Rachel Naomi Remen & 5 tools to readjust your sails

Rachel Naomi Remen is the author of Kitchen Table Wisdom. Her healing perspective emerges from being a patient herself and living over forty years with chronic illness. She is also a physician and counselor and draws from real life stories.

Rachel has a gift for guiding you to uncover things you had not consciously recognized about yourself.  She has a way of empowering people to acknowledge and transcend their own self-destructive beliefs and judgments.

As you evolve within yourself, you come to sense that her insight reveals she reconnects with her spiritual core. She invites us to open up to be more receptive to the wisdom of the ultimate spiritual teacher, which she believes, is life itself. Consider these 5 tools you can use to readjust your sails;

1) Recognize receiving is not a weakness. People frequently feel drained of energy and do not always understand why this happens. You may assume it relates to what you did or did not eat. Beneath the surface, there is more to it. Some people evolve to give of themselves and do not learn how to receive in return. They exert effort caring for others and do not permit themselves to discover reciprocity. As you relax, you can learn what it feels like to be loved and cared for and transformed as a result.  

2) Choose to redirect your attention. Every experience serves more than one purpose. You grow or stagnate in ways you do not notice until you are ready to move onto another focus. As you evolve in awareness, you are ready to acknowledge particular behaviour or choices no longer serve you.  Things you have been afraid to explore within yourself require courage and encouragement. When you are ready to shift, you will choose to experience sources of pain, frustration and other negative energy.  This is part of a process to rechannel energy and gain deeper self- understanding.

3) Decide to share your feelings. Many people deny this aspect of common humanity. They are taught it is inappropriate, embarrassing, unprofessional or unnatural. They curtail the free-flow of emotional energy because they incorrectly assume no person will understand. This could not be further from the truth. Loneliness emerges as a symptom that deserves new attention.

4) Accept you will never cease to be amazed. As people collect life experience, they may decide that nothing will surprise them anymore. You may have had the same job and same friends or colleagues for a long time, and begin to think you know everyone and have symbolically seen it all. Think again. You experience moments of connection to what is going on around you but you are not always aware.

5) Remove labels and dissolve expectations. How you view things triggers stress. You unconsciously decide one choice, action or situation is better for you. This illusion leads to undesirable anxiety.   As you explore possible reasons for bad energy, you realize values and beliefs underlie your chosen labels and expectations.  If you compromise your true values, then you precipitate imbalance.  As you become more true to yourself, you begin to see stress often relates back to external pressures and expectations that you have deliberately chosen to adopt. Nothing is unchangeable.

What do you do when they fear for you?

This may come as a surprise, but friends and family may not believe in your dreams.  They may not understand your choices.  In fact, they may seem to fear for you. What they are really saying is that they do not know what they would do in your circumstances.  And why would they? After all, they are not you. They only react based on their experience.

I know one older woman who is scared because her son is in a foreign country.  She fears he may choose to work there or remain away for an extended period. When he phones her, she nags or speaks of terrible things she imagines happening and shares negative rumours about what people back home assume he is doing.  She voices her worst fears. What is this woman really saying? She would much prefer that he stay closer to her and not believe in his dreams.  Yet, her behaviour is alienating him and pushing him away.

I know a young woman who is confused about why her entourage fears for her safety and security.  They fear she will never marry or settle down like they have done.  They fear she will not conform to their life choices. They voice their beliefs and she listens.  Then, she shares views.  The entourage does not hear.  They have no similar experience.  Over time, people grow apart because they no longer choose to evolve with or relate to each other's lives.  Part of them feels discomfort in the presence of the other.  What to do?

It is common to have dreams shaken up by friends and family you would have thought would be key sources of support.  What if this is an invitation to revisit your reactions?  What kind of feelings are evoked inside you?  How do your react in truth? Which feelings do you share openly or hide? If you are unhappy with your own company, then you may not be truthful about what matters to you.  It is never too late to shift gears.

Another way to look at it is that you are constantly reading signs of your own internal energy.  When people seem incompatible with your perspective, you can show compassion and you can also choose how much time and effort on them serve you. You have to decide whether your dreams are worth your undivided attention and if so, at what cost?

8 ways to reclaim your own power

When any part of you questions what it means to really feel emotion, this is a pivotal moment.  You are beginning to realize you are in charge of what you perceive.  You are in the process of doing what it takes to reclaim your own power.  How far will you go?

1) Notice and overcome desire to be argumentative. As you become conscious of negative energy, this is a chance to nip it in the bud. Negativity does not serve you.

2) Detach from ego.  This includes many different phases based on your progress with awareness.  You do not need to be right.  You have no reason to judge or analyze in ways you have been taught. You have no reason to lie, be bitter, vengeful or hold grudges.

3) Expand your sense of wealth.  Many people believe wealth is limited to money and material success. The same people will assume you must give something up to have it, you must be greedy, selfish, densensitized or ackknowledge lack. This is all an illusion. Abundance is everywhere. People do not always see true wealth is immeasurable.

4) Recognize opposites exist for balance. You have a judgmental side to regulate your non-judgmental side and teach you the power of love and compassion.  Every thought and feeling has an opposite because you are learning rediscovering balance and inner peace. 

5) Read deeper into your inner dialogue. Some people catch themselves talking aloud and cut themselves off because they find it funny.  Choose to examine this more closely. It actually teaches not only whay you behave as you do but also why you attract what arises in your life.  Your character traits emerge for certain reasons.  Learn about them.

6) Rethink how you define responsibility. You may believe you are involved in why your life develops in certain directions, but you are unaware that how you choose to respond is conditioned and can also be changed based on a shift in your deliberate intention.  Sensing what do do differs from evolving to do it. No time like the present!

7) Explore different sides of your personality.  Regardless of your prominent traits, you have alternative ways of perceiving and understanding things.  Your approach to what happens relates back to how you make choices and respond to what appears in your field of vision or radar. How you view strengths and weaknesses evolves as you do.

8) Rediscover what non-judgmantal means.  Your core energy and zest for life is stifled more often by judgment than illness or any other force.  Absorbing criticism causes you to ignore spontaneous impulses and natural, free-flowing energy. Remind yourself approval is also judgment.  Discipline your mind.  Rediscover unwavering self-acceptance, universal tolerance and unconditional love.  Anything else is judgment.

Learn to accept who you are

The whole idea of getting to know yourself may seem self-explanatory.  And yet, how many people consistently make decisions based on being completely honest with themselves? Many people do not know when they are being honest or what this means.

People will talk about the desire to find deeper satisfaction in their lives.  This is something that each person has to define personally.  We learn much from exploring our beliefs, preconceptions and feelings about ourselves and each other. 

You may evolve to believe that to learn about yourself, it makes sense to better understand your sense of crises.  In some cases, this becomes reason to explore your views about life and death.  Ask yourself what sorts of beliefs you find the courage to write about or speak aloud.  This reveals levels of fear and self-acceptence. 

Take core spiritual teachings of Buddhism. You may view this as a position of non-judgment and non-interference.  It is a process to evolve within to recognize what judgment is or is not, when you do it and why.  Each person is in the process of defining and revising his or her own standards of compassion.  You can grow to realize who you are is fine and life will be all right.  To act from a position of integrity is all you ever need.

10 things that are helping my friend recover from cancer

Increasingly, people are realizing they know someone who has had cancer or, who is experiencing it right now. You may have known this experience yourself. Illness and healing are very personal journeys. No two people's experiences are exactly the same.

Youmay read biographies of seemingly miraculous recoveries and wonder how on Earth it is possible. You may ask yourself what is happening with your own body, mind and spirit, or those of someone you know. You may be ready to consider things you had not before.

In speaking with friends and loved ones who have been caught off guard with a variety of symptoms, I have put together a list of 15 things that are effectively helping one close friend recover from cancer. If you have another illness or know someone suffering from an ailment, these ideas could help. Healing is not specific to one kind of illness. It is a process that begins inside;

1) Believe you are already healed. Positive, mentalenergy goes a long way to manifesting well-being. If you do not believe in your inner power, then doubt sends out undesirable vibes into the universe.

2) Surround yourself by people who believe you will recover. To choose a personal and professional entourage who believe in your ability to stretch and gain something meaningful from your illness will help you grow and heal.

3) Respect the healing power of rest. The physical body works in mysterious ways. You are constantly mending and repairing, but at a different rate when you slow your pace. Sleep is a time when the body undergoes incredible levels of repair. Honor that.

4) Realize you have intrinsic value. Who you are is not based on how you appear, on what you can or cannot do. As you grow inward to accept what you can do at every moment, then you are sowing seeds of love. Self-acceptance has invisible, healing power.

5) Challenge yourself based on your current capacities. Chronic pain, fatigue and weakened faculties alter your energy level. Nonetheless, you can always find sources of motivation. It can be as simple as  getting yourself to the toilet, finding strength to sit up or get out of bed, or getting dressed. Each effort is a milestone.

6)Periodically redefine your priorities. In order to get the most out of where you are and how you feel, it makes sense to re-evaluate your situation in ways that reinforce progress.  It is not how many things you do that matters but. Focus energy in directions that move you forward.

7) Focus on your developing resiliency. You are in better shape that you give yourself credit for.  The more you reinforce the positive points about where yo uare and how far you have come, the more strength your will develop on mental, physical, spiritual and other unseen levels.

8) Limit your intake of news media. Tv, radio and other sources of media tend toward a negative slant. You have no need to hear about murder, casulaties and conflict during your healing journey.

9) Focus on what you can do. rather than think about lack or disability, focus on every step you take as being an encouraging one. You need not measure things in phyicality or temporality. Gauge based on feeling.  As you realize you control how you think and feel, you can focus on joy, determination and healing in ways that make sense to you at every moment.

10) Break everything down into steps you can handle. If you feel the need to learn things from scratch, then do not be afraid to do that. You only ever compete with yourself.  This is not a race. Patience, understanding, tolerance and faith and trust are the kinds of qualities yo uare developing in new ways.