A Meditation Just for YOU

Does stress, anxiety, self-sabotage, and sleeplessness create obstacles on your path to achieving health, happiness and success?  Do you wish to overcome your fears and act on your dreams, hopes and passions?  Or simply begin — or end– your day being connected to your inner BE-ing?

The best way to bring about feelings of calm for the body, heart and soul is to seek inner peace and banish negativity through meditation. It can also empower your mind to take control of your physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual well-being!

I am now offering a unique gift idea this holiday season—-a Personalized Ten Minute Meditation. Order one today for You or someone You Love.

Only $25

This entry was posted in Blog and tagged Clearing and Healing Techniques, clearing energy, intuition and self awareness, Intuitive Counseling, intuitive counselor, Laurie Huston, meditation, meditations, personalized meditation.

See more at- https://www.intuitivesoul.com

The Masks we Wear!

As we just completed the Halloween holiday my attention was focusing on the masks we wear! I completed an interview with Tom Campbell recently and masks came up as a theme. I feel that this ‘masks’ theme will also be covered with Christopher Papadopoulos Nov 10^th airing Nov 16^th.

One of my thoughts around this theme is that we wear masks all the time as we try to be – or hope to be – someone other’s will like and appreciate. You know the masks I’m talking about: the ‘family’ masks we wear to try and please others in the family; the ‘relationship’ masks we wear to our significant other so that they won’t ‘leave us’; the ‘work’ masks we wear when we dislike our job/co-worker/boss etc. We find all sorts of different ways to wear a mask believing that our masked self is who people want to see. The problem is if we wear a mask long enough we get stuck in it. We can’t be authentic by dropping the masks to the people we know well and maybe even love because how do we change now after having worn the mask so long? Or we may forget our authentic self completely and just keep wearing the masks!

Another thought I had about masks as we celebrated Halloween is that people can often be more authentic when they dress up and participate in Halloween. We also do this with alcohol and vacations. Why is it we can feel comfortable BEing our authentic selves with some makeup to hide who we are, with some alcohol to give us courage to BE who we are, or with a vacation where we can experiment with pushing ourselves out of our comfort zones into our authentic selves or is it just because we are in a different place where no one knows us so we are able to BE our authentic selves?

Fear is the problem that we try to resolve through masks and it is courage that we require to free us from our masks or fear. Fear definitely is the culprit that helps us create our masks. We are afraid that we aren’t enough as we are and that we must be nicer, friendlier, and more aloof to hide our insecurities. And ultimately we are trying to be happier to please other people so that they will ‘like’ us and not ‘leave’ us!

The thing with happiness is that it isn’t something we can pretend. And it isn’t something outside of us. It comes from our ‘BEing’ level! It comes from who we are authentically. If fear prohibits us from being who we are, authentically, and courage is what will eventually allow us to be our authentic self, then why are masks used to make us feel safe?

I believe what happens is that we are unconsciously driven by our fears and we eventually walk around like sleepwalkers, unaware that we pretend to be someone else. As children we were naturally authentic and often didn’t care about what others thought of us but this fear crept in as we were disciplined and punished for BEing who we are. It became so ingrained in us to BE this person who would win approval that we kept on the masks that won approval and this ‘stuck’ on us and we became the masked person and forgot our authentic self.

We experiment with different masks on occasions such as Halloween, or in alcohol-infused situations, or on vacations and we have more courage, and as a result are more authentic, with these masks on. It is also probable that people use Halloween (masquerade) parties, alcohol and drugs, and even vacations to distract themselves from feeling uncomfortable about their lives as well as to give themselves courage. These distracting behaviors can be expressions of addictions and although I’m not going to delve into our ‘addictions’ in this article it is still worth mentioning because it is fear that pushes us to resort to addictions just as it is fear that makes us reach for masks.

I believe we want to experiment to remember who we are. And as we experiment we feel like we don’t have to worry that others will judge us when we wear an actual mask on Halloween or when we are ‘under the influence’ of alcohol, or are on vacation when we won’t be recognized and won’t be seeing again the people we meet. Ultimately these occasions assist us to feel safe BEing who we are.

So how can we remove our masks and be more authentic just as we may be on Halloween, under the influence of alcohol, or on vacation? I believe it will only happen when we are aware of what we are truly afraid of and breathe into our fears to see that they aren’t real but only part of our ‘story’. It can only happen if we choose to authentically feel into our bodies instead of avoiding feeling uncomfortable. It will happen when we get quiet and connect to the ‘now’ moment and with our body’s innate wisdom. It will happen when we feel safe inside enough to BE who we are. It will happen when we practice BEing our authentic self and not worrying about feeling judged for BEing who we are!

We can do this and perhaps instead of seeing these masks as a distraction we can allow our awareness of these masks to transport us towards our growth. And we can allow our Halloween experiences and our ‘vacation time’ to magically carry us into new opportunities to practice BEing authentic. Let’s have fun with this and celebrate our uniqueness!

See more at: http://www.intuitivesoul.com

 

Authenticity, BEing, Clearing and Healing Techniques, halloween, Heart-Centered Support Group, intuition and self awareness, Intuitive Counseling, intuitive counselor, Laurie Huston, masks, News for the Heart, News for the Heart Radio, Tom Campbell

Arrogance and Forgiveness

When I was writing the “forgiveness” article,  an area that kept coming up for me – because it was brought up in the Support Group call – became a significant piece in the ‘forgiveness’ process. This is related to our arrogance around ‘forgiveness’. When we have a belief that ‘forgiveness’ is necessary for a situation or a person it is because we have a judgment of a right and a wrong occurring with this situation or person. This is a huge issue for many of us – myself included – because we have judged something as right or wrong and this judgment is just our perception. Let me explain how I became aware of a lingering issue related to arrogance and ‘forgiveness’ from a recent experience.

This was something I needed to see and curiously I saw it while watching a TV series. I realized how tense I was becoming while watching. And I noticed that the tension was around ‘betrayal’. Betrayal has been a theme in my life and it tends to bring up a great deal of anger in me and that means of course I have not forgiven those who I have perceived to have betrayed me.

Since last month’s theme was about perceptions (read last month’s blog) I know that my perception of betrayal is skewed. From my personal history, because I felt I needed to take the ‘higher road’ and forgive – knowing how important forgiveness is – I thought I had forgiven many times. However, due to my reaction to the portrayal of betrayal in the television series it was obvious to me that I still didn’t feel safe, that I still was feeling the sense of betrayal.

And I still believed I was ‘right’ in my personal history of my perception of betrayal. After all, in each perceived betrayal, I believed that I was ‘wronged’ by another person and it seemed that I was ‘right’ and took the ‘higher road’. Yet by my seeming to take the ‘higher road’ I now see my ‘arrogance’ in that stance.  It was arrogance because I saw the other person as wrong and I would show them that I’m better than they are because I’ll take the ‘higher road’ and forgive them.

By so-called ‘taking the higher road’ I thought I had forgiven the other person. I saw myself as ‘right’ and had gone through the steps of forgiveness but, of course, this really was arrogance on my part because I had judged – and continued to judge – the other person or situation as being wrong.

Because I still didn’t feel safe in certain situations related to betrayal I knew that my gut brain had not completed the forgiveness process. From my training in mBraining I knew that we don’t fully forgive if we don’t do this from the Gut Brain. And since the Gut is about feeling safe and protecting us, if we don’t feel safe, we haven’t fully forgiven.  The sensing of not feeling safe became more evident while watching the TV series: as I experienced betrayal in the story I was getting very tense. Clearly I hadn’t ‘let-go’ of the perceived betrayals in my own “story”!

In the past I believed that I had forgiven others who I perceived had ‘betrayed’ me. I knew that this was through a mental process and that is completely ineffective. I had been aware of the heart for years now and how to bring the process into the heart. By using the mental and heart approach (of compassion) only, I had actually denied forgiveness through believing I had done the “right” thing or that I was taking the ‘higher road’. To me the process came from an open, heart felt place, however, because I didn’t feel safe in my recent watching of the television show I learned that I hadn’t fully forgiven those who had betrayed me in the past. The forgiveness had never come from the Gut or from a place of feeling safe. And it was through my arrogance that I thought I was still ‘right’, that I had taken the ‘higher road’, and I justified it so that it made me feel freer. But it wasn’t forgiveness.

As soon as we judge something as ‘right or wrong’, ‘good or bad’, it’s arrogance because we judge and we feel we KNOW what is going on. We’ll never know. And it’s arrogance to believe we will. We’ll never truly know the bigger picture. God / the Universe / our Higher Self has a plan (it’s always to grow towards love) but from our filters, our beliefs, our experiences it’s impossible to see the truth!

That sense of feeling ‘right’ is part of judgment and judgment is a sign of arrogance. So really, after all of this, I don’t need to forgive others because it is just my ‘perceptions’ that have labeled them as ‘wrong’ for whatever they did. And it was just my perceptions that have labeled me as ‘right’ and my ‘perception’ that the belief that taking the high road and being gracious enough to give them forgiveness was also forgiveness! The belief that I am ‘right’ is arrogance! And THAT impedes forgiveness or any healing.

The arrogance of believing that I had done the ‘right’ thing didn’t allow me to let go. But, for myself, I saw – in a process of contemplation – the fears, the pain and the sadness of the inner child of those who had betrayed me. I saw how in each situation that the inner child, of those I had perceived as betraying me, had made a decision or series of decisions that I allowed to hurt me.  I don’t need to know the reasons for their inner child decisions. I may never know the reasons. I just needed to let go of feeling unsafe. I needed to let go of feeling hurt. I needed to let go of my judgment – even my judgment about their hurt inner child. I needed to let go of my belief of my own ‘rightness’. I needed to let go of my arrogance.

To let go is to forgive!

How about you? What can you do? Let go! Let go of the judgment and the arrogance behind the need to feel ‘right’ in the midst of ‘perceiving’ to have been ‘wronged’. Let go. There is no need to hold on to the belief that you have to be ‘right’ and the other ‘wrong’. This is judgment. This is arrogance. Just let go. Let go.

Let go.
See more at: http://www.intuitivesoul.com/arrogance-and-forgiveness

Do You Forgive?

This month has been a powerful one for me. It began with an interview with Eric Altman and continued with our support group calls and another interview with Jean Adrienne. The topic was around ‘forgiveness’! I know that for most people ‘forgiveness’ is just a mental exercise, similar to prayers and affirmations. We just go through the exercise of saying I forgive you, I forgive myself … or do the Ho’oponopono (I’m sorry, Please forgive me, I love you, Thank you). Many people realize that mentally, as in just saying the words, isn’t enough and so they try to bring it into their hearts. This is where true ‘forgiveness’ lies. However, there is one more layer of ‘forgiveness’ – beyond the mind and beyond the heart – and that is bringing ‘forgiveness’ into our guts. This is how we can truly ‘forgive’ someone.
 

The role of our ‘gut brain’ is to ‘protect’ us. It is all about survival. And our ‘gut brain’ informs us, if we are willing to listen, as to what is safe, and our ‘heart brain’ tells us what is to be trusted. When we can’t forgive, we aren’t trusting! And when we aren’t trusting we don’t feel ‘safe’.  Our lack of trust, which is accompanied by the feeling of being unsafe, is a deep issue with most of us and it runs to the root of our survival. It runs so deep that we tend to expect that this is our natural state. And this is not a feeling just for us as individuals. Our collective unconscious promotes that this – wherever we are – isn’t a ‘safe’ place. The major religions suggest that we were thrown out of the ‘Garden’. Our trust issues run as deep as not being able to forgive or trust God as a result! And THAT being the case, we will obviously have trust issues and will not feel safe.

Since ‘forgiveness’ is directly related to trust and trust is directly related to the feeling of safety, which is directly related to the role of our gut brain, we aren’t forgiving anyone because we don’t trust anyone – including ourselves. And how could we? We don’t even trust God. Therefore, one of our first goals is to address all areas where we don’t trust and can begin to feel safe. Then we can forgive ourselves, others, and even the Divine/Source.

Personally, the need to forgive myself is a big issue and it seems to be based on the unconscious beliefs that: I don’t trust the Divine Guidance within my life; I am alone; I have to have some control over my life; I don’t trust ‘Source’ to do what is needed for me; and I know better than ‘Source/God’! Can you see this as arrogance? (I will be writing a follow up article to this and it won’t be sent as a newsletter: it will be available by 15/06 on my blog labeled ‘Arrogance and Forgiveness’)

Do you see how unconsciously I’m judging the Divine? Do you see that I’m unconsciously suggesting that I could know better than the Divine? I need to forgive myself because these unconscious beliefs are just based on my lack of trust. After all I want to ‘know’ that the Divine is guiding my life and that I can trust this guidance!

If we realized just how much harm we do to ourselves by not forgiving and not letting go of our feelings about the situation and/or person – including the Divine; if we saw the harm caused by the amount of anger, frustration, and energy that builds up in us and gets stuck within us when we can’t let go – we would never want to withhold forgiveness. But our arrogance in thinking that we are ‘right’ and others are ‘wrong’ – as well as our innate distrust in the world and the role of the Divine/Source – makes it so difficult to forgive! All the pain and discomfort we feel stems from our failure to forgive and let go!

This last piece was just as big for me: I knew how to ‘let go’… but explaining it to others was often difficult for me. Letting go is forgiving! When we can trust and feel safe, when we can realize that it is just our perceptions that have made us hold onto something, then we can truly forgive and ‘let go’!

I believe the place we first must start is trust; to trust in the Divine Wisdom within our lives. Would you like to join me in gaining back the trust and restoring faith? I believe that the best way to do this is to remember all the times when we felt wronged – even by the Divine – and for us to realize that whatever we think was done was not what we perceived it to be and that we will perhaps never see the ‘bigger’ picture of our lives to understand what really happened. Yet in looking in on these past events where we think there was ‘wrong’ done to us we can acknowledge that our perceptions were not likely in alignment with the ‘bigger’ picture and as a result we have misperceived and judged and failed to communicate properly and allowed the misunderstanding to get ‘bigger’ inside us somehow. And we justified our thinking to ourselves and refused to forgive, refused to let go, refused to feel the relief of forgiveness – the feeling of safety and trust.

I invite you to determine what areas in your life still require forgiveness – and don’t forget yourself! And remember that we don’t ‘forgive’ just to be nice or to follow some religious principles to be ‘good’ … we forgive in order to make our world experience ‘safe’ through building our trust with the Source of all things – including ourselves as part of All That Is. And we do this by incorporating not only the mind and heart but also the gut: our very survival depends on it! Take some time to truly examine all of the situations and people – and the Divine – where you still hold this blocked energy of ‘non-forgiveness’ – you’ll feel it in your ‘heart’ – and see where you just didn’t know any better but did the best you could. Now, just forgive: have faith and trust in your own Divine Guidance and Let GO!

See more at: http://www.intuitivesoul.com/do-you-forgive

What are your Perceptions?

This month, I have been reviewing my perceptions and the perceptions of those around me. By perceptions I mean our thoughts about what others or ourselves are believing about what is happening in the world around us. I have noticed that I have been slipping into perceiving incorrectly and I have been bringing it up for discussion. I discussed this first with Jean Adrienne and later Eric Altman and I delved into it.

We tend to get very confused around the two, often separated, views in our world: on the one side we have the views of our ‘human aspect’ or ‘human nature’: the views of the inner child who strives to be right or the ego that creates disharmony in our lives and on the other side we have the views of the more enlightened and evolved ‘higher aspect’ or ‘higher nature’ of ourselves which we call our intuition, our higher self, our soul, or our BEing. The human nature, often referred to as the lower nature, doesn’t necessarily view things the same as our higher nature.

The thing that Eric and I discussed at length on my show was that we aren’t two different pieces, higher and lower nature, we are one. What we see as conflicting are aspects of our one nature and each of these aspects is truly just as important as the other. We are human beings that are having a spiritual experience, but we are also having a human experience. We’re not here to choose sides – we are here to find a way to bring them together and make them whole!

People who try to convince us that for us to BE evolved in this world we must transcend the ego are delusional. It is like trying to pretend that we have a million dollars when we can’t pay the rent. It is denying the aspect of ourselves that is here experiencing this world, the emotional richness of this world. The other aspect that is our BEing, our higher nature, is most helpful when we give this part of ourselves the opportunity to participate in a grounded and centered ‘vehicle’, our bodies. To think that we can just fly off to some higher nature world without being grounded and centered is equally delusional. The higher nature and the lower nature are both an essential aspect of our oneness – and every bit as important.

When it comes to perceptions, this is the human aspect of us that comes to light. It is that part of us that feels like we must defend ourselves, prove that we are right, or hide our vulnerabilities by reacting as if we are invulnerable. Whenever we are reacting, we have slipped (or separated) into our humanness and it is best to recognize this. We are human; we need not try to pretend we are anything but. However, to let this human aspect rule our lives is the opposite of what we are desiring – if we want to grow into love. [Laurie, do we want to ‘grow into love’ or ‘grow in love’? There MAY be a distinction here … and … unless EVERY blog refers to love in this way, you may want to introduce the concept of ‘love’ earlier in the article … to set the stage for this … to show that ‘love’ is the goal, the purpose, of all life and living – or whatever the heck love is all about (where’s Tina Turner at a time like this when we are asking “What’s Love All About?”. BTW: by introducing ‘love’ here … you may want to consider adding it to the latter part of this article.]

When we aren’t recognizing our perceptions then we blame others for how we are feeling. We make our dis-ease into the person opposite us, our job, our employers, our friends and/or our family. We hope that instead of taking responsibility for our discomfort we can displace it onto someone or something else. We are afraid of seeing our own vulnerabilities, our own pain and fears. We have this belief that life is too much of a struggle and to actually touch these waters is to drown in our pain.

Earlier this month in a support group call Eric discussed the idea that “if you aren’t getting what you want then you don’t love yourself”. Therein lies our biggest problem: our lack of self-esteem, confidence, and self-love are what create our perceptions about life to go askew. We react from a place of low self-esteem or it may show up as the opposite, arrogance… yet either way it comes from a place of judging self or others. It comes from fear instead of love.

Think of an example where you are blaming someone else for your discomfort. This could be with a lover, and ex-lover, a work colleague, friend, or family member where something has occurred that you have perceived that you were betrayed, hurt, angry about, or where something has “happened” to you. Everything you are feeling in this situation is perception. You have taken something that happened and made it personal and made it about you. Therefore you have placed the blame on someone else for this occurrence, for your feeling this way. You may feel this has made you depressed or contributed to your already low self-esteem. However, no matter what, it is your perception of what has “happened” to you that has created an inner story and likely a story that you have been playing since you were a child.

When a story keeps playing in your life, you know the pattern is there to assist you to evolve towards love. However, what I am inviting you to become conscious about is that what you believed happened is not the motivation of the other people but rather you replaying your story: that in fact, the other person or people involved have their own story replaying in their ego and these people are as caught up as you are; that these people also just want to feel loved; and these people are also reacting to their own story, not trying to play into yours. And that if these people were conscious, they would be able to explain why they did what they did and that it had nothing to do with you.

What I invite you to ponder is what your underlying fear is? What moves you to react? What emotion are you trying to defer, distract or escape from that is the real problem? And if you could realize that by projecting it onto someone else you are not accepting your human side and that diving into this emotion would quickly disperse the fears, the emotions, and, in fact, even the perceptions – once the answers to these questions are identified.

It is never as unpleasant as we believe. It would empower you to see what is real and true. This is just adding to your story and you can discover that all the others that you are blaming, are as innocent as you are … or as human!

See more at http://www.intuitivesoul.com/what-are-your-perceptions