they block any chance we have of accessing our natural inner peace.

Do the words natural inner peace surprise you?  Yes, our natural state is inner peace.  However, from our earliest years, we start to harbor psychic wounds.  We allow the hurts to accumulate and clump together in our subconscious.  We start to believe ideas like these:

I am a bad person.
I am not smart.
I am not worthy.
Nobody likes me.
I am not love-able.
Life is unfair.
The world is cruel.
Bad things happen.

When we allow these ideas to take over, we suffer.

And the more we think thoughts like these, the more we draw events toward us that re-enforce these very ideas.  We work a theme.  Perhaps it's a belief in abandonment.  Maybe there was an incident as a very small child where we felt abandoned.  We may find that throughout our lifetime we re-experience those same feelings.  On a regular basis, events transpire in which we are "abandoned" yet one more time.

The only way to stop the cycle of hurt is to forgive and release the grievances.  We can start by working on the most recent experience of abandonment.  We can forgive the event and anyone involved in it.  That will go along way toward resolving this issue.  However, it is best to root it out fully.  We do this by searching our memories for the earliest time when we felt this emotion.  We sit with these feelings and experience them fully until they move through us.  We remember, contemplate, feel the feelings and release.

This takes time and it takes a commitment to look deep, be open to epiphanies, to keep studying ourselves, week after week and month after month.  Things will be revealed.  Aha moments will happen.  And as we understand more about what occurred in our past, as we forgive and release, we will begin the process of restoring that natural inner peace.  

We all have a choice.  We can continue to let fear run our daily lives, or we can do the work and forgive our world.  It takes a lot of inner work to create a forgiveness lifestyle and it unfolds slowly over the course of several years, if one is fully committed.  However, once we do this work, we live largely in peace.  Happiness is once again our ordinary state.

Ask yourself, are you really truly happy?  Or are you substituting a nice car, a good job, busy children and a comfortable house for true happiness.  Are you just telling yourself that this is what happiness is?  Because happiness is so much more than a busy comfortable life.  True happiness comes from a deep inner peace that only forgiveness can bring.

Forgiveness is a lot easier than you may think.  If you would like to forgive, but don't know how to start, "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness" outlines many easy processes to help you learn to forgive.  Amazingly, forgiveness actually becomes pleasurable and something you will look forward to.  

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Withholding Love

On a quantum level, we are all joined.  All minds are joined.  That means that when we refuse to forgive someone, or when we judge someone, on a sub-conscious level, they know.

A while back I read about experiments with plants where love and praise was lavishly given or withheld.  In the studies, each family was given a plant and asked to keep it on their kitchen table where it would be seen frequently by all member of the family.  Half of the families were asked to praise and give love to the plants each time they entered the room.  "I love you.  You are beautiful.  You are magnificent.  You are a wonderful addition to our home."

The other families were asked to scold and ignore the plant.  "I hate you.  You are ugly.  Why are you even here?"

What happened?  The loved plants flourished and the despised plants died.  Yes, they DIED!

Let's talk for a moment about what happens to others when we either refuse to forgive or we forgive them (in tomorrow's post I will talk about what happens to ourselves).  If we choose to judge others harshly, they do suffer.  Everyone of us knows how it feels to be in someone's bad graces.  This suffering also happens on an unseen level.  Whether they know consciously that we are not forgiving them, they do know sub-consciously.  Remember that only a small part of our awareness is conscious.  The much bigger part of us is sub-conscious.  Just like the plants, any people we choose not to forgive will suffer.

On the other hand, when we choose to forgive, they heal.  Consciously, they may not know why, and we may not know why, but when we forgive others it changes them.  Forgiveness means focusing loving feelings towards others.  Love changes everything.

In The Hidden Messages of Water, Dr. Emoto proved that thoughts and feelings affect physical reality.  "By producing different focused intentions through written and spoken words and music and literally presenting it to the same water samples, the water appears to change its expression." --What the Bleep Do We Know?

Water Crystals Given Love and Gratitude

Water Crystals Played Heavy Metal Music

We may think that holding grievances is a harmless, neutral act, but it is not.  When we refuse to forgive, we are actually HARMING others.  

I really don't want to be that person.  I don't want to harm anyone, really, even annoying people.  I can see clearly that it is my job just get over it!  I must not allow myself to feel provoked, injured or even annoyed by anyone because I don't want to do harm.  

Join me in non-violent thought!

All Events Are Neutral

It is the spin we put on things that creates hurt and pain in our minds.  The one thing that we can control is our own thoughts.  We can choose how to view the events that transpire in our lives.

The insanity that you experience as your pain, your suffering, your seeking and your dramas comes only from your mistaken choice to become identified with what arises in the field of your awareness.  You, therefore, lose the sight of innocence. For all events are perfectly neutral, and you are free to see them any way you want. --The Way of Mastery p.4

No matter what happens in our lives we can choose to simply watch it unfold.  We can experience it without defining it as good or bad.  It just is. There is no need for us to decide that, "It is a terrible painful thing" and that, "Oh, it hurts so very, very badly!"

Our ego wants us to believe the insane spin it puts on everything in our worlds.  It judges everything it sees.  It will tell us that these judgments are its' important contribution to our lives, that they help us navigate the minefield of this world.  The ego wants us to believe that the world is a minefield and that without it, the ego, to guide us, we would forever be stepping on mines. The ego wants us to believe we need it.  However, the world is not a minefield, but a MIND-FIELD.  There are no mines.  There is only our perception of danger, difficulty and pain.  This comes from our egos.

When we allow ourselves to be with what is without judging it as right or wrong, or difficult or easy, or happy or sad, we are able to find peace with whatever is happening.  Nothing is as bad as we think it is!  When we drop our judgments about the world we find that things only just are.  It is all actually just fine.  And the more we think like this, the more we are at peace.  The more we experience peace, the happier we become.

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Quick...Name Five People You Know Of Who Are "Bad"

You can do it, can't you.  We can all do it.  We have everyone we know of somehow labelled in our minds.  We label some as beautiful, others as smart or successful, still others as happy and fun or serious and intellectual.  And, of course, there are those that are overweight, or depressed, or sick, or addicts, or lonely, or struggling with money.  Or, or, or...the list goes on.

Whether we have labelled people positively or negatively, it is all the same.  We have judged them.  We have decided their value based on some random criteria of our own makings.

"I am beginning to see that I don't have to judge and interpret the motives and behaviors of others.  There is no need to decide who are the good guys and who are the bad, who should be blamed and who should be punished.  I find it is truly "safe" to surrender the script written by me and trust in God's script."  --Gerald Jampolsky 

What would happen if we just let this entire system of judgments go?  Do we really need it at all?  After all, we have no idea what each of these people is ultimately experiencing.  We have no idea what lessons they are here for, what learning they are here to gather or what rights they may be attempting to wrong.

Each of these people was created by God.  Each one was created exactly in His own image. They are perfect, powerful and creative beings who are choosing to spend some time here on earth.  They are all so much more than we can see.

When we judge others, we are choosing to separate and diminish. When we accept others and love them regardless of who they appear to be here on earth, we are allowing the truth of God's existence to permeate our minds. We are knowing that we can only view a very small part of anyone's whole existence from our very limited viewpoint here on earth.  We are knowing that we are all God's creations, that we exist together with him, in His mind, and that we are all perfect and safe and free.  We are all really only love because God is only love and we are part of Him.

It's not easy to stop a lifelong habit of judgement.  I struggle with it every day.  But I am trying to let it go.  I hope you will think about joining me in this.  After all, if we never judge anyone, we will never have to forgive anyone.  When we release our minds from judging, the peace of God flows in.

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Self Forgiveness is a Choice for Happiness

In any moment we are making a choice between one of two things.  We are choosing to be happy or not to be happy.  We are siding with either fear or love.  Every moment in life, every perspective we choose to peer from, every action we take or don't take are all a version of this simple choice.

Guilt is a man-made creation.  God did not create it, nor did he create sin.  In fact God always chooses love and happiness.  He created us in love.  We are designed to be happy.

But, for better or worse, we have been given free-will.  We can use our free will to choose happiness, as God wishes for us.  Or, we can choose fear over love.  When we buy into the concept of fear, we choose to believe that we can be "bad".  And, of course, if we are "bad", then we are sinners.  And if we are sinners, then we need to feel guilt.  This is our system of fear.  It's man-made.  It's not God's.  God is always love.

I say, scrap it.  Let's just toss out this painful, miserable, system of fear from our minds.  It doesn't serve our best interests.  After all, it is in our best interest to be happy.

Release the fear.  Release the belief that you are bad. Release the feelings of guilt.  In the short term this is always a very simple thing to do.  Just think about what makes you happy and keep your mind focused on that.  This is a habit you can develop.  It's a choice you make.  This is step one to becoming happy.

Step two is to go deep into your mind and uncover all the dark hidden unconscious feelings of shame and inadequacy.  The belief that you are a worthless, undeserving, selfish and ridiculous creature is stashed away in the farthest reaches of your mind. You'll have to do some serious forgiveness work to uncover these beliefs and eradicate them.  But you can do this  Anyone can do this.

It's actually very easy to do this work.  It does take thinking time and a development of self-awareness, but there are processes that make it simple work to do.  It all has to do with your intentions for your life.  What do you intend?  What do you choose?  Is it your choice to learn to be happy...to live the life that you were created for?

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It is Only Our Own Thoughts That Hurt Us

In "Out of Darkness Into the Light", Gerald Jampolsky lists this as one of his favorite principles from A Course in Miracles:

"It is only our own thoughts that hurt us.  It is only our own minds that need to be healed.  We are not victims of the world that we see."

We choose the contents of our minds.  We never HAVE to be a victim.  We can always elect to see the world differently.  We can simmer in anger and hurt or we can let it go and create peace in our minds.  As the Course says, we are always choosing between love and fear.  There is no grey in between.

If you are toying with the idea of letting it go, but like so many of us, simply don't know where to begin, "Forgiveness is the Key to Happiness" walks you through beginning forgiveness practices and step by step teaches you how to forgive in every area of your life. It is soooooooooo much easier than you may think!  Why not trade in fear, anger, hurt, rage, sadness and upset for inner peace?  It is absolutely doable.  What in your entire world could possibly be more important than your own happiness?

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