Mastering Awareness with consistency is the key to making changes in our lives. The first step to mastering awareness is self-observation—noticing where we focus our attention, and how this focus makes us feel. There are two basic feelings—feel good and getting better, paddling down stream; or feeling bad and getting worse, paddling up-stream.  If we are not feeling good, we have the opportunity to focus our attention from another point of view, take another route. Many will say that is easier said then done. With persistence and desire, however, shifting how we feel is simpler when we detach from the stories and assumptions in our heads.

For example, inconsistent, even chaotic and intense weather patterns have recently inundated our lives, effecting appointments, travel plans, and the comfort and safety of our homes from power outages and weather related erosion, and global catastrophes.  Instead of assuming the worst-case scenario into the future, the doomsday, fear producing warnings of 2012, we can look instead to the abiding power of the Earth, our responsibility to live in synchronicity with Mother Nature and discover new and better ways to make this happen

We can put our faith into ingenuity and wisdom instead of putting faith into fear, diminishing and constricting our lives. We can experience global climate change as an opportunity to grow in Oneness with all of humanity, while deepening our respect for the events in the natural world. 

Mastering Awareness is learning to focus our attention on what is propelling us to think and act and feel the way we do.  We have the option to stop making choices from conditioned responses, addictive behaviors, and the distortions in our programmed minds.

The key to living in Awareness is to stop making assumptions, repeating stories in our heads and sharing them with others, assuming the future will be a continuation of the past, and presuming that we will always experience life in the way we have. Defending our point of view, justifying our behavior, and rationalizing our perception of the world, expecting others to be and do exactly what they have done in the past is out-dated. Our obligation as a humanity to create in the present, relinquish assumptions based in the past projected into the future has never been clearer. This shift, like any other begins with each of us.

Make a commitment to watch your mind and be your observer. Notice the myriad of assumptions you make every day. Focus light on your assumptions. Cast doubt on what you believe, ask questions and even more important ask follow-up questions, gather information, be quiet and notice your feelings, and make space for options and innovative approaches. Free yourself from making assumptions and enjoy the result of living feely in the present moment.

The call began with focused deep breathing, a guided meditation followed, then each participant spoke his or her gratitude, and after a silent gratitude minute, an inspirational quote concluded the call.

Be Grateful for Your Breath

Spotlighting gratitude provides an opportunity for living in-sync with the abundance that supports life. When we focus on the big picture, we see that the Universe abides by natural laws ~ inevitable, repeatable and understandable laws. For example, during respiration, plants and animals consume oxygen and emit carbon dioxide. Incidentally, that same photosynthetic process which takes place in the oceans also removes carbon dioxide from the earth’s atmosphere. In fact, the oceans, which make up about 75% of the world’s surface are the single largest CO2 reduction system in the world. This phenomenon is the very essence of life itself. You don’t have to be aware that this phenomenon is happening, or that it even exists. It is always happening whether you are aware of it or not.

Make the decision to start each day with this vast, yet simple awareness and watch gratitude expand. BE GRATEFUL FOR YOUR BREATH.  You will simply not be the same person two months from now after consciously giving thanks, appreciation and gratitude each day for your breath.

Before you get out of bed, before you are fully awake, focus on your breath. Take a slow deep breath in and hold it Then let the breath go even more slowly. Repeat this five times and feel gratitude in your heart for your breath. Then let your mind return yesterday and focus on three events, circumstances or people for which you have gratitude and smile. Then focus on today and decide the quality that you will bring to your day. Make it a happy day, or a day filled with activity, or a contemplative day, or perhaps a day filled with unconditional love.  You decide. Be grateful that you have the choice to create the quality of your day.

Now you are in the best mind frame to have the best day. Repeat this morning ceremony for 21 days creating a pattern in your brain, Then master that pattern and repeat it for another 21 days. As you watch your life change, you will know there is so much to be grateful for. This is just the beginning.  But, you already knew that.

Join the morning Gratitude Call at 7 AM Eastern.

Dial in number: 1-218-862-7200

Even when we are focusing on joy and feeling gratitude for life, sometimes stuff happens, and we are thrown off our joyful course into fear, anxiety, tension, and stress. (FATS) The events that create this shift in feeling can be as temporary as the failure of the computer’s operating system, as constricting as the economy going deeper into the red, or as permanent as the loss of a cherished relationship through death.

And yet aren’t these feelings that billions of people share— emotion (energy in motion). Isn’t it wonderful that human beings throughout the planet, though often misguided by their conditioning and mind-chatter, can connect through the experience of  “feel good” and “don’t feel good.”?  From powerless to un-conditional love, each of us knows the truth of how we feel. When we have gratitude for that unity of the human experience, we have gratitude for life itself.

In The Circle of Fire Prayer, don Miguel Ruiz writes “… I will live my life with gratitude, love, loyalty and justice/ beginning with myself and continuing with my brothers and sisters…” Ruiz begins with gratitude because gratitude, he writes, is one of the most beautiful expressions of love. When we live our lives with love, we will love ourselves unconditionally no matter what, no matter what!  We will live our lives with loyalty—loyalty to ourselves —we will never go against ourselves or betray ourselves again. When we live our lives with  justice, we will no longer judge ourselves– creating shame, guilt and self- abuse. Of course, we must begin with ourselves so we know how living this way feels, and then we will choose to “continue with our brothers and sisters. ”

I remember a Toltec Dreaming Retreat when forty people repeated The Circle of Fire Prayer at three-minute intervals from midnight till dawn. Needless to say it was a very long night. In retrospect, however, since that night, my outlook has progressively shifted from fear and worry to faith and gratitude. The words of The Circle of Fire Prayer are tattooed in my cells. Practice makes the master.

The more we practice gratitude beginning with ourselves, the more we see and experience more to be grateful for. Live with gratitude, just for being alive; embrace and give gratitude for the richness of being human—especially for human feeling. Have gratitude for the breath of life itself. To master gratitude is the blue-print for a joy-filled life in which there is always so much to be grateful for.

To learn about Toltec Dreaming go to click here.   To purchase Prayers by don Miguel Ruiz go to Amazon

To join a Gratitude Call at 7 AM Eastern M-F call 641-715-3625 pin 938854

To join a Gratitude Call at 10 AM Eastern Wednesday only call 712-775-7300 pin 404-459-1592.

To create your own daily Gratitude Practice listen to these Gratitude Meditations.

Wednesday – September 9^th, September 16^th , September 23^rd , September 30^th & October 7^th
Time: 90 minute class – 2 time slots for your convenience – 3:00pm and 8:00pm
Cost: $150.00

Please register with Michele at michele@lifemasteryprograms.com or go to  http://www.lawofattractioncatalog.com/event_details.html?eventid=11149 for more information

The Four Agreements are:
1. Be impeccable with your word
2. Don’t take anything personally
3. Don’t make assumptions
4. Always do your best

Participants recognize that taking things personally leads to self-doubt, self-judgment, limitation, and suffering. They continue to take things personally even though they realize they are hurting themselves. The question they ask is “How do I stop taking things personally? If my partner, friend or boss says something that really hurts my feelings, it has to be about me!” The answer to this statement is No! It is when we subconsciously agree with them that it hurts us.

As children we made agreements about ourselves based on what people told us. We didn’t know we had choices. The adults around us dictated who we were and how we were to behave. Eventually, these agreements became perfected habits, reinforced as we believed them.

When we decide to live with awareness we can *heal* the insecurities, the hurts, and the pain we feel from taking things personally. We learn that when someone says something about us, the person is really telling us about them; how they see the world, and what they believe, which has nothing to do with us. When someone tells us how we should be, that person is speaking from her perception, conditioning, beliefs and opinions; in other words, again showing us who they are.

Everyone in our lives is a mirror, posing as an opportunity to experience beliefs about ourselves that are in action just below the surface, reflecting aspects of ourselves hidden from our awareness. We are always drawing into our lives exactly what we need to heal within ourselves. However, we often miss the opportunity to recognize the mirror because we fall into the mind’s trap of taking things personally.

From this point of view taking things personally is a waste of our energy invested in suffering based on another’s projection. Instead – we can be grateful that the light of awareness is reflected on our reaction and through deliberate awareness, we can take respsonsibility for uncovering a past agreement stuck on autopilot and in turn stop believing it. We can notice behaviors in others we don’t like and ask ourselves if that way of being is active in us.

I remember a time when I let go of all the people in my life whom I perceived as being “controlling”. Today, I appreciate those people as mirrors of myself, and have healed my need to control. A key to personal freedom lies in NOT taking things personally.

Always express appreciation for the whole process. Imagine these irritations as the means to cleaning up your own act, for they are the reflections of what you have believed about yourself. Soon, not only will you know more about who the other person is, you will know more about yourself as well.

Beliefs are alive, supported by a distinct emotional point of view, and without awareness they run our lives. For me there was always something to worry about, surprises out of left field, and disappointments to stop me in my tracks.

By my mid-20s I realized that others were taking risks, having fun and experiencing love, while I survived from outside the fishbowl, nose against the glass watching, waiting and fearing. The quest to overcome the pain of fear became my personal experiment, guiding me through the traditional process of self-discovery peppered with deep periods of introspection. Through marriage, motherhood and work, fear focused my perception, always lurking under the surface.

After a roller-coaster life of fear and not fear, I read The Four Agreements, by don Miguel Ruiz, Toltec Master and Shaman. I had found the key for me and was compelled to go deeper. As a Dreamer in the Toltec Mystery School, I learned that fear is a distortion of the mind whose job it is to keep us safe. I learned to quiet my mind, expunge cellular memory, and most important: to focus on gratitude as love in action.

Because the mind can only hold one thought at a time, focusing on gratitude replaces the fear, and consistent practice makes the master. The original Toltecs, who built the pyramid city of Teotihuacan 2,000 years ago, knew this. At Teotihuacan the physical representation of gratitude stands as an expression of beauty, universal connection through art, architecture and the structure of the city itself.

I imagine myself as an early Toltec, arriving in fear from a distant mountain village, giving up past constricting beliefs as I walk the Avenue of the Dead choosing a new focus of beauty and gratitude, knowing that everything is connected, living in trust. I know that I am always at the moment of choice, choosing between gratitude or fear. Knowing that fear is “false evidence appearing real” – a result of fear-based conditioning and limiting beliefs, I let go of fear and open the flood gates for more and more to be grateful for.

Join Michele Laub M-F for Your Gratitude Call at 7:00 and/or 10:00 A.M. (ET)Dial 218-486-3850 and enter PIN 51601#

It is a great way to start your day. Feel, express, and come together with others in the spirit of gratefulness. Put the universal laws in motion for yourself, while positively impacting the collective. We welcome participants from all over the world.

For more information visit www.HumanPotentialUnlimited.com and select Gratitude Call

 

 

During the day our dream is framed by the language we speak and conditioned responses. At night there is no frame, we dream in metaphor, symbols and intuition.

We move about in our daily lives within the virtual reality of our dream, created by the sum of our focus and attention. Wherever we put our attention will stop the rest of the world from showing up.

The mind can only hold one thought at a time. As we consistently place our attention on what feels good, and makes us happy we are on the *happiness road* – attracting more of the same into our virtual reality. No matter what occurs in the world news or the incidental events in our lives, we can always find something to be grateful for, such as the bed we sleep in.

When we focus on worry, we find there is much to worry about. In a meeting with a 100yr old woman, who had lived an ordinary life, I asked what was the most important information she had to share. She replied “Everything I worried about never happened, and the things that happened, that took me off guard, I never could have imagined. I used up much of my life worrying for nothing.”

Watch your thoughts and whenever you hear yourself saying “the reality is…” -STOP-
Recognize that you have brought that reality into your virtual reality through your focus, giving you the exact same power to reject it.

Whose dream is it anyway? Yours. When you create your dream through deliberate awareness and intention, no matter what, you will experience living profound freedom and joy as you weave your own virtual reality.

We all embody three aspects of the human condition, which when aligned in harmony, energize our authentic self:

1. The Conscious mind – the decision maker, logical thinker; whose primary job is to keep us safe. We are aware of this part of the mind.
2. The Subconscious mind – the storehouse for our beliefs formed from early conditioning and interpretation connected to emotions. Like an iceberg, 90% of our make-up is stored here and we are not consciously aware of this part of the mind. This is the part that is generally running the show; it is the part that we will illuminate with awareness through our practices.
3. The Supraconscious – the connection to all; often referred to as the spirit or higher self; This part has a better sense of the self’s ideal than the conscious mind does.

When these three aspects are in conflict, no matter how much we consciously focus on what we want, our desires elude us, happiness is fleeting, and like Bill Murray’s character, we are stuck in a rut destined to repeat the same actions over and over again, leading us to believe that life does not change.

When we decide to live in awareness, we realize that what our minds tell us is not necessarily the truth, and we can let go of beliefs formed when we were not aware, and create space for new beliefs and new ways of being, but this time with awareness, Now we have a clear mental canvass to create our lives in the present, as we quiet mental chatter and observe our actions.

We work with a mentor, attend workshops, read self-help books, and meditate, all with the goal of re-creating our lives with awareness. We then have the opportunity to construct new patterns, rituals, beliefs, and act from the point of awareness in the moment. The three aspects of our human condition are now in alignment, and our lives improve.

Are you willing to take a day and start changing your life?

Start by watching (stalking) your mind for an entire day.

Set a timer, and every thirty minutes STOP and stalk your mind.

Write down the words you are speaking to yourself.

You have just entered the realm of awareness.

Join “Your Gratitude Call”
Monday through Friday
7AM US E.S.T.
218-486-3850
PIN 51601#

“Belief colors every experience and determines how we react
in any situation, yet we are often unaware of the hidden beliefs that guide
us.” Ray Dodd from The Power of Belief

Since embracing this wisdom, I hunt for beliefs on every
level—those that I am aware of and those I am not, those that support my life
and those that limit it, those that are supported by society and those that
emanate from me personally.

It is a game I play in re-creating myself—expose the belief
through listening to my thoughts, and not necessarily believing them; observing my behavior, owning my present
creation, paying attention to what I say and the energy behind my words.
Hunting beliefs is a doorway to really knowing myself

So when my physical trainer recommended that I complete a
10-day Master cleanse fast, I thought, oh another opportunity to find out
something more about me. From my
immediate internal reaction which was’ I can’t do that. I will die” though I
spoke “ I will have to think about it.” I could see that I had a lot of belief
uncovering ahead of me to maintain my integrity.

I found that I believed that I would be sick, nauseous,
weak, fuzzy brained, unable to drive, unable to think, unable to work, that
fasting worked for others and not for me, Wow! No wonder I never fasted.

Then like everything else I made a “big deal” of in the
past, the fantasies attached to beliefs based in the fear of the unknown and
not good enough, I decided to create this experience of the Master Cleanse
Fast—one day—one hour at a time. The Master Cleanse is a combination of lemon
juice, filtered water, cayenne pepper and grade “B” Maple Syrup. Surprisingly, not as yucky as it sounds. As
the days passed maintaining the fast brought powerful, though diverse feelings
and physical experiences. Not only was I “fuzzy brained” at times, I had
clarity of vision and hearing beyond my typical experiences. Not only did I feel hunger in my belly; I
also felt relief about not cooking and eating and choosing what and where to
eat. Life became simpler and each day brought color filled and unusual
experiences. The myths about what would happen to me disappeared, and life in
the present moment took on expanded meaning.

Now that I have returned to eating, I much more mindful of
my choices, and am grateful for any food that is provided. I trust that food
exists for health and pleasure– a shift in attitude. Food is not life, and
lack of food is not death. Wow! What
energy I gave away to food, or no food.
All that energy has returned to me. The energy to create beyond
self-limiting beliefs, self-doubt and limitation is an energy I have decided to
invite into my life. This fast has been an invitation to a new consciousness.

I invite you to embrace the courage to bust a long held
belief that you would choose to give up if you believed you could… and watch what happens. Your comments and
personal insights are welcome