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

Surrendering to the Divine

By Nancy Smeltzer


One of the 3 major tenets of the Renaissance of the Heart healing practice is surrendering the illusion of control we think we have over our lives, and turning everything over to the Divine. “Of course”, you might say, “who wouldn’t let the One with the big game plan run their life?” However, that can be so much easier said than done.

I find that on the smaller issues I have, there’s no problem in following this tenet. However, when it comes down to my core issues, I find myself expecting (should I say “demanding”?) an issue to resolve itself according to the way I want it.. However, it’s when I turn these difficult core issues over to my Higher Power, and ask that whatever is in my best and highest good come about for myself and all parties involved, that the most amazing things happen. Oftentimes, the result is a resolution I had not even considered, which is one of the big benefits of surrendering to the Divine. My take is that we, as humans, often have way too limited a viewpoint as to what the possibilities are in a given situation, and thus don’t even consider what wonders might be out there just waiting for us.

So, exactly how do I go about surrendering to the Divine. Oftentimes, spiritual writers offer great advice, but if you don’t already naturally do whatever they’re suggesting, the advice for me has often not been very helpful. Since I didn’t have a feel for whatever was being suggested, I often found their words to be about as effective as saying…”If you just flap your arms hard enough, you could fly if you really wanted to!” What I really wanted to have heard back then would have been something along the lines of “Here’s how I did this…”, or “When you’re experiencing stress, I like to do ….”.As practitioners of Renaissance of the Heart, we try to offer useable spiritual advice whenever possible, yet at the same time, try not to conflict with those who already have practices and methods that work for them.

We teach many techniques in our workshops, but if you’re not inclined to take one now, or become a client for individual sessions, then my best advice would be to set your intention and say to the Universe…”I want to surrender this issue”. Then, try and still any inner voices, or as we say, “the itty, bitty, shitty committee”, that arise in your head.
These nay saying, nagging, doubting inner voices often stop us dead in our tracks when we even begin to try to use a healing technique.

To the above advice regarding stating your intent, I would add “State what you’d like to see happen, and then shut up and listen!” It’s the last half of this phrase that seems to be the most important for us. We’ve found that in many religions and spiritual disciplines, there’s an awful lot of praying and asking, but very little listening. We advise our clients that about 95% of their spiritual meditation time is optimally spent being still and quiet, waiting for an answer. Helping our clients develop their own way of receiving intuitive information is one of the more rewarding aspects of our healing practice.

I imagine there is a lot of discussion that can be generated about surrendering to the Divine, and stilling your mind to listen. We’ll have a lot more thoughts in future postings about how we see this taking place in our own lives, but we’d love to hear about how our readers accomplish this…or not. 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. http://www.hearthealing.net

To Be or Not To Be (in Your Heart)-Part 2

By Mary Pellicer, MD

The question we were left with from Part 1 of this post (9-17-2009), is how can I tell if I’m in my heart and by extension how might you tell if you’re in your heart? So let’s consider that. The first thing I notice is where my center of awareness is located. The center of awareness is the sense of where “you” are located within your body. One way to get a sense for this is to point your finger back at yourself (without touching your skin) and starting at the top of your head just run your finger down in front of your body and get a sense for where it feels like you are located. Your center of awareness will feel like you are pointing to “you”. Just for fun, you could try this with a friend and compare notes.

For myself for many, many years the only place I seemed to be located was right behind my eyes. Other places felt like they were part of my body, but it didn’t seem as if I was looking out of any other place than my eyes—which seemed perfectly natural and obvious to me. In fact, until I began doing this work, I didn’t think there was any other possibility. As it turns out, I was almost totally “in my head” with my awareness firmly seated there. Right now, doing this same exercise I feel like my awareness extends from the top of my head to my chest, pretty good for me. However, when I am stressed and not doing well, my awareness typically reverts to my original location of right behind my eyes. When people do this exercise there are many possibilities of where their awareness might be with the head , the heart region and the belly being the most common. However, occasionally people feel as if their center of awareness is located in an extremity and sometimes a person may not be in their body at all. Sometimes the center of awareness is very small and very hard to find, while other times it is spread throughout the whole body and even out into the surrounding environment.

So generally, when people are in their heart, their awareness is centered in their chest and if their awareness is quite expanded, it spreads out from there. The other hallmarks of being in one’s heart are a sense of peace and rightness, of calm and “being home”. Even if I am feeling very strong emotions, like sadness or anger, experiencing them from my heart has an underlying sense of acceptance and caring for myself while still having that emotion.

Also staying in your heart while having a strong emotion tends to allow it to dissipate and heal much more quickly than if you stay in your head for instance. Being in your head often will lead to judging yourself and the emotion (this is terrible, this will never go away, I deserve to feel this way, etc.) instead of just accepting and experiencing it. Emotions experienced from your heart center tend not to get stuck, they are acknowledged, experienced and then you move on.

While being in your heart may seem easy at first glance, in reality it is often very difficult for people because of their burden of unconsciously held trauma and stress. However, being aware of the concept and playing around with it and even asking the question “Am I in my heart?”, and checking for the signs that you are, can go a long way to making being in your heart an everyday reality.

From my heart to yours,
Mary

What I see is what I see

by Nancy Smeltzer

As a fiber artist, I’m a visual person. That’s my strong suit. That’s what I do, touch with my eyes. So, it’s not surprising that “psychically seeing” is one of my best ways of accessing intuitive information. It’s not the only way, just the easiest for me.

I was not born knowing how to “see” things. I used to read about how others did visualize without their physical eyes, and thought it was cool, but I just knew that you had to be born knowing how to do it. With the work that I’ve been shown with Renaissance of the Heart, and other modalities, I taught myself to be clairvoyant, (and later clairaudient, and clairsentient.) At first, the images had about the clarity of a sonogram, or a weather map of a hurricane in the Caribbean. Just as I imagine is the case with a newborn baby, I learned to interpret this blob of color as meaning this, while a squiggle meant that. Slowly, over the space of about four months, the resolution of my inner pictures began to clear, until one day, I woke up and could see as well behind my closed eyelids as I could when they were open.

Cool, a new toy to play with! I learned how to project my consciousness across the continent and pretty soon, was seeing into the present and past lives of the clients with whom we worked. For me, my psychic sight has become an important diagnostic tool and I depend on it greatly.

However, I know that what I’m being shown are metaphors for what’s really going on. After all, you wouldn’t explain nuclear physics the same way to a kindergartner as you would to a graduate student; so the Divine gives me metaphorical pictures to give me information. Sometimes, those images can be pretty strange; other times, quite straightforward. Since one of my undergrad degrees is in biology, I often realize that I’m standing on a mitochondrion or wandering through the valves of the heart. I’m realizing that all of those lab classes are paying off, as I can often interpret what part of the client’s body I’m being shown. However, especially with past lives, it’s not so much a literal interpretation that’s important, but what’s the bottom line being presented. In other words, what’s the message here? I view my images often as I would a parable, not necessarily as definitive facts. However, sometimes, it’s amazing how accurate my images can be, which I’ll talk about in another posting.

Love to your hearts,
Nancy