• • •
Never allow your healing symbol to change and never change it yourself. Every time your healing symbol seems to change its form or color, immediately return to your original symbol, as it was given to you by your higher consciousness. It doesn't matter how often you have to repeat this process, because it will not weaken the positive effects of higher-consciousness healing.
Work Actively to Solve the Problem
When we use our symbol, we must work actively toward the solution of our problem and do everything that common sense dictates. Don't just sit back and do nothing, while hoping that your higher consciousness will solve all your problems. Unfortunately, it just doesn't work that way. The following parable exemplifies this point:
Nasreddin and the Flood
A big flood had engulfed the country and Nasreddin sat on top of a tree well above the water. Nasreddin was a very religious man. He fervently prayed to God to save him and he felt total faith in his heart that this would happen. When a boat appeared and the people in it offered to rescue Nasreddin, he declined and told them that he was sure God would save him. The people in the boat tried to convince him to join them, but finally they gave up and went away. Another boat appeared, but Nasreddin declined again. The water rose and rose and, finally, Nasreddin had to let go of the tree and swim in the water. Again he prayed to God to save him and again he felt optimistic that this would happen. A helicopter appeared, but Nasreddin once again declined to be rescued. As before, he told the people that God would save him. Nasreddin swam for three days and three nights in the water. Then his strength failed and he drowned.
When Nasreddin appeared in heaven in front of God's throne, he was furious. “I prayed to you to save me,” he said angrily, “but you let me drown! Didn't you hear my prayers?”
“I heard your first prayer,” God said in a mild way, “and I sent you a boat. But you declined its help. Then I heard your second prayer and I sent another boat, but you declined that help as well. I also heard your third prayer and, that time, I sent you a helicopter. But again, you declined its help. What else, Nasreddin, could I have done for you?”
• • •
This story encourages us to use common sense and take every bit of help that is offered to us. Sometimes, higher-consciousness healing will support us in doing the most obvious thing—the one that was always in front of our nose. At other times, we may even be lucky enough to experience a small miracle. Therefore, always be active and try to improve your situation in whatever way you can.
For those who find it difficult to get up and do something about their problems, here is another piece of good news. I have observed that people who previously just put up with their problems passively suddenly become active in finding solutions when they start practicing higher-consciousness healing. Their healing symbol seems to remove the block that hindered them from being disciplined and active in solving their problems.
Attracting Other Forms of Help
Higher-consciousness healing is not an exclusive method. It can work as a catalyst to trigger other processes that can help us solve our problems. For example, sometimes we “coincidentally” find a book that gives us muchneeded insights; sometimes, we “coincidentally” meet a person who can help us. The following case study demonstrates this dynamic in quite a dramatic way.
Brenda
Brenda suffered from a very painful spinal disorder that was so disabling that she couldn't go to work; she lived on benefits. When she talked to me, she felt so depressed that she was suicidal. I immediately helped her to receive a symbol to dissolve her despair. When I heard from her two months later, she told me an astounding and unlikely story. Brenda had long been convinced that she would get optimal treatment in a special hospital in another country, but she had never had the financial means to get there. After starting to work with her symbol, Brenda's depression lifted and she wrote to an airline to ask for a free ticket, which she promptly received. She flew to the other country, simply turned up at the hospital, and asked for treatment. To her joy, she received treatment worth many thousands of dollars and was allowed to pay it back in very small installments. She even received free lodging. Her condition dramatically improved and she returned home with new hope. Brenda put all these unlikely coincidences down to her practice of higher-consciousness healing. Obviously, I cannot say if this is so. What I can say is that I have seen “miracles”—some small and some large—when people start to connect with their higher consciousness and send love to their problems.
Overcoming Emotional Problems
Some people believe that in order to overcome their problems, all they need is one amazing breakthrough in which everything becomes clear and their problem is solved once and for all. In my experience, it doesn't work like this. The human mind seems to need time and frequent reminders to make lasting changes.
Many problems are nothing other than habits of negative thinking and negative feeling. In order to overcome them, we have to let them go and replace them with positive rational beliefs and more joyful feelings. This may sound terribly simplistic, but when it comes to changing the human mind, it boils down to just that. Even if we have deep insights and amazing liberating experiences, the resulting positive emotions will often be short-lived if we don't know how to engrain these changes into our mind. Repeating our healing symbol twice a day over the course of two weeks helps us achieve this.
Some people try to change their negative habits of thinking and feeling with just their willpower. This usually doesn't work, because it doesn't take into account the part of us that wants, unconsciously, to hold on to our problem. My client Paul is a good example of this.
Paul
Paul had problems with commitment in his relationships with women and had just left his wife. He moved in with his girlfriend, but they were arguing a lot because she wanted more commitment than he was willing to give. Paul had spent much of his adult life under the influence of drugs and alcohol, and had only made a halfhearted commitment to stop this. He was pretty depressed about his whole situation, but he was motivated to bring about some change. His favorite approach was to use affirmations, like “I am fully alive and happy” or “I now commit joyfully.” He used to say positive statements to himself, and if he felt he was resisting them, he simply repeated them to himself more often. Unfortunately, the use of positive affirmations did not help him. On the contrary, they usually made him feel worse. The more he tried to talk himself into these affirmations, the more the impulse not to commit surfaced and the more a voice in his head told him that his life was meaningless. But Paul was undeterred and struggled on, repeating his sentences in the hope that, one day, he would break through his own resistance.
Once Paul began to use symbols, his situation improved. After several days of sending love to his wife and to his girlfriend, he did what he had avoided doing all his life and what he feared most of all. He talked openly to his wife and to his girlfriend, and started to relate to them in a more honest way. This was a major breakthrough for Paul, because throughout his adult life, he had never related to anyone in an honest way. His relationships were always riddled with lies and dishonesty. For him to have the courage to talk to someone honestly was a mini-enlightenment. His depression lifted considerably, and by the time he stopped coming to see me, he was about to move out of his girlfriend's flat. It had become clear to him that he was at a stage in his life where he didn't want to make a commitment, and that it was in the best interest of everyone that he live on his own for a while.
• • •
Some people believe that it is possible to “let feelings out” by screaming and hitting pillows. Unfortunately, the opposite is true. People who express their negative emotions frequently and powerfully soon discover that their emotions increase and become more difficult to control. The whole idea that we can somehow expel negative emotions from our body is completely wrong. Emotions are not “things” that can be moved from one place to another. They are mental
experiences that can easily become destructive habits. The sublime pacifier of all negative emotions is love for ourselves and for others. Higher-consciousness healing enables us to heal our negative emotions with love without suppressing them.
Another destructive attitude that keeps people from finding happiness is blaming others. Unfortunately, in our society, it is still widely believed that childhood experiences or other traumas from the past are somehow to blame for present problems. I always explain to my clients that there is no proof of these theories, even if millions of people believe in them. One thing is absolutely certain, however—blaming others leads to a victim mentality, chronic resentment, and depression. Higher-consciousness healing offers a radical and extremely quick way to overcome all real and imagined consequences of past traumas—sending love to the very people who have hurt us. In that way, our victim mentality is replaced with confidence, resentment is replaced with inner peace, and depression can easily be transformed into joie de vivre. Karen's story illustrates this point quite clearly.
Karen
Karen contacted me because nothing in her life was as she wished it to be. She had no boyfriend; she didn't like her work; she thought it was impossible to get a visa for the country she wanted to live in. Karen was consumed by envy and was convinced that “everybody had what they wanted” and that “she was irreparably scarred by her upbringing.” She freely admitted that her parents had been quite loving, however, but she was adamant that something in her childhood must be to blame for all her problems. After searching high and low, she finally concluded that it had to be the fact that she was an only child. She had subscribed to a website that encouraged her in this belief and was full of self-pity when she contacted me. She was quite taken aback when I (gently) disagreed with her conviction. Fortunately, after working first on her chronic resentment with one symbol and on her envy with another, she felt so much better that she confessed to me that “all this whining” of the people on her website about the effects of being an only child was really getting on her nerves. Several months later, she contacted me with the positive news that she felt strongly inspired to become a counselor herself and—even better—that this would allow her to get a student visa so she could live and study in the country of her dreams. She had changed from being a resentful, envious, and depressed person to one who was responsible, positive, and in control.
Summary
Work with your healing symbol for two minutes, twice a day, for two weeks in formal practice.
Use your symbol every time negative feelings around your problem arise.
Determinedly stop all negative self-talk by placing your mind on your healing symbol as soon as a negative thought arises.
Never allow your healing symbol to change of its own accord and never change it yourself.
Actively work for the solution of your problem as common sense dictates.
Avoid misconceptions about how to solve emotional problems, like using too much willpower, forcefully expressing negative emotions, or blaming others.
Chapter 12
GETTING FEEDBACK ON OUR PROCESS
AFTER FINISHING TWO WEEKS of higher-consciousness healing, most people experience a significant improvement in their suffering. There are two ways in which we can get feedback on our progress.
Consulting the Scale of Suffering
To get feedback on your progress with higher-consciousness healing, ask yourself where you are on the scale of suffering (taking an average of the last three days), and then compare this number with the one from two weeks before. In order to get a correct reading, it is important to go back to the precise definition of your problem and to measure only the negative emotion that you have been addressing. For example, if you defined your problem as “suffering from feeling afraid of arguments with my partner” and measured your fear as 8 on the scale, now look at how much your fear has decreased and not at how many arguments you have had, or if you feel any other negative emotions, like anger, for example.
In many cases, people experience quite dramatic improvements. They may initially measure their suffering the first time as 7 or 8; after two weeks, they may be down to 2 or 3. Even if you don't get this major improvement, however, it is good to appreciate any improvement you have achieved. This will increase your confidence and determination to carry on.
In rare cases, our initial negative emotion may be replaced with a different one. For example, we may find that we are no longer afraid, but that we feel quite annoyed instead. This may seem frustrating, but it is actually a positive development. It simply means that we have worked through the first layer of our emotions and can now work (with a different symbol) on the next layer. There are only three layers (anxiety, sadness, and anger), and most people experience only one sort of negative emotion per problem. In the next chapter, I will say more about how to work through complex problems.
It is a good idea to write down all our scale numbers so we don't miss any positive improvements.
Consulting Our Life-Path
The second way to get feedback on our process is to ask our higher consciousness to show us our progress on our life-path. This is a more intuitive approach compared with consulting the scale of suffering, and as I have said before, it is not essential for higher-consciousness healing to work. So if the imagery of the life-path doesn't appeal to you, you can leave it out altogether.
Before you can consult your life-path, recall where you were on your life-path and what you were doing two weeks ago. If you have made progress with your problem, your higher consciousness should show you that you are moving forward with more confidence—for example, walking upward instead of standing still. You may even find that you are a bit farther up on your life-path. In order to consult your life-path, just relax. Then you can ask your higher consciousness in the following way:
Please, can you show me what I am doing now on my life-path?
As before, watch out for the very first thought or image that pops up in your head. For most people, the imagery of the life-path is quite selfexplanatory. Here is a list of what may indicate a positive improvement. For more explanations about the life-path, please return to chapter 8.
Your life-path is more visible than before.
You have turned toward your higher consciousness.
You are now on your life-path instead of next to it or on other paths.
You are standing up instead of sitting down.
You are moving in the right direction.
You have increased your speed.
The obstacles on your path (rocks, streams, etc.) have become smaller, have disappeared, or you have found a way around them.
The weather is better.
Here are some examples of how my clients' life-path imagery has changed in the process of practicing higher-consciousness healing.
Table 3. Life-Path Imagery Changes
Appreciating Our Improvement
Getting feedback on our process is important for two reasons. First, it serves as an encouragement and helps us to keep going. Second—and this is even more crucial—it gives us an opportunity to appreciate our effort. This is extremely important, because each time we consciously appreciate our ability to solve our problems, we become more confident, more able, and more in control. In that way, we benefit doubly from higher-consciousness healing—we get rid of our problem and we gain the confidence to solve all our future challenges as well.
Unfortunately, I have seen people who achieved dramatic results with higher-consciousness healing, but because they were not able to appreciate these improvements, never experienced an overall confidence boost. Even more sadly, these people quickly forgot about this method and felt as helpless as before.
Gary
Gary suffered from exhaustion and chronic fatigue. When he asked for his life-path imagery, he saw himself lying on his life-path sleeping. I asked him where in his body he felt his tiredness, and after much searching, he realized that he felt tension in his head. After he recei
ved his healing symbol, I showed him how to release and relax that tension with every out breath by imagining a beautiful flower opening up in his head.
Unfortunately, Gary's progress was slow, because he always thought that the reasons for his tiredness came from outside his mind (hard work, a virus, etc.), and that he would be unable to do something about it himself. Not surprisingly, after two weeks, he saw himself still lying on his life-path—but at least his eyes were half open. This coincided with feeling a little bit less tired (from 7 to 5 on the scale). I explained to Gary that his higher consciousness has so much energy that it can light up half of the universe for a week. The solution to his fatigue was to let the light of his higher consciousness release the energy in his body that had been there all along.
Gary accepted my line of thinking and concentrated strongly to intercept even the tiniest amount of tiredness before it crept in by immediately relaxing the tension in his head. Slowly, his condition improved and so did the imagery on his life-path. After two months, he was finally standing up; after three months, he was energetically walking up the mountain. His chronic tiredness completely disappeared, despite his working even harder than before.
The Five-Minute Miracle Page 10