Ilchi Lee's Blog, page 37

The Golden Rule of Health

I’d like to introduce a principle that can serve as the cornerstone of your efforts to have better health, whatever your state of health right now. I call it the “Golden Principle of Health.”

Certain principles, or causes, underlie all natural phenomena. You might also call them “natural laws” since they are intrinsic to the way the world works. The reason the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, for example, is that the earth rotates. And the natural law of gravity makes apples fall from their trees.

Universal principles lie behind our health, too, and failing to live in harmony with them gives rise to illness. With so many people sick these days, illness may seem normal, and it may seem like you have to do an awful lot to keep yourself healthy, but good health is the most natural condition of life. In other words, being healthy is what’s normal. So, to regain and retain good health, you need to understand the principles of health and live according to them.

I think this most central of these principles is:

Keep your head cool and your belly warm.

You’re healthy when you follow this Golden Principle of Health and unhealthy when you don’t. No matter what physical or mental issues you may have, if you apply this principle in your daily life, you’ll be able to make progress toward clearing them up.

Consider applying this principle to maintain your health as important as social distancing, wearing a mask when going out, and frequently washing hands during the coronavirus pandemic. It works best when you make it a daily habit, like eating, brushing your teeth, and washing your face.

Check Your Condition

Before I describe this principle in detail, try checking your physical condition right now to see how healthy you are in light of this principle. First, touch your forehead with your hand and then the nape of your neck, sensing the temperature of these two areas. Now try clasping your hands together and feel their temperature. Also try sensing the temperature of your belly and feet by touching them with your hands. Does your forehead or the back of your neck feel about the same as your belly, hands, and feet or cooler? Or do they feel a little or a lot warmer?

It’s great if your forehead and neck feel cool and your belly, hands, and feet feel warm. If that’s your condition, you’re probably focusing well, with your mind at peace and your head clear. You may have enough energy to get through your day, be able to eat and sleep well, and approach life with enthusiasm. You’re better able to be creative and productive.

But if your forehead feels hot or if your belly, hands, or feet feel cold, then the harmony and the balance of your body may be broken, either temporarily or chronically. In this unbalanced state, your senses are duller and your breathing is shallower than they should be. Your shoulders and neck may be stiff, or you may experience headaches. You may also have problems with your digestive system. This condition affects your mental state, as well. Flooded with thoughts, you have trouble concentrating or sleeping. If you try to read in this condition, you’ll have difficulty grasping and retaining details. You may also feel confused or hesitant about making decisions.

Regain Your Balance

It’s not hard to reverse this imbalance, however. Even if your head is already cool and your belly warm, try the following exercise and see how you feel.

Standing or sitting on the floor or in a chair, make loose fists with your hands.
Relax your shoulders and tap your lower abdomen two inches or so below your navel using the part of your fists where your little fingers are located. Alternate your fists, tapping 100 times.
Apply enough force so that you feel the vibration of your tapping in your abdomen, providing some degree of stimulation.
After you finish tapping, close your eyes for about a minute as you comfortably focus on the sensations you feel in your body.

Do you feel a warm heat developing in your belly? Is your chest more comfortable, your breathing deeper? Does it feel like a kind of pressure or heat in your head is now sinking into your body? Are your eyes moister, and is your mouth filling with saliva? Do you feel better?

The type and intensity of sensations will differ from person to person, but people almost universally feel their bellies growing warmer and saliva filling their mouths. If you’re sensitive to physical sensations, you may get tangible feelings of warm vitality filling your body.

With this simple exercise, you are able to change the condition of your body in a very short time, making your head cooler and your abdomen warmer—in other words, putting your body into a healthier state.

A Principle of Energy

This principle involves more than temperature. It’s also about circulation. An organism is healthy when it has good circulation. With good circulation, nutrients and oxygen are supplied to every cell of our bodies, and carbon dioxide and waste products are fully eliminated.

Many things circulate in our bodies. Blood circulates through our blood vessels, lymph through our lymphatic system, and bioelectrical impulses through our nerves. But there is something crucial circulating through our bodies apart from these things—energy. The circulation of energy is every bit as important as that of blood and lymph, for it is the foundation that makes all other forms of circulation possible.

Keep your head cool and your belly warm. This is the Golden Rule of Health because it is the law of energy circulation, which lies behind our inherent state of good health. If you follow this one rule in your daily life, you can remain in this natural state of vitality.

I go into great depth on this principle and how to apply it in your life in my upcoming book: Water Up Fire Down: An Energy Principle for Creating Calmness, Clarity, and a Lifetime of Health.

How to Have True Peace of Mind

We train ourselves to gain peace of mind. Some people mistakenly believe that this peace of mind is a state from which all worries have vanished. However, troubles never cease as long as you’re living life as a human being. True peace of mind comes from an attitude of accepting those troubles, not a state from which all worries have disappeared.

Living people worry anyway, and it’s proof that they’re alive. Once we’ve chosen enlightenment, our wandering ends and peace comes. At the same time, we realize that the concerns we’ve had so far have been trivial. That’s when our big worries begin. Those worries are for everyone, not just for ourselves as individuals.

Do you want your worries to go away, and do you want to find peace? Don’t try to rest. Don’t try to be comfortable. True tranquility is found in living and doing your best for the goal you’ve chosen. There’s no more peaceful path. The only way to end all kinds of suffering is to stake everything on heading toward a great goal.

Proper worrying is contemplation and practice. Your little worries hide themselves when you have greater concerns. So don’t hope to be free of troubles. Don’t worry about having worries. Such concerns are a springboard allowing us to grow.

Life without worries and questions is a dead life.

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Meditation to Connect to Abundance

[Photo by seventyfourimages at Envato Elements]

Your mind can create blessings or disasters, can heal or harm, can bring abundance or absence. It is up to your mind whether the world looks hopeful or hopeless.

You may have heard something like this many times. Motivational speakers may have told you to change your attitude or outlook, and law of attraction experts have emphasized imagining what you really want instead of dwelling on what you lack.

I have given such advice too, but it could be difficult to believe that something so simple could work if you are worried about whether you and your family can be healthy and financially stable.

So I would like to explain a little more about how to connect to the natural abundance we all have inside us and bring that about in our lives.

Everything Is Energy

Our abundance comes from the life force within us, the energy you may have heard called chi, ki, or prana. I’ve given it another name as well—LifeParticles. As the name suggests, LifeParticles are the smallest particles of life, but they are not only matter. They are a combination of matter, energy, and consciousness. Everything is made of LifeParticles. That means you can never lack LifeParticles, and that everything has an aspect of consciousness and can be affected by consciousness. Our consciousness can affect other consciousness and make LifeParticles come together to form something solid or move them apart.

Of course, we can’t see our minds, our consciousness, do this directly with our eyes. We can only see it on the screen of our minds, what I call the MindScreen. On our MindScreens, our imagination can paint any picture it wants. It can defy the laws of physics and is not bound by time or space. Pink zebras could be morphing through your window right now.

But the hard dense world of reality is bound by physics (including quantum physics), and in it, we experience time and space. So it’s difficult for ordinary folks to see pink zebras coming through the window without breaking it right now. But many other things are possible for us—like having a growing career, a healthy family, and nurturing relationships.

Even with wishes closer within the realm of the currently possible reality than pink zebras, however, our thoughts and actions may keep them away from us. Our unconscious thoughts, our unhelpful coping habits, or our learned worldview may be counteracting what we consciously intend.

Abundance Is in Your Brain

That’s where meditation comes in. It takes practice, but with meditation, we can bring our conscious minds into the realm of our unconscious minds and free up the thoughts and emotions that don’t align with the future we want. It’s where we can heal trauma, let go of attachments, and meet the divine, creative aspects of ourselves.

The part of the brain I’ve realized is the seat of the unconscious mind and of our divine nature is the brain stem. Connected to the top of the spinal cord, the brain stem supervises vital, automatic functions such as breathing, heartbeat, and blood pressure through the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. It can also be called the “Life Brain.” The brain stem, particularly the pineal gland just above it, is also the location of the sixth chakra, the energy center within us that’s responsible for inspiration and insight. Our MindScreen is projected from this place at the center of our brains.

In a meditative state of mind, the activity of the brain stem increases dramatically as the thoughts and emotions of the neocortex (your “thinking brain”) and the limbic system (your “emotion brain”) are reduced. This is the calm and clear state that integrates the different parts and functions of your brain, and thus allows your body’s natural healing processes or creative inspiration to emerge from the world of the unconscious through the MindScreen.

Clear Your Energy First

You may be wondering how we can change our thoughts or habits just by quieting certain parts of our brain and redirecting our focus from outside of ourselves to our brain stem. The change is initiated at the level of energy. There is a principle of energy that says where the mind goes, energy follows. When you focus on your brain stem, your unconscious mind, in meditation, you are bringing fresh energy there, particularly if you visualize bright light filling that imaginary space. That energy pushes out the dark, stagnant energy of negative emotions and attachments that may be holding you back and clouding your ability to see a happy future. You are replacing LifeParticles with the energy of lack or limitation with LifeParticles with the positive, limitless energy of abundance. These pure LifeParticles come from the Source of life, from the oneness and unformed potential that underlies everything in existence.

It’s when you can project what you want onto your MindScreen with a pure and free consciousness, a state known as the zero point, that it has the power to become reality. In this state, you are also able to experience that you and all life is self-existent—unattached to the past or present, time or space, emotions or preconceptions. It’s this free and independent consciousness that can control LifeParticles on the MindScreen and in life.

Try this practicing this LifeParticle Meditation for Abundance if you would like to experience this for yourself.

Find a quiet spot to sit with your back and neck straight.
Tap your body with your fists or palms to relax your body and mind.
Then breathing naturally, imagine golden particles of light coming into the very top of your head.
See these particles filling your entire brain, and then going straight down through your body in a line. (This will brighten and balance all of your chakras.)
Then visualize the light filling your entire body.
The light expands to surround you in a capsule of light.
Breathe naturally in this state for a few minutes, noticing your breath, feeling it gradually deepen and slow. Bask in the light, allowing feelings of joy, love, oneness, and peace to arise inside you.
Then focus on the center of your head, where your brain stem/sixth chakra is located. See it filled with bright light. From the light there, project the type of abundance you want to bring into your life onto the screen of your mind. See it in as much detail as possible. Imagine it with all of your senses. As you do this, you may be presented with ideas to use in creating what you want.
Spend some time noticing how being in such a state of abundance feels to you.
Finish the meditation with three deep breaths.

From Inside to Out

Connecting to our inner abundance and using our mind are important and necessary steps for bringing abundance to our everyday lives. Even more than using our mind, taking action moves LifeParticles toward what we want. Acting on the inspiration we receive through meditation while keeping a zero point mindset has the most potent power to attract abundance.

Each and every moment of our lives is an instant of creation that causes LifeParticles to move. Our mind guides LifeParticles in the vast terrain of unlimited possibilities. If there is something you want—health, happiness, improved relationships, material abundance—keep it before you on your MindScreen. One day you will also see it with your eyes.

Editor’s Note

Learn more about Ilchi Lee’s teachings on LifeParticles from his book, LifeParticle Meditation: A Practical Guide to Healing and Transformation.

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One Important Way to Master Your Time

[Photo by nenetus @ Envato Elements]

What are you doing today? Are you satisfied with what you’ve done so far or with what you plan to do?

If we don’t take a moment to take stock of how we’re using our space and time, we can live controlled by them. We just go on day by day until suddenly a week has passed, a month, and then years. On the other hand, if we design and make good use of our space and time, we can be successful at whatever we attempt.

Many people begin their day hating to get out of bed in the morning, and they go to sleep after a hard day without first cleaning out their emotions. Those who have jobs live their lives led about by time, as, out of obligation, they just check the clock for the time to go to work, the time to get off work, and the time for their next meeting.

To actively direct your time instead of being led about by it, check in with yourself instead of only checking the clock. Report to yourself three times a day, but don’t just do it passively. Move your body actively to wake up your body and brain. One exercise I like to do as I check in is called Belly Button Healing.

Belly Button Healing

>Belly Button Healing is a method of abdominal massage that primarily involves repeatedly and rhythmically pressing your navel with your fingers or a tool over your clothing. It’s a way to improve blood, lymph, and energy circulation; strengthen your core; lift your mood; warm your body; and calm your brain waves. You can use just a minute of Belly Button Healing to reset your energy, mind, and mood throughout your day.

Your first report begins as soon as you get up in the morning. Press your belly button with the attitude, “I will live today with meaning and passion, and I will make it a moving, happy day.” See how you are that moment and set an intention and goals for the day.

Then do an intermediate report to yourself in the afternoon. Ask yourself, “What have I done so far today? How will I spend the time I have left?”

Finally, as you end your day, do a closing report, thinking, “How did I live today? Did I do work that was somehow meaningful?” With each press of your belly button, let go of the thoughts and emotions you accumulated that day.

Incremental Self-Care and Achievement

These three daily reports—beginning, intermediate, and closing—you make to your true self, not to anyone else. They’re different from the obligatory reports you make at work. We are generally under obligation or compulsion when we schedule our time, but these are one minute bursts of time we take for ourselves.

By frequently reporting to yourself, try to design your life each day, thinking about how you will live a life of fulfillment, compassion, and self-care. Your life will change once you’ve done that. With just these short bits of time, accumulated day after day, your life can become more energized, proactive, and intentional. And you can achieve deeper unity with your true self. The starting point is one minute of Belly Button Healing.

Doing Belly Button Healing three times a day is significant on more than a physical level. You can also connect with the earth as you do Belly Button Healing. Our bodies are the earth.

Our bodies are nature, and the earth is nature; they are ultimately one. The belly button is connected with all life and also with the earth. As you do Belly Button Healing, try to think, “I’m also healing the earth right now. My body is for the earth, so healing my body is healing the earth.” If you do this, your consciousness will grow.

With this daily practice, you have the power to resolve to yourself: “I am the master of my life. I design my life.” That beginning originates in the belly button.

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[Video] Deep Meditation Sounds for Better Sleep and Relaxation

Are you having a hard time sleeping or relaxing? Do you have too many thoughts and worries in your mind? Changing your brain waves with soothing sounds can help.

I played the flute for those of you who need to relax and sleep better.
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I played the flute for those of you who need to relax and sleep better. Find a comfortably place to lie down and immerse yourself in the sound. Breathe comfortably, letting your breathing deepen naturally. Let the sound and the feeling of your breath keep you in the present moment.

As you listen, your body and mind will gradually relax. The music is supporting you, so you can let go of the world and drift off into unconsciousness.

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Master Your Body to Master Your Brain

[Photo by TrendsetterImages @ Envato Elements]

Mastering your body means being able to use your body as you want. Do you have many things you want to do, but regret not getting enough of them done because of lethargy or feeling unwell? Many of us have become slaves of our body without realizing it. You know this has happened to you when you hear yourself thinking, “My body doesn’t like this. It’s hard,” and then avoid that situation. Or you find yourself caught in negative emotions, unable to get away from them. In these situations, we are giving into our bodies whims, whether they fit what we want or not.

Unfortunately, the more we listen to our stiffness, pain, fear, or frustration, the less likely we are to use our energy. Instead of moving when we’re tired and don’t have enough energy, we go into energy-saving mode and try to avoid using energy unless it is absolutely necessary. But when we do this, the life energy that circulates in our body pools and stagnates, and the energy points on our body close. If this becomes a habit, we simply become lazy and full of inertia.

What can we achieve or how can we respond to change if we have this much inertia? If the energy in our body doesn’t circulate, our health declines, our minds become dull, and we escape into ourselves to avoid conflict or hardship. Breaking out of this rut requires changing the lazy mode of our brains. We have to switch our brains into a mode in which the more energy we use, the better we feel. If we are to do that, our brains must often experience states in which the body is full of energy. We can train our bodies with mind-body exercises that energize them.

Train Your Body

The Belly Button Healing, Longevity Walking, Brain Wave Vibration, and Abdominal Breathing methods that I teach are examples of ways for changing our brains by moving our bodies. They are mindful, rhythmic exercises involving awareness and breathing that ultimately open a path for our consciousness to move from the neocortex, (our thinking brain) to the brain stem (our subconscious mind). They purify the stagnant energy in the body, facilitate blood flow, and enable energy to flow well throughout the body.

When we use up our stagnant energy with exercises such as these, then the vital energy that exists in the brain stem is able to fill the whole body. Our bodies feel lighter and more energetic while our lower abdomens, our bodies’ core, feel stronger. Our minds also feel clearer and more open because we have less thoughts whirling around in them.

Uncontrolled thinking, getting lost in memories, or worrying about the future override the part of our brain, our brain stem, that enables us to make spiritual choices. In this situation, our consciousness is trapped by our ego, and we do not make pure choices. So these mind-body exercises are also important for making pure, spiritual choices rather than choices rooted in the desires and limitations of the body.

Move with Purpose

Those who are truly masters of their bodies, when they decide to do something, their body moves. They don’t move their bodies with their thoughts; their minds move their energy, which moves their bodies. This is a state in which mind, energy, and body are one. It is a state in which the spiritual body, the mind, has become the master of the physical body. Once you achieve that state, then, no matter what action you take, your body will be filled with energy, and that energy will flow ceaselessly. Your brain stem is activated, and the different parts of your brain work together through that energy. Then, you come to realize your life purpose and act with passion to fulfill that purpose.

In fact, if you keep your purpose in mind as you do exercises to move your body and energy, even basic ones such as push-ups, sit-ups, or walking, not only will you be more motivated to exercise, but more of the vital energy in your brain stem will be activated. That means that more of your subconscious mind and more of your body’s automatic processes will align with your purpose. In this way, you are not only mastering your body, but you are using your body to master your brain.

When you become used to burning up all your energy as you focus on an important goal, you may automatically feel joy. This is the joy of breaking the resistance of your inertia and emotions and of your consciousness moving beyond your ordinary thoughts and emotions to your insight and intuition. Then you can use your inner wisdom to live a fulfilling life of purpose and passion. And you’ll be able to experience having a vigorous body through the physical practice of establishing a goal and using up your energy for that goal.

 

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A Method for Making the Best Use of Your Brain

[Photo by AboutImages via Envato Elements]

When it comes to imagination, there are good imaginings and bad, but there is no good or bad meditation. “I’m meditating to steal from people.” No one meditates with such thoughts in mind. True meditation can be done when it’s based on a good heart.

A meditative state is a level from which it is possible to observe the true nature of your life just as it is, to feel your soul and spirit and the souls and spirits of others, and to feel the lives of many people.

The way to avoid risky situations in every day life is doing many good deeds and thinking many good thoughts. The way to eliminate things like victim consciousness, selfishness, and bad habits is working to help others with their own, doing many good deeds, and letting go of attachments.

By doing that, you repeatedly let go of old baggage and create positive energy and a hopeful mind. This makes your brain more refreshed and versatile. You can enter a true meditative state only if you are not clouding your brain with past deeds and old information, but instead are holding good intentions.

Meditation is a method for using your brain in the freest, most positive way. Nothing is as good as meditation for making good use of your brain.

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[Video] A Song to Give You Hope and Comfort

There’s a very famous Korean song from the early 1970s called “Morning Dew” that was written and composed by Mingi Kim. Although not originally intended to be, it became a song of hope for the democratization movement battling a dictatorship in South Korea in the 1970s and 1980s. Its lyrics say that faced with sorrow or hardship, I keep going and climbing and leave them behind.

“Morning Dew” is one of my favorite songs, because it reminds me that all the ups and downs in my life have made me who I am now. Every time I listen to this song, it gives me strength. So, I sang this song for you. I hope you receive strength from my song.

Lyrics

Like morning dew, prettier than pearls

Hanging on every blade of grass

When sorrow hangs in my heart, drop by drop

I hike the morning hill and learn a little smile

The red sun rises over the graves

And the sweltering heat of the day is my trial

I shall now go into that barren desert

Casting off all the sorrow, I shall now go

When sorry hangs in my heart, drop by drop

I hike the morning hill and learn a little smile

The red sun rises over the graves

And the sweltering heat of the day is my trial

I shall now go into that barren desert

Casting off all the sorrow, I shall ow go

 

For more songs and sound healing, subscribe to Ilchi Lee’s YouTube channel here.

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A Step-by-Step Way to Manage Change and Achieve Your Goals

[Photo by @hursl via Twenty20]

The COVID-19 pandemic has woken many of us up from our routines and sped up many slow moving problems that existed before it hit us. The parts of our health or our social systems that we could not manage well have been pushed to a critical point. We can no longer avoid changing our approach.

I think a system of business development I adopted long ago for personal development can help us manage the many changes we need to make and do it with hope and care. It’s called >Plan-Do-Check-Act or PDCA.

Plan: Set a goal and a strategy for achieving it

Do: Start carrying out your strategy

Check: Look at your progress toward your goal at regular intervals

Act: Adjust your strategy based on your evaluation and put it into effect

PDCA tells us to set a direction for ourselves and to track our progress along the way. Rather than simply having a wish or dream, with PDCA we can bring that dream down to earth with a realistic plan and a way to move forward. It also reminds us not to keep going blindly toward our dream. Instead, it says to check our progress to see if we’re really going in the right direction and whether our initial plan is still valid.

For example, let’s say you want to lose weight. Based on PDCA, you would set a goal to lose a certain amount of weight by a certain time. Then you would make a plan about how you will do it. You’d detail what foods you will eat, how much food, and at what times. You would plan out your exercise routines and develop a strategy for overcoming resistance and distractions. Acting on your plan, you would keep track of your weight, as well as your food and exercise, every day around the same time. If you noticed that you weren’t losing weight fast enough to reach your goal weight by the time you set, you would adjust your strategy, perhaps adding more exercise or more sleep to your daily regimen. If you saw that your work interfered with your exercise, you might change the time at which you worked out. By paying close attention to the details of your goal and keeping close track of your progress, you raise your chances of reaching your goal in time.

Using PDCA is a way to be mindful about our lives. It prevents us from easily falling into a routine that’s not working and not realizing it until another crisis shakes us up. By continuously doing Check and Act, we’re able to see and understand more from our experience than we could when we first devised our plan. It gives us a sense of the present reality. With PDCA, we can manage ourselves more precisely and find the smoothest path.

Manage Your Emotions by Managing Your Goals

Part of managing ourselves is managing our emotions. Planning involves relaxing and establishing action steps with a clear mind–quite the opposite of worrying. If you have a good plan, then you don’t need to be anxious. You just need to keep checking, revising your plan, and acting on it, and you’ll be able to take the challenges you meet in stride.

Fill all of your time with PDCA, and you won’t have time to worry. With commitment to your goal, continuously ask yourself: “Am I doing PDCA now? Am I planning? Am I doing what I planned? Am I checking? Am I taking action now?” Focusing on your goals like this through PDCA sends more energy to them. Your goals will be achieved when enough energy has been given to them. In this way, you can achieve anything.

It Develops Your Character

The challenge of working toward your goals without fear of failure makes you more assertive and self-confident. It awakens a sense of survival and accomplishment in you. Someone who is self-assured, and who moves their own heart with their sincerity and gratitude, receives help from those around them. It’s just like the saying, “Heaven helps those who help themselves.”

PDCA is essentially a tool for training our character. Choosing is half of it. Then action follows. All you have to do is train yourself with repetition. Choose, act, choose, act and you’ll find the way through any challenge.

Learn more about PDCA in this video:

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4 Ways to Deal with Uncertainty

[Photo by gpointstudio via Envato Elements]

The future is a wide-open blank space—the great unknown. Especially amid unrest and less stability, that looming question mark can cause stress and anxiety. It may leave you paralyzed, unable to hope or plan, leaving a scary blankness in your brain.

Nothing in the future is guaranteed (except death of the body). So what can we do when faced with uncertainty, especially when our ability to fulfill our basic needs of food, shelter, and clothing has been seriously hampered or taken away?

I propose four ways:

Ground yourself in your body in the moment
Stay focused on a picture of what you’d like your life to be like
Surrender your control over how your goals will be achieved
Be grateful for everything you have

Ground Yourself in the Body in the Moment

The physical body has great wisdom. It is the seat of our consciousness. Rather than taking us to great heights, the information stored in our bodies is that of form, of “reality.” By focusing on the body’s sensations, you can learn its wisdom.

This is also an effective way to keep your mind in the moment. When your mind is not flying to the past or, especially, the future, it can see how things are at this moment. When you’re in the moment, there’s nothing uncertain. Everything is here. So it’s easier to feel less anxious or worried about what may come.

Stay Focused on What You Want

It’s the nature of our consciousness that it has the ability to co-create what we experience. So while the future is uncertain, you have the ability to affect it if you hold the picture of what you want in your mind and keep sending energy to it with visualization, with your thoughts and words, and with your actions.

I call this being a LifeParticle transmitter. LifeParticles are the name I’ve given to the smallest particles of life. They are, by definition, matter, energy, and consciousness in one. We are LifeParticles, and everything is LifeParticles coming together and scattering in a never-ending dance of life. Since our own consciousness is LifeParticles, we affect and are affected by other LifeParticles. As a LifeParticle transmitter, your mind can gather LifeParticles into the form of what you want to be, experience, and have.

Surrender Control Over How It Happens

While our minds are great tools of creation, if we hold onto preconceptions and expectations too tightly, LifeParticles cannot flow into the future to create. What we envision best occurs when we surrender ourselves to the process and accept all circumstances. It’s like walking down a path to a destination and enjoying the scenery along the way without trying to change it. Some of the scenery may feel good and give us pleasure. Some of it may make us worry. The scenery we pass, however, does not determine whether or not we will reach our destination if we keep going.

Change is inevitable. If we accept the changes that occur, but stay focused on our ultimate goal, we can better manage the emotions that we may feel when the changes feel out of our control.

Practice Radical Gratitude

Acceptance and calm can come to us more easily when we feel gratitude. Being grateful for whatever we have now, even in uncertain times, can help us feel more hopeful that we will have what we need in the future.

If we try, we can feel gratitude regardless of what is happening in our lives or in the world. We can feel thankful that we’re alive, that we can breathe, that the sun still rises and sets. We can even be grateful for death, as the finiteness of our physical bodies can drive us to find greater meaning and fulfillment. Whatever thought or emotion you become aware of, give it thanks. Such radical gratitude opens you to more joy and opportunities coming into your life.

 

Together, these four frames of mind can turn worry into hope. You can be empowered to strive for a better future, your mind focused on your goals while taking action in the moment. As situations shift, you can shift with them as you continue to steer yourself in the direction you’ve chosen. These tools arm you against the anxiety, fear, or even desperation you may sometimes feel in the face of uncertainty.

 

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