I’m Doing Better about Doing Worse

By Mary Pellicer, MD
photo by John Pellicer

My life has always had up times and down times, as long as I can remember. Sometimes I’m on top of the world and everything just flows with amazing ease. Other times, I get “triggered” because of one of my unhealed issues and everything comes to a grinding halt. Nothing flows and when it is really bad, it feels as if I’m slogging through mud if I try to move forward.
In my long ago past, these times would be times of spiraling downward and beating myself up. But, slowly over the years, I’ve learned more and more how to love myself—even during these tough times, or I should say, especially during these tough times.
So now, when I am triggered, and am feeling terrible I take the following steps:

1) I declare, like Judith Viorst’s Alexander, that this is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day!!!!!

2) I love myself anyway (after all, this is when I need love the most), the best I can, even if it’s just a tiny bit, (this is a key practice at Renaissance of the Heart and it does get easier with practice).

3) I decide not to beat myself up (I have tapes and tapes on how to do that but don’t stick them in the tape player in my head) and I decide to be okay with doing worse.

4) I mope, sulk, read or watch movies or whatever escape mechanism I feel drawn too. Remember, I’m not beating myself up so I just let myself do this little escape from the reality of my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. I don’t pretend I’m not doing these things, or try to hide them. I just decide to engage in this behavior for as long as I need to, knowing full well it’s not moving me forward and do my best to love myself the whole time. I am brilliant at these escape mechanisms so what’s not to love?

5) I accept the consequences of my behavior—if I eat that whole box of cookies I know I am going to feel absolutely dreadful in a couple hours, but I may decide I’m going to do it anyway. I work really hard not to lie to myself or pretend I’m not doing what I am. Did I mention I love myself for being such a crazy nut?

6) Sometimes sooner (the more I love myself the sooner it happens) or later I decide to work on healing whatever it is that’s coming up. If I’m really, really stuck with a dreadful case of the “poor me’s” I get some help from a friend (thankfully I have two of the very dearest friends, Nancy & Ceitllyn) who are also brilliant healers.

7) Then once things are past and I’m back on an even keel and moving forward, I learn what I can from the experience.

So with this plan in place, overall I’m doing much better about doing worse. I encourage you to think through (before you need it) your own plan for handling the down times so that eventually these down times are just little jaunts down into a valley that gets you further along toward cresting the next ridge on your journey forward through life.

We’d love to hear any other ideas and strategies you have for moving through the “doing worse” times.

From My Heart to Yours,
Mary

We’re Human Beings, not Human Doers

By Nancy Smeltzer
Photo by Dave Berry

With the beginning of a new year, it seems as if I and my healing partners, Mary and Ceitllyn, in Renaissance of the Heart, are growing into a new facet of our understanding on how to facilitate healing for ourselves and our clients. For a long time, we have gotten intellectually that we need to surrender our ego and intent to the Divine. After all, who wouldn’t? They have the big game plan, and can see far beyond what our limited human capabilities can perceive regarding all the implications for a given issue. Still, doing the surrender and wanting to surrender versus being the surrender are quite different matters.

For a long time, in our workshops, http://www.renaissanceheart.com/workshops.php,
We’ve stated that we’re human beings, not human doers. We set our intent for ourselves or the client, serve as catalysts to get the process going, and then get out of the way so the Divine and our client can do the healing. In other words, as we say down south, “Get your picky paws out of the way!” However, I know for myself, especially if it’s one of my core issues that I’m working on for myself, the “helper” part of me starts wanting to “do something”. Just surrendering and being in the still quiet of not doing, a thing has been a hard lesson to learn. It’s much easier for me if I have a set of rules to follow, or mantras to say or SOMETHING to do. However, what we’re finding is that the process will go much more quickly if we just set the intent, merge with the Divine and then just “be”.

In our Level 2 workshop, we teach the beginnings of access to an amazing state of existence called the State of Being. In that technique, you begin to access the quiet yet exhilarating state of being one with the Divine and the Universe. However deep that experience was for me when we were shown the process several years ago, it’s only a glimpse at how profoundly connected in you can be with the Divine when you get past the fear of doing so. I can hear some of you asking; “Why would you be afraid to be ultimately connected in?”, but, for me, at first, it was rather scary. There was a part of me that felt as if I was dying, or wouldn’t “be able to come back”, or was losing my essence in the process. Those feelings weren’t exactly conducive to my “letting go”, since it felt as if I were caught up in a survival mode. However, having done the surrendering enough now, and my demise did not occur, it’s easier and easier to surrender. Teaching the process to others, however, will probably be part of our level 11 workshops. For the time being, we’ll just do it for our clients.

The problem for me is knowing when I was doing, rather then being. Ceitllyn gave me the metaphor of being in a plane with the “seatbelts need to be fastened” sign on.
When I start feeling restless and want to “get out of my seat”, that’s a clue that I’m trying to do something. Another is when the setting up the intent sequence feels difficult to do. Our take is that connecting in with the Divine is our natural birthright, and if it’s feeling hard to access, then we have some resistance to doing so that needs to be healed. Since we just discovered this new to us process of connecting less than a week ago, I’m sure that there will be many more discoveries along the way. We’d love to hear form you regarding your own experiences of connecting in with the Divine, so please post a comment. That way we can build a community of like-minded souls that we’re calling Renaissance of the Heart. Why not come along and join us in our discoveries.

Love to your hearts,
Nancy

Healing isn't for Wimps!

By Nancy Smeltzer
Photo by Vince Lombardi


There are many people who are actively seeking solutions in their lives, whether it’s for healing physical ailments or emotional problems. Just like me, if you were to ask them, they would unequivocally say that they want to get rid of their issue. However, there is a concept called psychological reversal, that we’ve spoken about in earlier postings. This term refers to a situation where your conscious mind says that, yes, you want something to change in your life. However, there are other consciousnesses involved that have conflicting agendas. The usual culprits are your Body Brain consciousness, involved with survival, and your Solar Plexus consciousness, connected with control. (See the posting for August 21, 2009 for more on this concept known as Triune Brain theory) As a result,many people find that they are unconsciously self-sabotaging the very issue they’re trying so hard to resolve.

When starting off in this healing business, I early on had many rapid positive results. That got me enthusiastically started on my spiritual path. Finally, I was having releases from many issues that had plagued me for years. As I learned to hear the Divine, I found concrete, effective tools that I could implement and dissolve away my problems. Having been a teacher, it was easy for me to figure out ways to then show others how to achieve similar results. However, it seems that we each reach a time when it seems as if we’ve run into a wall. For me, the path seems to be that I’ve cleared away the easier issues and now to go further, I have to go even deeper into core issues that I’ve spent a lifetime of shoving under the rug. Ouch, that really, really hurts when I run into those walls that I build myself. So now what do I do?

For me, in the past, I would have cut and run. Rather than facing issues that were no longer serving me, I would run away in order to avoid conflict or shove my feelings and not express what I was feeling. As a result, I faced years of physical pain and many surgeries as my body was screaming at me trying to get me to listen. However, what I’m learning now and trying to embrace with all of my being is that I am creating my own reality in order to learn the lessons that I was sent here to learn this life time. Part of my soul contract this lifetime seems to be about getting out from playing the “victim”. A major, painful part of that lesson is owning that the faults I’m pointing the finger about with regard to others are really projections of mine. I’m either doing something similar or am using their actions to create a stir so I won’t look at my own activities. It’s so much easier to proclaim to the world about somebody else’s heinous doings than admit to my own shortcomings.

So, having recently run into a very big wall of my own creation, I’m having to pick myself up, dust myself off, look at my own reflection in the mirror and ask to forgive myself. Hopefully the ones with whom I’ve hurt will move forwards with me. If not, then perhaps I need to move along my own path. I am proud of myself for at least making some movement and not staying wallowing in my usual hole. I once had a vision where I saw all of humanity being on a racetrack, hunched down at the starting blocks and ready to run the race of Life. When the starter’s gun went off, some people rushed straight forward, full of purpose and resolve. I wandered off the track, up into the bleachers, bck onto the track, went around in circles for awhile, and then moved forward a little. Some of the life runners disappeared in a “poof” and reappeared back at the beginning of the track, as if they were starting over again in a new life. However, when I changed my vantage point to looking down on the race rather than being in it, I could fast forward and see that all of the runners eventually got to the end of the race. It’s that “knowing” that I’ll get there eventually that keeps me going.

I’d like to end with the thought that healing has to be hard is just a belief. Since that concept is a commonly held belief., our take in Renaissance of the Heart is that it can be healed. In other words, it’s not a Universal given that any of this work has to be difficult. It unfortunately, seems to be one that I’m very invested in right now. Ideally, when you’re in the flow of life, issues and conflicts come up, you rise up and over those rocks and continue down stream. Please keep reading along with us as we share more of what we’ve learned with regard to our findings on how to climb over Life’s rocks. We’d also love to hear from you about your own findings on how you easily implement healing for yourselves and others. We see ourselves as building a community of like-minded souls, and we’d love to hear from you.

How do you Know When You’ve Finished Healing?

By Nancy Smeltzer
Photo by Robert Vibert

Many people are born with their intuitive knowledge intact from before they were born. They come into this world with the ability to see, hear, or feel much of what is not immediately evident to others. I am not one of those people. Any psychic ability that I now have, I’ve been shown by the Divine in the last five years. In our Renaissance of the Heart workshops, we teach ways to recognize each person’s own abilities and foster the development of each person’s intuitive knowledge. In several of my previous postings, I’ve talked about the visual and auditory metaphors that I’m given as I work with our clients. When I work during a session, I share with the person being worked on whatever I’m shown that seems appropriate. Our goal is to help each person learn through time to be able to do much of their own healing without our help. While the techniques are easy to learn and practice, one of the hardest things to learn seems to be for others to know when they’ve healed or cleared an issue for themselves.

From another healing modality, Peak States of Consciousness, we’ve borrowed the term, calm, peace, and light (as if a back pack has been taken off your back.) For us, this describes the sensation many experience when they’ve done a technique on a particular issue and then find it to be gone. The sense of personal freedom can be so exhilarating that a person can even forget what the original issue was about. On Gary Craig’s web site, Silvia Hartmann-Kent speaks very eloquently of this phenomena, known as the Apex Effect, in which the person discredits the treatment that has just been given as causing their newly found release from their symptoms…. http://www.emofree.com/articles/apexeffect.htm .

Most of us don’t experience such an immediate release from symptoms to the degree of not equating the work being done to the diminishing of their sensations. However, to insure that there is some benchmark to which any progress can be compared, we have people pick a “trigger event” that is typical of the problem that they’re experiencing. Just a short phrase is needed to describe the moment, such as “my brother issue” or “when I was fired”. They we ask them to go back to that event, and while looking out through their own eyes, not at themselves as an observer, write down the emotion(s) they’re experiencing and where in the body they’re feeling that sensation. Then we ask them, for each emotion, what number, on a scale of 0-10, with 10 being the worst, would they give that emotion right now. (This numbering system is called a SUDS measurement or “Subjective Unit of Distress Scale.)These notes are useful to refer to at the end of the session, when the client goes back to the event and checks in with the emotions, body sensations, and numbers to see if any progress has been made.

So, the client then begins one of the techniques that we teach, and we work on whatever facet of the issue the Divine directs us to focus on. As the client heals himself with us serving as catalysts for the energy, changes or shifts may be experienced by the client.
Some people will experience waves of energy peeling off of them. Some experience their inner vision becoming brighter, if it started out as being dark. The reverse might be true if the person started out with a well-lit field of vision, which could go to dark upon completion, as if a door was bring shut on an issue. Others, who are more kinesthetically inclined, experience what I call the elevator drop. That sensation can be described as when you stop at a floor in an elevator, and first you go upwards slightly and then you drop back down inwardly as your own motion is stopped. Some people hear an audible “ding”, much as old-fashioned teacher’s bell sounds. While most people seem to have some variation of seeing or hearing information, there are a multitude of other ways of knowing when you’ve finished a particular part of a healing session. We help to supply feedback, such as “no not quite finished”, or “seems clear to me”. That way, the client can learn his or her own modality. The type of affirmative responses can also vary in the same person depending on the issue being worked on and its severity. The point is that one method isn’t any better than any other, and that each person needs to learn his or her own way of “knowing” intuitive information


I imagine that many of you who read this have your own experiences with gaining intuitive information. We’d love to hear about your own experiences as to how you find light at the end of the tunnel. Please feel free to ask any questions you might have of myself, Mary, or Ceitllyn, as we work to weave together this community of like minded souls that we’re calling Renaissance of the Heart.

What I See is What I Get

By Nancy Smeltzer

On October 2, 2009, I wrote about my psychic inner sight and some descriptions of how the visions appear to me. These stories and metaphors of what is going on with our clients at Renaissance of the Heart are often quite strange in appearance and content. My partners and I say that some of these images are high on the “woo-woo” scale, in that they test even our sense of credibility. Yet, time and time again, we are given independent confirmation of what we’ve been shown.

One such case early on in our practice we call the bunny rabbit story. Our client’s grandfather had died a year earlier and she was still dealing with the grief of not getting to say goodbye to him at the hospital. When I told her that I could see her grandfather standing behind her, and that she could talk to him anytime that she wanted, it was very hard for her to have much of a sense of his presence. He held out his hand and asked me to put its contents into her heart. After having scanned it to make sure it was safe, I asked her if it was OK for me to put her grandfather’s present into her heart. When she asked what it was, I had to smile rather sheepishly, because I was having a hard time believing what I was ‘seeing”.

“It’s a bunny rabbit”, I said. “Just your basic, brown cottontail bunny rabbit, but your grandfather wanted you to have it.” She agreed to having me put it in her heart, which I did. She could feel some warmth there, but other than that, she had no other sense of anything being different. I felt that there was more to the bunny rabbit story, but she didn’t know of any connection between her grandfather and rabbits. I encouraged her to ask around in her family to see if they knew of any rabbit stories and that was the end of the day’s work.

At her next session, she had quite a tale to tell. She had asked her mother, and siblings if they remembered anything about her grandfather and bunnies, but no one remembered anything. However, she had quite a surprise when she was telling her grandmother. It turned out that her grandfather had always wanted to give her a rabbit when she was little, but her parents wouldn’t let her have one. Now, she has one for eternity, the soft little friend her beloved grandfather had always wanted to give her.

I sat a little stunned. There had been no doubt in my mind what I had been shown in her grandfather’s hand at the earlier session. Nor was there any way that I could have known about her early life in clues she might have said in the session, as she had never known about her grandfather’s wish to give her a bunny. I felt humbled and in awe at the realization that I really do see things that are “real” and felt incredibly grateful that I have been shown a way to comfort others through their grief.

Since those early days, I’ve been shown much stranger images, but somehow there is always some underlying truth in what I’m being shown. It is independent confirmations like these that have led me to know the “taste” and “feel” of when I’m being shown something significant to a client’s healing. I’m constantly asking myself is my own ego is affecting what I’m being shown, but usually the answer comes back a resounding “No!”.

Surrendering to the Divine…You Want me to do What?

By Nancy Smeltzer

On October 15, 2009, I wrote about Surrendering to the Divine and how this important tenet is part of our Renaissance of the Heart healing practice. Mary, Ceitllyn, and I have found that for our clients and ourselves, when we turn an issue over to the Divine, or whatever you may see as your Higher Power, life flows much more smoothly. Your life can unfold seamlessly before you when you are not insistent in having the outcome a certain way. “Perfect!” you might say, “Where do I sign up?” However, I neglected to mention in my previous posting on this subject that it is important to remember that all actions do have consequences and you need to be prepared for some unusual demands that may be placed on you.

For instance, about 1 ½ years into my spiritual journey, I was asked by the Divine if I wanted to move to a higher level. “Of course”, I eagerly replied. “Who wouldn’t?” The Divine told me “OK, no problem, however you won’t be able to see or know what you’re doing.” “Not know what I’m doing?” I sputtered. “I HAVE to know what I’m doing! I’m a teacher and I have to be able to see in order to teach others!” My rant went on for a few more sentences, and then I quickly understood that if I wanted to move to a higher level of learning, then those were the conditions of the lessons.

Begrudgingly, I agreed. For the next month, I could no longer “see” anything that was going on when I worked with a client. I would know when the healing started, I could tell that something was going on way off in the distance, and I could tell when the healing for that day had finished. Other than that, things were very dark in my psychic field of vision. Our clients however were raving about how much better they felt, and since results for those we work on are what are important to us, I learned to do without my inner sight. Finally, one day, the Divine said, “OK, you’ve learned what you needed to learn” and my sight and knowing abilities returned within about eight hours.

As I tried to figure what that loss of sight was about, I quickly came to the realization that I needed to learn other ways of knowing about a situation. During that muffled period, other skills of mine were developing, such as using kinesthetic or “feeling” what was going on with my body. I also learned to trust in what the Divine was asking me to do. Another event, however, really tested just how much I was ready to trust in the Divine when I was asked to freefall from some outer dimension in the cosmos.

Let me begin by explaining that I fell down a lot as kid, turning weak ankles, with many weeks every year spent on crutches. Falling, therefore, is a big fear of mine. (At this point in my narration, I can hear Mary saying, “You could heal that, you know”, and I will, Mary, after I finish about 30 other things ahead of that fear on my list of things to heal in this lifetime.) So when the Divine took me out somewhere high and far way in etheric space and said, “Now, fall backwards”, I was terrified. When I kept asking why, The Divine let me know I had an important lesson to learn. I was still very skeptical, but figuring that the Divine has the big game plan, I launched myself off from some precarious platform and began to fall.

While I spend a lot of time in some strange places, I sometimes have a sense of doubt whether or not what I am experiencing is real. There I was physically sitting in my safe office chair in my studio, but it certainly felt as if I were falling from some great height. I kept falling…, falling…, and falling, and nothing changed except that I was still falling. I was furious at myself for doing something as “stupid” as deliberately allowing myself to plummet from some unknown height. “What were you thinking?” was of the milder things I was yelling at myself. Then I began to realize that I was going to fall forever, and I got even madder at myself. Who was going to feed the cats, and nobody would ever find me, and who was going to explain to my mother, and, and, and…the thoughts raced through my head. Finally, I decided, “Well fine! I’ll just fall forever!” As I settled into that sense of resignation of perpetual rapid descent, I relaxed. At that moment of acceptance, I flipped over, turned into a giant eagle, and slowly spiraled downwards, as if I were riding some celestial thermal of air “Ta dah!” I exclaimed triumphantly as I gently landed, shaking myself off from what could have been a never-ending, nauseating ride.

Did I mention that you wouldn’t always know immediately why something was important to do when you are asked to surrender to the Divine? Having taken my free fall, I knew that what I had done had greater significance than just the obvious learning to trust in my Higher Powers. However, what that deeper level was escaped me at the time. It was nearly a year later that I learned the lesson for my celestial jump. At this later time, I was working on opening up my heart and realized that what I needed to do was to free fall into the Heart of the Divine. There was my answer! I would ever have allowed myself to dive freely into the innermost recesses of the Divine Heart, with all of the scary implications that were involved with such a release, if I had not taken my life changing free fall the year before. It had taken all of that intervening year for me to get an answer as to why I had been asked to take that leap. By accepting that you may not ever know why something is the way it is could be part of what you are asked to surrender. You just never know where you will be led in this work!

I hope that our series of postings about our thoughts and insights as we move forward in our spiritual journeys are inspiring some breakthroughs of your own. Please feel free to leave us a comment about your thoughts on these subjects, as we continue to build this community we call Renaissance of the Heart.

Infinity Releasing and the Grieving Mom, Part 2 continued from September 25, 2009

by Ceitllyn Connal

I have come to realize how much I have yet to learn and how much I have already learned in the five months since my son’s death. I wanted perfection in my life, but in wanting that, I wanted the control that comes with that perfection. I chose to do anything else except move forward toward healing my grief. There is no amount of control or perfection possible that would give me any measure of peace. There was just too much fear for me to manage; so there needed to be more control. I expected things to go according to some unwritten plan, my plan that would still allow me to grow in my spiritual journey. I would think, “I am The All Powerful Human I know what my Divine plan is.” I do not feel like the all-powerful human; I am sitting feeling very unpowerful all of my victimness because my son died.

When I let myself move toward healing, I realize how much I wanted to control when my son died. I would be able to do so many things differently before that happened so I would not have to feel the rawness of my emotions now. It was not in my plan to be in the middle of feeling lonely, sad, angry or alone at this time in my life. Sometimes I still want the illusion of controlling my own steps. This grieving part of my journey is a frightening way of existing, I am unsure of where my emotions will lead me next. It is not an easy road; it has its hard and difficult parts. I feel if I am not able to move through these feelings, learn the lessons given to me, these same lessons will come back again and again stronger and harder than they are now. The knowledge is there for me to learn how to be on a higher spiritual level, all it requires of me is to open my heart to the Love of the Divine. Whenever I feel like I have to ‘make it through’ my grief I know my need to control things and my fears keep me from truly surrendering to the Divine.

The times I have used our Infinity Releasing tool with my grief, my raw emotions were eased and soothed. Sometimes things were swirling in my head too quickly to comprehend anything else except the very powerful movement of the Infinity sign. I knew then that my feelings were just what they were meant to be, a gateway to a greater connection and my anchor with the Divine.

I hope we can have the opportunity to teach you this remarkable tool that can open up so many new wonders. Using this tool can help you to access all the Divine Love that is possible for your life, as it has done for my own.

For more information about Infinity Releasing please see our
website at:http://hearthealing.net/workshops.php