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Be Content

The door opens onto NOW. What you experience is always right now. Here you stay fully focused on what you are doing in this moment. You choose to feel good by thinking thoughts that support you. Being is at the top of your to-do list. You are fully present and there is always enough time. Your Universe reflects all this right back to you. Isn’t this a place you’d like to BE?

3 Steps to Inspiration

5/1/2020

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“Inspiration and manifestation on all levels are birthed in the present moment from your ‘I Am’, your ‘God Self.’” 
-Red Feather
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The present moment is your source of inspiration.

Suppose you have a job to do. It must be done. You’ve committed to getting it done. Now it’s time to do it and you feel uninspired. You’d rather be doing something else. You can feel the energy of inspiration around other projects, just not this one. How do you get inspired about doing this one?

You could just push your way through and get it done so that you can get on to what you’d really like to be doing. You could say to yourself, “As soon as I get this done, I can do this other thing that really inspires me.” It would be like eating your vegetables before you can have dessert. That’s one way to get the job done, and plenty of us work that way.

But where does inspiration live?

Red Feather says that inspiration comes from within, from our God self. Our God selves live in the present moment, right here, right now. Our God selves are not anticipating the future or worrying over the past. Our God selves are right here. This is where the magic happens. This is where inspiration lives, right in the heart of our God self.

Now, suppose you have a job to do, something you feel you have to get done. You have chosen to get it done now despite the fact that there are other things you’d rather be doing. It feels like work to you. Remember the saying, “It’s only work if you’d rather be doing something else,”? Well, right now you’d rather be doing something else, so it’s work. But you’ve chosen to get this done now.

So, do you push through and just get it done, focused on the product and on the doing of the job, wishing you were somewhere else? You can do that. If you do, you’ll be motivating yourself through fear or anger or some other emotion linked to your ego. Maybe you’re afraid that you won’t get paid. Maybe you’re afraid that if you don’t meet your commitments others will be disappointed, or you’ll be disappointed in yourself. Maybe you’re angry that you have to do this job, and that fuels your energy. However you motivate yourself from ego, it’s not likely to be enjoyable, but you’ll get the job done, even though it will feel like work.

Or, you can motivate yourself from your God self, with love. You can find your inspiration within your heart, opening yourself fully into this present moment.

Let’s take an example – Pretend we’re not in the middle of a stay-at-home social isolation order and you’re giving a dinner party tonight. You’re feeling stressed because the house needs to be cleaned, the table set and dinner cooked. You have an image in your mind of a clean, attractive, welcoming home, a delicious meal to offer your guests, and you as the relaxed and gracious host.

It’s a lot to live up to and not much time to make it happen. You’re feeling stressed about it. Your mind is bringing up images of the past when you felt disappointed in yourself for offering less than your best to your guests. Your fears are conjuring an image of future disappointment. Fear motivates you to rush through the cleaning, forget the decorations and barrel into cooking dinner as fear constricts your stomach. Not surprisingly, you don’t enjoy your dinner party much.

There is a more enjoyable way to approach this. You can get focused into the present moment where inspiration lives.

What would that look like? In this same example of the dinner party, the house still needs to be cleaned, table set, dinner cooked. Instead of launching yourself into a cleaning frenzy, you sit down, close your eyes, and take several, deep, calming breaths. Now, thank your Higher Self for opening the blossom of inspiration in your heart. Invite your Spiritual Support Team to guide and support you, that you may offer your guests a loving welcome, a clean, supportive environment, and a nurturing and delicious meal. Thank your Spiritual Support Team for giving you exactly what you need to accomplish this.

Next, you put on some upbeat music that sparks your energy. You gather together your cleaning materials, and while grooving to the music, you vacuum, wipe and wash. You feel energized as you enjoy the process, keeping your mind fully focused on what you are doing.

You’re not planning out the dinner as you clean, or worrying about getting it all done. If stressful thoughts come up, you mentally hand them over to your Spiritual Support Team and trust that you have exactly what you need.

You flow through the cleaning and on into the kitchen to start preparing the meal. You’re listening to music you love. Maybe you pour yourself a glass of wine or make a cup of tea to enjoy as you chop the vegetables. You feel relaxed. This is fun!

With dinner started, you turn your attention to setting the table, arranging the flowers and creating a beautiful, welcoming environment. Your guests arrive and you’re delighted by how much you enjoy the evening.

When you call on your Higher Self and your Spiritual Support Team and focus into the present moment, you are releasing the egoic fuel of fear and anger, and energizing your actions through love. That’s when what might feel like work turns into enjoyment because you feel inspired.
Photo by Kristopher Roller on Unsplash

Your Spiritual Toolbox

Three Steps to Inspiration
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Inspiration lives in this present moment. That’s where to look for it and find it. Here are three, simple steps to make that happen.
1. Intend it – Set your intention by saying out loud, “Higher Self, I intend to feel inspired about this name your activity, thank you.”
2. Ask for it – Take a moment to sit still and close your eyes. Take several deep, calming breaths. When you feel calm invite your Spiritual Support Team to participate. You could say something like, “Thank you, Spiritual Support Team for guiding me to inspiration about name your activity. Thank you for giving me exactly what I need.”

3. Trust – You've got this. Relax with gratitude, knowing that your team is on board and you have exactly what you need to accomplish this activity, whatever it is, with love.

Inspiration is spoken through the language of your heart.

All you have to do is intend it, ask for it and trust that it is yours. Your Higher Self and your Spiritual Support Team will guide you through to the finish line.  
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Allowing the Silence

2/21/2020

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“Real peace and happiness can be experienced only when the pendulum of the mind stops swinging altogether. From that stillness, real peace and bliss ensue. This state of perfect stillness is verily the essence of life.”
-Mata Amritatnandamayi

Many of us struggle against unhappiness because unhappiness is uncomfortable. 

​Our minds tell us that if we can just do enough, be enough, have enough, then we will be happy. We constantly struggle to attain more of what we think we need, yet as Wayne Dyer says, “You can never get enough of what you don’t want.”

What this means is, what we think we want is not necessarily what we need for true happiness. The new car, new house, new romance, new job, new hobby, new exercise program, may feel good for a time, but no matter how many activities we do or how many things we have, it is never enough to create lasting happiness.

In our struggle to feel happy we energize the momentum of the pendulum in our minds. The pendulum swings back and forth from happiness to unhappiness, day by day, minute by minute. The seeking and struggle keep it in constant motion.

The Indian saint and great spiritual teacher, Mata Amritatnandamayi (Amma) speaks of stilling the pendulum of our mind. How do we attain the peace and bliss within that stillness?

We attain the stillness by wanting it, wanting it so much that we are willing to release the struggle against unhappiness. To do that we must also release the struggle for happiness.

What? Release the struggle for happiness?

Yes. The keyword here is ‘struggle.’ Release the struggle.

 “When something really, really, really matters to you, let it go! Say to the Universe: ‘You know what I want.’ Give it to me in the path of least resistance…”
- Abraham Hicks

The stillness lives deep underneath like the depths of the vast ocean. The waves and troughs of highs and lows roil about on the surface. As long as you stay at the surface trying to ride the highs of the waves, you are inevitably carried down into the troughs as well. Think of a surfer catching a wave at the top and riding from the height of the wave down to its bottom, only to have to return again to catch the next wave and ride it top to bottom. Over and over again the surfer rides top to bottom. When we constantly seek happiness, we inevitably ride the waves, top to bottom and back again.

While there is fun and excitement in riding the waves in the ocean, riding the waves of our emotions is a constant struggle to get back up to the top of the wave.  We try to fix unhappiness by having more, doing more, being more. We try to ensure happiness by struggling against unhappiness. We are constantly riding the waves of our emotions in an attempt to control what we cannot control.  

It is only in the depths where the stillness may be found. It is in the release of the struggle to keep our heads above emotional waters that we may encounter true peace.

When I was a child, I spent summers in a lake cottage with my grandparents. There we spent many hours each day swimming in the lake. My favorite thing was to be underwater. I would find a heavy rock and use it as a weight. Resting the rock in my lap, I could sit on the sand at the bottom. There I would feel the pressure of the ringing silence in my ears, surrounding me. It was so still and peaceful. It felt deeply restful.

As a child I understood the silence. As an adult I find I have to relearn the art of allowing myself the silence of my soul.

Are you allowing yourself the silence of your soul?

“Are you practicing the art of allowing or the art of disallowing? Are you practicing the art of allowing yourself to be in sync with who-you-really-are; the art of allowing yourself to be the true extension of Source Energy? That is who you were born to be.”
-Abraham-Hicks
Photo by Abbas Malek Hosseini on Unsplash

Your Spiritual Toolbox

The Temple of Silence 
Go to a place where there are as few outer distractions as possible.

Sit in the quiet with eyes closed. Take three slow, deep breaths pulling your attention within as you take each breath.

Listen to the sound of your breath. Hear it, like the sound of ocean waves rolling in and out. Continue breathing slowly and deeply, listening to the sound your breath makes moving in and out, as you drop deeper into that quiet space within.

If you find thoughts coming up, allow them to drift. Become a screen door with your thoughts moving through like a passing breeze.

Now, allow your breath to normalize. Imagine you are sinking beneath the waves, still breathing normally. Sink deeper and deeper until you rest gently on the sandy ocean bottom.

Imagine a beautiful, light-filled, underwater temple before you. Enter the temple and sit quietly within. Feel the ringing silence, the slight pressure in your ears, enveloping you in deeply restful silence.

Breathe that stillness and quiet into your heart for as long as feels good to you.

Ask your Higher Self to make this Temple of Silence available to you whenever you desire it by taking three, deep, slow breaths into your heart area and imagining again the temple within your heart.
 
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Redirect Negative Thought Loops

1/10/2020

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“Rather than fighting with ego you can work together for the same goal. Teach ego that it is an equal energy. You can say to ego, ‘While I am doing this, I would like you to support in this other way.’ This gives your ego permission to show you the parts of yourself that you have repressed out of self-judgment.”
-Red Feather
 
Have you ever found yourself caught in a looping circle of negative thoughts even when things are going well? It can be really painful, and all the more so because it doesn’t have to happen that way. Unfortunately, or fortunately for the lesson of it, it did happen to me, just the other day.

It was a magical day. I went with some of my dear soul family to a wetlands wildlife refuge. We discovered to our delight, a huge migration, hundreds of thousands of Snow Geese, as well as Trumpeter Swans, Canadian Geese, Mallards and Bald Eagles. It was a delight to my birder eyes, and pure magic for my soul. The day was filled with lovely discoveries and messages from Spirit throughout.

The lesson for me, however, was my growing awareness of how at odd moments during the day, and even afterwards, my thoughts circled around negative perceptions of small events that took place, like a dog worrying a bone. Instead of staying focused upon the magic that surrounded me, my thoughts zoomed in on some perceived annoyance or jealousy or fear and gnawed at it.

Really? Why would I want to do that?

It’s all about ego of course. Like a nervous and overly energetic dog our egos need a job to do. If we don’t assign our egos something positive to do, they will revert to old habits. So, our egos need to be taught how to support us.

It is not that our egos are consciously being negative, in fact just the opposite. Our egos are trying to protect us by searching out what is wrong or hurtful and fixing it. The ego is not programmed to look for the good stuff. The ego is programmed like a watch dog, to look for the bad stuff, the stuff that might hurt us. That worked well for survival in the past when we had to be on the look out for predators and life-threatening situations. In our lives today that more often looks like watching out for emotionally threatening situations.

So, here I was having a lovely day with friends and my ego was on alert, looking for the bad stuff, looking for anything that might be emotionally threatening. And of course, my ego usually finds something scary to worry over.

The egos way of ‘fixing’ things is to worry and fret and go over and over various negative scenarios and generally get us worked up into an emotional lather. Then we take some sort of fear-based action or just withdraw into a negative funk. It’s no fun. It certainly doesn’t feel good. But the ego doesn’t care about fun, the ego cares about survival. In this case, emotional survival.

The ego is programmed for fight, flight or freeze, the physical survival responses. When it comes to emotional survival however, these responses may be less than optimal, and keep us circling around in a loop of negativity.

Unless we can catch ourselves and redirect, reprogramming our egos with a positive response.

I caught myself repeating a negative loop, a loop I have repeated many times in many ways, in the past. It was old, familiar and painful territory.

I asked for support and guidance from my Spiritual Support Team as I became aware of what I was doing. I asked for guidance because at that moment I didn’t have a solution. I was just aware that I didn’t want to continue on with the negative thought loop of worry, running negative scenarios, going over various negative scripts in my head, and all the other egoic approaches that result in increasing emotional pain.

I asked for guidance and was delighted by the unexpected thought that I was really lucky. I was really lucky to have these dear friends and family. I felt the fullness of the love that we share, our history and our bond. I felt that overflow of love as echoed in the abundance of life that surrounded us in the wetlands, the water, the marsh, the thousands upon thousands of geese and swans coming together in floating, honking, trumpeting, feathered rafts of bird community.

It was an inspiring, loving answer to my prayer for support, and it turned me right around. After that my thoughts focused upon the beauty of the sunset on the drive home, the fun and humor of those riding in the back seat, my gratitude to my friend driving us, making this trip possible.

That night as I lay in bed, tired and ready for sleep, I could feel my thoughts edging back toward negativity. Like unwelcome visitors knocking on the door in my mind, I knew if I opened the door I’d be circling around once more.

Closing my eyes, I saw a beautiful visual of thousands of geese rising up into the air. I focused upon that visual, and other visual memories of the beauty in the wetlands, choosing not to open the door to the loop of negative thoughts. I fell asleep easily, feeling contented.

Have you ever felt yourself caught up in a negative thought loop like this? Running scenarios and mental scripts and visualizations in an attempt to ‘fix’ whatever the ego perceives as threatening, falling down the rabbit hole of negativity?

Yup, it happens to most of us. Today’s Spiritual Toolbox has some suggestions for what you can do about it.
Photo by Callie Morgan on Unsplash

Your Spiritual Toolbox

Suggestions for Redirecting Negative Thought Loops

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Ask for guidance.
Ask. Ask. Ask. Our Spiritual Support Teams are always there for us, but given the gift of our free will, can do nothing unless we ask for support and guidance.
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Hand it over. Give whatever is worrying you to your Spiritual Support Team, to God, to your Higher Self, and know that it is taken care of. Ask that you be shown if and what you need to know and do about it, and then let it go.

Redirect your thoughts. Look around you with your heart. What feels good to you? It doesn’t matter what it is. Find something that feels good and focus your attention upon that. It may be a thought. “I’m so lucky to have all this in my life.” It may be a feeling. Perhaps an appreciation of the abundance of love that fills your life, or something else that feels really good to you. It may be a visual, a beautiful memory that gives you a feeling of appreciation and contentment.

Give your ego a positive job to do. If you discover repeated negative loops triggered by certain types of situations, give your ego the job of recognizing the trigger situations and then programming in a new thought pattern.

Affirmations are a wonderful way to reprogram your thought patterns. As you pay attention to situations in which you don’t feel good, you can recognize your triggers, those situations in which you find yourself in a negative thought loop. Then you can create positive affirmations for how you want to feel in those situations.

For example, perhaps your pattern is to feel left out in social events. You expect it. Your thoughts loop in negative circles about it any time you are in a social situation or even thinking about being in a social situation. Not because you want to, but because your ego thinks that by doing so it is protecting you. You get into a social situation and create your expectations, and there you are are feeling left out yet again.

Only now you recognize the pattern and you can take preemptive action. Tell your ego, “Thank you for trying to protect me. Now let’s do this in a positive way.”

Ask yourself how you would like to feel in this situation and create an affirmation based upon that. Here are some possibilities from the above example –
“People love me, and I love people.”
“I feel calm and relaxed when I am with others.”
“I welcome others into my life and they welcome me.”
“I love being with others and they love being with me.”

Create your affirmations based upon your specific trigger situations. Now repeat your affirmation to yourself, throughout the day, as well as whenever you find yourself in your trigger situation or thinking of your trigger situation. The more that you repeat your affirmation the better, as it gradually becomes your new belief about that situation.

Oh, and remember to thank your ego for her/his assistance with this. Ego loves a pat on the back ;)
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Seasonal Limbo

10/18/2019

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"Nature gives to every time and season unique beauty; from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it’s just a succession of changes so soft and comfortable that we hardly notice the progress."
— Charles Dickens
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Here in Eastern Kansas fall usually arrives in October with cooling temperatures and coloring leaves. Yet, today is beautifully warm and breezy. Too warm to be fall, and too cool to really feel like summer. It is ‘tween summer and fall, a sort of no-man’s land of seasons. There is a feeling of waiting, of being held in limbo, awaiting seasonal judgment when the weather will choose whether it is to be summer or fall, at least for today.
 
There are times in our lives when we feel as the weather feels today. Times when the seasons are changing for us and yet we can’t seem to make the change completely.
 
Parts of us are stuck while other parts of us move forward. We are pulled astraddle, unable to fully move forward, waiting for some parts to pull more strongly in one direction or another.
 
We hope that we will be able to move forward, we want to move forward. After all, as the seasons inevitably move from one to the next, so too do we move and grow and change.
 
But as there is so often a return to summer-like weather in October, so do we move backward, held by the attraction of our old habits. It is temporary of course, a last fling with what feels familiar and warm before we fully move forward into the next season of our lives.
 
Today, as the weather drifts between the seasons, I too will allow myself to drift and not push for change. The change will come as inevitably as one season follows another. I do not need to hurry it along. Instead I will enjoy the rest that this between time offers.
 
Gone is the oppressive heat of summer. The cool air trickles through my window down over my shoulder, smelling of drying leaves and fresh mown grass. I will stay safely within screens and allow the mosquitoes their last hurrah somewhere other than on my skin. 
 
The crisp, cold days of fall that fill me with energy and enthusiasm are not yet fully here. I can rest awhile. The change will come and by then I will have gathered up the bits of myself that still long for summer’s warmth and be ready to move into fall.   
Photo by Alex Geerts on Unsplash

Your Spiritual Toolbox

​On the path of personal development and spiritual growth, all of us on occasion slip back into old, familiar behavior patterns. Patterns that we really want to change.  
 
We don’t like it when we slide backwards. We know we know better. Still, it happens.
 
Rather than berating yourself, consider accepting this aspect of the growth process.
 
Think of spiritual development as like the progress of the seasons throughout the year. Do you shake your fist at Mother Nature and decry her last flings with summer? Probably not. Though many of us did that when last winter was slow to move along into spring. Our complaints didn’t hurry things along. The seasons move as they will and spring did eventually arrive.
 
Why tie yourself in a knot? Awareness is the first step to change. Be aware of how you are showing up. Accept yourself whatever that looks like.
 
Relax, rest awhile, know that you are changing and growing. The weather may look completely different tomorrow.
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Feeling Overwhelmed?

10/11/2019

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“Overwhelm is an illusion that states: ‘I am not capable. I cannot handle all this. It is too much. I am doing this all alone.”
-Shoshona Ortalia Rogers from Goddess: 7 Rings of the Heart

We’ve just returned from a week in New England visiting with family and friends and a week driving back and forth. Our days were busy, fitting in everyone we wanted to see. It was wonderful and exhausting.

Getting back home, though tired, I swung full tilt into Weight Watchers and creating a new way of eating. Learning how to use my new FitBit, (which is at this moment buzzing my wrist because I haven’t taken enough steps in the past hour!) Preparing to co-teach a Goddess class. Taking an on-line writing and publishing course. Writing and editing fiction and non-fiction. Planning for our upcoming holiday and birthday parties. And last, but certainly not least, grandparenting, parenting and spousing (is that a word?). I swung myself right into overwhelm.

Overwhelm is a state of mind. It really has nothing to do with what and how much you are doing.

There are many who can handle a daily schedule that is packed from morning to night and beyond with equanimity. There are those whose flexibility makes it possible for them to easily go with the flow. And there are those who get overwhelmed by any change in their daily routine. I probably fall somewhere in the middle depending upon the day.

Overwhelm has everything to do with what and how you are thinking and feeling about what you are doing.

I experience overwhelm when I perceive a task as bigger than it actually is. This happens particularly when I have a number of different projects and responsibilities that I am juggling at once. They gather together, increasing exponentially, and loom over me, mountainous and huge.

I feel confused. I don’t know where to start, and so I don’t. I am stuck. I feel like there is not enough time to accomplish what I must.  I feel alone, as if there is no where to turn for support.

The specter of resistance then rears its head. My ego-self digs in her heels and pulls in the opposite direction from where I want to go for fear that what I do or create will not be perfect. Sigh…

Overwhelm is not fun.

So, what do we do when the illusion of overwhelm, does its thing and overwhelms us?

1. Understand that the feeling of overwhelm is an illusion. It is a misperception. You have the power to look at things differently.

2. Know that you are not alone. Your Spiritual Support Team is interested in and involved with every little bit of your life. They’ve got your back. You can hand that fear in your gut, which is at the base of the perception of overwhelm, over to your Team. They will take care of it. Today’s Spiritual Toolbox is a visualization guiding you through doing this.

3. Focus and Organize. Break each task down into, small, incremental steps. Then, take one step at a time. As you do so you reduce that looming mountain of overwhelm into manageable, orderly, small piles of pebbles. These you can deal with, one at a time.

4. Express gratitude for each small step that you take. Gratitude shifts your energy, lifting you into alignment with your Higher Self. That’s a nice place to be.


Are you willing to give it a try? Me too!

Your Spiritual Toolbox

Sit comfortably, feet flat on the floor. Close your eyes and slowly take deep breaths. Feel yourself relaxing and sinking deeper into your chair.

​Allow whatever is on your mind to drift away and focus on breathing deeply.

Mentally invite your Spiritual Support Team to support and guide you through this visualization.  

Now, out loud quietly ask your body to show you where the feeling of overwhelm is strongest. Keep breathing deeply and notice any sensation of discomfort, tightness, blockage, swelling, pain, anything that is unusual.

Ask your Spiritual Support Team to remove this overwhelm from your body and your energy bodies.

Visualize a shower of light cascading over you, washing you in sparkling white, cleansing light. Clearing your body and energy bodies of all feelings of fear and overwhelm.

Visualize this sparkling white light filling and surrounding your body. Know that you are cleared, loved, protected, supported and guided.
Continue with this visualization for as long as it feels good to you.

Express gratitude to your Spiritual Support Team for their assistance. 
Photo by Jimmy Conover on Unsplash
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Rainy Day Magic

8/3/2019

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“Rain,
aren’t you my soul’s joyful tears,
only longing for the sky to be happy?”
― Munia Khan

It is a rainy morning, cool for August. I can hear the rain dribbling down through the downspout to empty on the thirsty ground, hard from days of drying in the sun. A chickadee and nuthatches welcome the morning, bright and nasal voices blending.

The rain picks up its pace, drops and splashes on roof and gutter getting louder. Rain on the leaves in the trees surrounding the porch is a constant shushing sound now. The birds chatter on, not seeming to mind the wet.

I can hear the garbage truck out front now, making its way around the circle at the end of Ravenswood Lane, crashing and clanking as the robotic arm picks up trash cans and dumps them into the back. It is like some huge-shelled crab making its way about, lifting food into its maw with great claws. This crab has a set feeding schedule and it is right on time this morning. Later on, it’s sister crab will be around to gather the recycling to take back to her nest.

Perhaps it is the rain and wet that fills my head with seashore fantasies.

It is pouring down now, straight and true. It’s life-giving moisture feeding the plants, trees and grass. Our birds are singing loudly in praise. They know how much we need the rain.

The air is sweet and moist. The light dim and grayed by a sky filled with clouds. Thunder rumbles in the distance, and the morning is alive, everything present, here and now.

There is magic in this moment. It is subtle and so easily missed.

It comes when I focus deeply into my senses, hear the train whistle in the distance and the constancy of the rain pouring now through the downspout.

It comes when I feel the moisture cooled air drifting over my arms, kissing my cheeks.

It comes when the light changes from gray to white, reflecting off the deep, wet green of trees and grass.

If I was inside listening to the latest news updates, worrying over who is and who will be president, or thinking about what jobs I should get done today, or taking a shower and getting ready for the day ahead, I would have missed this magic.

How many mornings have I rushed along forgetting to embrace this gift, not even realizing that it is all around me?

The rain has slowed now, drip, drip, dripping in the down spout. The air lightens, and the birds move away still singing in the distance. The day feels as if it’s ready to get started, the magic moving onward, and so must I.

​But I’ll remember this another morning, early and bright. I’ll remember the magic.
Photo by Camilla Bundgaard on Unsplash

Your Spiritual Toolbox

Our bodies with our five senses are the key to opening to the magic.
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Our bodies are always right here, right now. They can be nowhere else. Not like the mind, always in the future planning what is to come, or in the past, worrying over what has happened, but here, now, in the present.

Always in this present moment, where the magic is.

The next time you feel the need for a little magic, sit and quiet yourself.

Take several deep long breaths and pull your awareness into your body.

Leave all the thoughts of your day, thoughts of past or future, outside your awareness for the time being. You can always pick them up later if you feel the need. For now, bring all your attention into the present.

What sensations do you feel on your skin? What do you feel inside your body?

Close your eyes and listen. What do you hear?

Open your eyes now and look around you, what do you see? What color is the light that you see? How would you describe your surroundings?

Take a breath through your nose. What do you smell?

If you have a drink or food, take a sip or bite, really taste what you are putting into your mouth. How would you describe it?

If you have time, write your perceptions. Describe in detail what you feel, hear, see, smell, taste.

The magic of this moment is right here waiting for you. You have only to open yourself. 
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Got Empowerment?

7/25/2019

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“We all make mistakes, have struggles, and even regret things in our past. But you are not your mistakes, you are not your struggles, and you are here NOW with the power to shape your day and your future.” 
― Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience

What does it mean to be empowered in your life? If you’re interested in spiritual development and personal growth, if you’ve read some books, or talked with spiritually-minded others, you’ve most likely heard that word bandied about quite a bit. But what does it actually look like in daily life?
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12 ways to recognize empowerment in yourself:
  • You have the courage to take emotional risks, reaching out to others and being willing to get messy.
  • You allow yourself to be imperfect and colorful.
  • You allow yourself to stand out when you feel like it rather than keeping your head down and playing it safe.
  • You accept yourself, loving yourself, perfect or not.
  • You are open to the daily miracles, joy and love that surrounds you.
  • You jump right into your life with complete trust that Source is with you holding you up.
  • You lovingly take care of what is before you, willingly spending your time and energy.
  • You give whatever you do your best effort, investing everything you’ve got, and then letting go, leaving all outcomes up to Source.
  • You leave other people’s opinions up to them and Source, knowing it’s none of your business.
  • You express your God-Self in everything you are, think and do.
  • You live today fully by being fully present, right here, right now.
These are guidelines. Empowerment means different things to different people. You will express empowerment in your own way in your life. 

The next question to ask is what does empowerment feel like on the inside?

To me, empowerment feels like a warm sun glowing within my solar plexus and heart. I feel expansive, grounded and strong, standing tall. Empowerment feels like freedom, freedom from fear. I feel joyful, connected and guided within each present moment.
​
Most of us express empowerment in some situations, some of the time. Some of us express empowerment more than others. Some of us don’t express it at all.

Wherever you are with it, accept yourself! That’s a big part of being empowered, right? Accepting yourself wherever you are.  
​
Photo by Fuu J on Unsplash

Your Spiritual Toolbox

​I’d love to say that I always feel empowered. But I’m learning to accept wherever I am, go within, reground and reconnect. You can too.

Here is a simple and effective visualization you can use.

Sit comfortably, feet flat on the floor. Close your eyes and slowly take deep breaths. Feel yourself relaxing and sinking deeper into your chair. Allow whatever is on your mind to drift away and focus on breathing deeply.

Now focus your attention on your heart area. See a column of light stretching upward out through the top of your head and connecting with your Soul Star chakra, located about 18” above the crown of your head.

See white light energy from your Soul Star pouring down through this column of light and entering through the crown of your head. See and feel this energy moving down into your heart and enfolding your heart in sparkling, white energy.

Now send energy from your heart down through your torso, through your legs, through your feet and deep into the center of Mother Earth. See the energy flowing right to her core and anchoring deep within her.

Pull the energy up from Mother Earth, visualizing it as a beautiful, living green if that feels right to you. Pull the energy back up through your feet, legs and torso and anchor it in your heart.
​
Now you are connected above and below, aligned and grounded.


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Relax Into What Is

7/11/2019

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​“Here comes the sun (doo doo doo doo). Here comes the sun, and I say, It's all right.
Little darling, it's been a long, cold, lonely winter. Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here.
Here comes the sun (doo doo doo doo) Here comes the sun, and I say, It's all right.”
-George Harrison, The Beatles

In the past my everyday life felt pushed or maybe I should say driven, because it was me doing the pushing. I was always thinking about what else needed to get done, who I needed to take care of, how to keep everyone happy, how this or that wasn’t good enough. It took conscious effort for me to relax, allow and appreciate what was. At the end of the day I’d look back over the day and think of all that I should have accomplished and didn’t, setting myself up for a driven tomorrow.

My life was motivated by fear. Fear of not being good enough. Fear of not having enough, time, money, parenting skills, you name it. Fear of not doing enough. It is not a comfortable way to live.

Fortunately, I’ve learned that there is a better way.

When I began doing sessions for clients, I learned to center and align myself before each session, calling in my Spiritual Support Team. I learned to trust the guidance I received. Trust the topics that came up for healing. Trust the words and tools that came to me to offer and trust the outcome of our work together.

On several sacred journeys to Brazil and to Iceland I was able to expand this into full days of trust.  I learned to trust what was in my present reality enough to fully relax into the moment. Trusting that who I was with, where I was, and what I was doing, was exactly right for that moment.

I stopped thinking that I needed to be with someone I wasn’t. I stopped thinking that I should be saying or doing something else other than what I was saying and doing. I learned to trust and be with what was.

It was like in my sessions but expanded outward into full, shining days.

Unfortunately for me, there was a big difference in how I felt when I was doing a session, when I was on a sacred journey, and my daily life at home.

That sense of relaxing and trusting what was, was missing.

Instead, I pushed to get through to the next activity or the next person to connect with. I drove myself to get everything right, make sure everything and everyone was taken care of.

Yet, I couldn’t help but think, wouldn’t it be wonderful to feel that relaxation, trust, contentment, inner peace, acceptance, allowing and joy throughout all of my days?

Now I know it is possible.

We can each of us do this through consciously intending it to be so.

We make the choice in each minute to consciously connect with our Source within. We breathe deeply, relax and allow ourselves to align, until it becomes our habit and we are living our days in love rather than fear.

What is needed to make this possible is a change in perspective. It looks like this.

The contentment comes from trusting that we are connected and guided and following that guidance. Knowing that something greater than ourselves holds the big picture.

The inner peace comes from knowing that we live in a beneficent Universe and that we are a beloved and essential part of that. No one else can express the part of the Creator that is uniquely you.

The relaxation comes from focusing in on what is in this present moment, and being fully present with whatever that is.

The joy comes through appreciation, gratitude and allowing yourself to experience the pleasure inherent in whatever is.

​It is this change in perspective that allows you and me to relax into what is. When that becomes our habit, it changes our lives. We shine like the sun.
Photo by Daoudi Aissa on Unsplash

Your Spiritual Toolbox

​My daughter Ana, a talented energy healer, taught me a quick, functional tool, that is very supportive for breathing through the constriction of fear, clearing negativity, energizing and aligning with your Source within. I’d like to share it with you.

While breathing deeply imagine a golden funnel above your head with the larger funnel end stretching up to your Soul Star chakra (located about 6” above your head). Think of this as your personal sun. It is the doorway to your Higher Self.

Visualize pulling your breath down through that funnel into the crown of your head. Visualize this sun-energized breath flowing down deep throughout your body expanding, clearing, cleansing and revitalizing every part of you.

Intend to feel each breath opening your body all the way to the root. Feel the breath making space in between each atom, dissolving density and expanding outwards.

Negative thought sits in the body becoming dense. Breathing into the thought expanding it outwards dissolves it. You don’t have to struggle against negativity. That just creates more density within. Just breathe into the thoughts, bringing in love with your breath. Love expands.

Continue to breath deeply visualizing the sun’s breath filling and expanding throughout your body and energy body’s, until you feel peaceful, energized and complete.
​
Use this Golden Funnel Breath any time you feel the need for clearing negativity, energizing and aligning. 
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Give Yourself the Power to Choose

6/7/2019

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“…happiness is the result of love coming out of you…”
Don Miguel Ruiz, Mastery of Love, A Toltec Wisdom Book

​A forty-something, tired-looking woman (who looks nothing like a younger version of me) stares at her daughter with dismay.
 “You are not going out of this house dressed like that!”

Her daughter slams the front door she had just opened, turns and looks at her mother, eyes narrowed, and disgust distorting the outline of her mouth. She runs upstairs to her room, screaming,    
“I hate you!”

If you were me, uh .. I mean this mother, how might you choose to feel in this situation?

For the sake of argument let’s pretend that you have forgotten you have a choice about how you want to feel and that you respond with a knee-jerk reaction. Your feelings are hurt. You feel anger and fear. You are trying to protect your daughter. Who knows what teen-aged boys might assume if they saw her parading around in that 6 inch skirt and tight, low cut, cropped t-shirt?

When your daughter comes back downstairs wearing an 8 inch skirt and a tight, low-cut, uncropped t-shirt, and looking at you as if you were condemning her to death, your hurt, anger and fear for her causes you to overreact.

“Get back up to your room, young lady! You are grounded! No phone, no mall, nothing, till you can learn how to dress properly!”

And so, it repeats, in many homes, in many variations, with many different teenaged daughters and sons.

This is an old road, traveled by many an irate parent of a teenager.

You may not have teenagers. You may not be a parent. Your life may not look anything like this. The learned behavior patterns of this scene may not be one of your patterns, but most likely you will have others.

We all have our individual behavior patterns, based on fear and built in response to family patterns as we were growing up.

Our hypothetical mother had a choice of how to respond to her daughter, though she may not have been aware of it at the time. (In fact, I can say for sure that she wasn’t. She knee-jerked much of her way through motherhood, sigh…)

We are constantly confronted with situations in which we choose how we will respond. The choice is not always conscious, but it is always a choice. Many of us forget this.

We are trained from infancy to perceive the world around us as our parents, family and society perceived the world, a process known as acculturation. It is the way we learn how to be in the world.

During the process of acculturation, we learn about how our world works and where we fit into it. As infants and children, we swallow whole the view of our world from those around us. Later, as adults we may question this view, but the foundation is laid.

We learn to make the choices about how we feel without conscious thought, based upon what those around us have taught us. We learn knee-jerk responses to certain kinds of experiences. 

We learn that we need certain things or events to happen in order for us to respond lovingly and feel happy. If those things do not happen, or other things happen instead, we respond with fear and we feel unhappy.

It doesn’t feel like a choice for us. It feels like our happiness depends on events outside of ourselves.

This is an unhappy way to live, because we give up our power to choose. We forget that we have the power to choose a loving response, to choose to feel happy. We believe that our happiness lives outside ourselves, when in fact just the opposite is true.

How do we choose to feel happy? We have these learned patterns that tell us when we can feel happy and when we have to feel unhappy. How do we unlearn these patterns and start over?

How do we give ourselves back the power to choose? We retrain our automatic responses through attention, time and practice.

Learning anything new requires attention, time and practice. My granddaughter will repeat a new skill over and over, day after day, until she has mastered it. Whether it is riding her bike without training wheels, drawing a human figure, or hanging upside down on the monkey bars, she is driven to practice again and again, until one day she has it. Then she will lose interest and move on to something new.

Our brains are hard-wired to learn this way. When mastering a desired new skill, we feel a driving need to practice. We are creating new pathways in our brains that allow us to master new skills.

In time, the pathways in the brain associated with any particular bit of learning become like well-traveled roads.

What happens when we want to relearn these responses? We have to stop using the old roads and build new roads in their place.

Relearning requires the repeated practice that any new learning requires. It also requires paying attention and catching ourselves before we start down an old response road, then reorienting ourselves to the new response road we are building.

When you choose to relearn old behavior patterns be patient with yourself.

You are rebuilding the learned pathways in your brain. You are learning to choose a love-based response over a fear-based response.

Relearning takes attention, time and practice.

Chances are there will be times when you suddenly find yourself on the old roads, responding in a knee-jerk negative fashion to familiar stimuli. You will have by-passed all the detour signs and gone barreling down the old road. That’s OK. Wherever you find yourself you can choose to reorient and keep rebuilding.

It’s worth it, because our choice of response, whether we respond from fear or from love, determines how we feel about any situation.

When we choose to respond from love we choose to feel happy.

Don Miguel Ruiz, in his book Mastery of Love, explains that we are only happy when we are expressing love.

A feeling of happiness is a side effect, a beneficial result of expressing love into the world. When we choose the loving response, we feel happy.

Give yourself the power to choose love.
Photo by Eye for Ebony on Unsplash

Your Spiritual Toolbox

​Imagine that you are the parent of the teenager we met earlier.

Your beloved child has just screamed, “I hate you!”

You find yourself at the entranceway to the fear-filled road of hurt, anger and overreaction.

But with your new understanding, instead of traveling its well-worn path you stop. You remember that you have a choice.

Take a deep breath and ask yourself, what is positive about this situation?

Well, your daughter stopped. She didn’t go out that front door. She accepted the structure you imposed and went back upstairs to change. She did what you asked of her.

You could go on, thinking of how blessed you are to be the mother of such a high-spirited young woman. How lucky you are that she has good health, and that you are able to give her enough food to eat and a comfortable place to live.

Of course, you may not be feeling blessed by these things at the moment.

You have to choose to think of those things which feel positive to you.

Counting your blessings is an excellent tool for short-circuiting knee-jerk reactions.

Remember too to lighten up; it is not all so serious. Can you imagine what a cartoon of this situation would look like?

Remember what Erma Bombeck says, “If you can’t make it better, you can laugh at it.”

Now think about this - today is exactly perfect just as it is. Every annoying detail is exactly as it should be.

We put so much of our energy into annoyance with small details of everyday life that are as they are. See the  perfection. You can trust that your daughter is learning how to make her own choices. This is a good thing, even if it requires you to occasionally butt heads.

You have the ability to choose love. Love would give your daughter a calm choice with full knowledge of appropriate consequences.
​
The next time you find yourself reacting in a fearful or angry, knee-jerk reaction, take a deep breath, count your blessings, lighten up, see the perfection, and ask yourself, “What would love do here?”
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Memories Are Malleable

5/3/2019

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 “We all have memories that are malleable and susceptible to being contaminated or supplemented in some way.”
-Elizabeth Loftus

Have you ever had the experience of remembering an event a certain way, and finding out later that it happened differently than you remembered? I have, and it was disconcerting.
​
We think we remember an event a certain way and yet that is not what actually happened. Eye witnesses to traumatic events are notoriously unreliable. We perceive events through our personal filters.

Your Spiritual Toolbox

Do you have a memory that disturbs you? One that you go over and over in your mind trying to fix what went wrong? 

Refocus that memory.

Are there any parts of that memory that felt good to you? Or even other associated memories that feel good to you. Focus on those.
​
Even if there is a voice in your head that says, “But we’ve got to fix this!” Keep refocusing. When the old, painful memory comes up, overwrite it with the good stuff.
You are rewriting the pathways of the negative memory with positive, affirming memories.

Daydream your way to a positive experience. Enact it in your mind with as much detail as you can envision until you feel the positive emotions you want to feel. Do this each time the old memory disturbs you and build new, positive memory pathways in your brain.  
What’s more, if the actual event does not support the story we want to tell ourselves we may shift things around in our memory without even realizing that we are doing so.

This is because memories are not a record of actual events. Memories are the stories we tell ourselves to explain things, and our memories are malleable. They can change.
​

Dr Loftus, a psychologist who studies human memory, says,
“In real life, as well as in experiments, people can come to believe things that never really happened.”

“When we remember something, we're taking bits and pieces of experience - sometimes from different times and places - and bringing it all together to construct what might feel like a recollection but is actually a construction.”

This is all pretty interesting, but how can we utilize this malleability to support us?

For example, I have a memory from not too long ago of an afternoon and evening spent with my grandchildren. Tired children can be a challenge for tired grandmothers, even children said grandmother adores.

After playing in the yard and splash pool at our house, then dinner and bath time, one child, who shall remain nameless, tested my patience. I was feeling irritable with tiredness and not happy with myself to be so.

I thought a half-hour of gentle cartoons before bedtime might be a good solution for all of us.

After twenty minutes of sitting quietly to the point of falling asleep in front of the television, one child got up and couldn’t stop misbehaving, climbing dangerously on a piece of exercise equipment we had in the TV room. (You may ask why that particular piece of equipment was in the TV room at all. That is another story.)  In frustration I shut off the TV and ushered everyone upstairs for bedtime.

Our grandchildren are sensitive, empathic souls and this one knew I was annoyed. What’s more this child was annoyed with me right back! Instead of going up to bed as requested this child climbed up to the kitchen counter and stated, “I’m hungry!” though they all had a large snack (as well as dinner) shortly before. Rather than sputtering out my intense frustration, I asked my husband to take over in the kitchen and brought the other two upstairs to bed.

It’s not that the events were terrible or even my reactions. Young children get tired and so do grandmothers. But irritated and annoyed, waiting for bedtime, is not the kind of grandmother I want to be. What I want is to enjoy these precious moments with my grandchildren. They are small for such a short time.

Instead, that night I worried over my reactions, trying to figure out what I’d done wrong. I lay in bed going  over it in my mind, trying to fix it for next time. What I actually did was cement the negative parts of my memory in my brain, effectively eclipsing the positive parts. And we know what that creates, more of the same.

So, how do we make the malleability of memory work for us?

A memory is your mental re-creation; therefore, you can make it anything you want. If the memory of the past event is painful why not recreate it?

For most of us, our tendency is to focus on the negative parts of our memories in an attempt to fix whatever it was, just like I did.

The past is over, you already lived that version. Let go of trying to fix it. Instead, refocus the memory.

Refocus the memory onto the positive rather than focusing on the discomfort. Allow yourself to heal rather than re-inflicting injury each time you access that memory.

How would I refocus this memory with my grandchildren? I’d focus my attention on the parts of the memory that I want to have more of in my life.  I’d picture Eden’s delight as he cannonballed into the pool, Sophia’s mud-pies with mint leaf topping, and Alexandar’s sweet, one-sided smile as he showed me his special truck. I’d focus my attention on their joy and their laughter.  I’d feel the sweetness of our youngest falling asleep in my lap, while his sister fell asleep holding my hand resting against her cheek. I’d see my husband curled up with our grandson sleeping peacefully beside him.

These are the memories I choose to place my focused attention upon.
​

As you refocus your memory, you are laying the energetic groundwork for experiencing a future of events that eventually become memories which heal and support you.
Photo by Mike Marquez on Unsplash
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​All materials provided on www.hollyhildreth.com are provided for informational, educational and entertainment purposes only and are not intended to be, or serve as a substitute for, professional medical/psychological advice, examination, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical or psychological condition.
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