What does Spirit think of suicide?

A woman on one of the FB groups I frequent had a question regarding legalized, end-of-life, assisted suicide. She wanted to know what we thought the "heavens" think of all that as so many religions disapprove of and even condemn suicide. She was asking the psychics in the group specifically what they thought but that didn't stop the rest of us all from having and giving our opinions. :)

This is my take on it (for the moment, my beliefs and my spirituality are ever changing): 

Many who have had Near-Death Experiences (NDEs), ex. Anita Moorjani, Eben Alexander, etc. say that there is absolutely no judgement on the other side of the veil, only complete acceptance and unconditional love unlike anything we can even imagine here on Earth. 

All judgment seems to happen here, in human minds. I'm not psychic nor have I had an NDE, however, it seems to me that religious beliefs are mostly human interpretation of divine messages received by other humans. And most religious doctrines come from documents written by other humans.

Even if the messages and documents are channeled, as I'm sure they are, they've come through a human vessel. That person who received the message and/or wrote the document lived in a certain body (male or female), at a certain time in history and came from a certain culture. All of those elements colour the message that they received. Like air moving through different organ pipes make different sounds yet the air creates ALL of those sounds so none can be said to be the "correct" one that represents the air. Air is so much more than just the different sounds it can make through even a multi-piped organ.

I guess I don't believe human brains can ever capture the entire story that just "is". All that means to me is that our holy words and religious scriptures are not God's word. They are only a representation of that word because God/the Universe/Source/The Light/whatever you like to call it... IS the word and cannot ever be represented in its entirety in any Earthly form.

Our thoughts, feelings, beliefs and words are not enough to express that being. And if there is any judgment in our version of Spirit (toward suicide, toward someone who has a particular sexual orientation, etc. ad infinitum) then I think it is the vessel through which the air is passing that is to "blame" for that judgment and not the air itself. Air just is.

Make no mistake about it, you have been hypnotized!

If you hypnotize someone into believing that they are a chicken in a barnyard, what happens? We’ve all seen enough stage hypnosis shows to know that what happens is the hypnotist will get the person to start clucking like a chicken.

Well, here’s the thing… your beliefs about yourself, about life, about the world… have hypnotized you. Whatever or whoever you believe you are is who you will be. Your behaviours and actions, or lack of behaviours and actions, only ever come from your beliefs. Unless you make a conscious effort (and it is a very big effort of willpower that you will need), you will never take an action that falls outside of what you believe to be possible.

If you believe you are a chicken, you will cluck like a chicken. If you believe you are a loser, you will act like a loser and get a loser's results - reinforcing that belief. If you believe women or poor people can’t do X, Y or Z and you identify with being a “woman” or a “poor person” then you won’t be able to do X, Y or Z… but you are only hypnotized.

Maybe it’s your family who unwittingly or intentionally hypnotized you. Perhaps your culture or your teachers repeated the same things to you over and over until you believed them as well. In some cases, it was just one very emotional and negatively interpreted experience that made you take on a particular belief. 

All of this is only hypnosis and a hypnotic trance can be broken. Waking up from the trance means opening doors to other possibilities, opening doors to a new life and a new you.

Hypnosis happens in a number of ways but the two most common are repetition (all forms of advertising use this tactic) and emotional impact.

Repetition as hypnosis

If you hear the same string of words or see the same happenings over and over again, it sinks into your subconscious. Your mind, being a meaning-making-machine, attempts to make sense of it and that "sense", which is quite often nonsense, becomes something that you believe. X begins to = Y.

High levels of emotion induce trance

Any experiences we have while we are feeling highly emotional (fear, joy, anger, love, shame, etc.)  become embedded in our subconscious minds. That is why it's often easy for us to call them to memory. Again, our minds are always trying to comprehend what is happening. Whatever our interpretation of this situation is, it becomes our belief.

"The Truth"

What we believe is NOT “the truth”. This is very hard for us to grasp and understand because what we believe FEELS true to us. “The truth” is that what is true for you may be completely false for someone else in the exact same situation as you.

An example: Imagine you have to give up your home and most of your possessions. You own only a backpack worth of "stuff" and must go live with friends. To some, this would be their worst nightmare ever and yet there is another interpretation. I know of a person who has this happening to her yet she is feeling great. She feels free and unfettered. This is one of the best times of her life. She is not interpreting this situation to mean she has no worth, she is not interpreting it to mean that she is going to starve in the future, she is not interpreting that she’s a burden to her friends… she is enjoying her time feeling free, happy and light.

Here’s another thing that it’s hard for us to hear and believe: it’s NOT the situation, it is the interpretation of the situation, it’s the judgment we put on the situation. Our beliefs and judgments can be changed so that we can view “bad” situations differently, find peace with them and enjoy life more fully… no matter the situation.

So, coming back to beliefs and hypnotism: If we can become aware of our beliefs, we have a better chance of de-hypnotizing ourselves. We can also ask for help in finding our beliefs and reinterpreting our situations. There are many techniques that allow us to explore and release these beliefs and the pain they cause us: my favourites are EFT, The Work of Byron Katie and PSTec, among many other options.

Don’t allow life and other people to keep you stuck in your hypnotized state. It may have taken many years of childhood or one very emotional experience to hypnotize you but the state can be broken in an instant.

When you notice that you don’t like how you feel, ask yourself “What am I believing about this person/this situation, that makes me feel sad/angry/ashamed/afraid”? Pick up a healing tool or technique – maybe all you need to do is take some deep breaths – and de-hypnotize yourself or ask for help to do it. Know that it can be done.

Hugs,
Kelly.

Gratitude for Books, Reading and Google

I've been wanting to start a blog for a long time. Every once in a while, I will be riding home in my car, thinking about something I've read or heard recently and I'll start a discussion with no one in my head. Seems like a bit of a waste to have it stop there. So I think I'll start this out as a gratitude journal entry.

The first thing to mention is that I'm grateful to Google for making it so easy for me to get this underway.

The next thing that comes to mind is that I have had the privilege to read some absolutely amazing books over the last year or so related to healing; trauma's effects on health, what causes illness, how emotions play into disease, how we can heal ourselves. I'm just so happy and full of gratitude today that those books exist and that they have found their way to me. I'm looking forward to sharing some of them with you.

These are just a few to pique your curiosity:

• Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof That You Can Heal Yourself by Lissa Rankin, MD
• When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress by Gabor Maté, MD
• The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk, MD

I'm also really grateful that I know how to read. I don't even give it a second thought most of the time but I can't imagine what my life would have been like, would BE like if I couldn't read. I consider myself one of the truly lucky ones for that gift.

My mother was key in sparking and supporting my interest in books and my first grade teacher at Marie V. Duffy in Wharton, NJ was the one who taught me how to do it. I remember I couldn't stop reading billboards once I was able to figure out what they meant. So today I'm sending out gratitude to both my mother and Mrs. I-can't-remember-her-name as well.

I like to make a list of about 3 to 5 things when I do a gratitude journal entry, not too many that it will take too much time -if it takes more than 5 minutes, I probably won't do it at all- and not too few that I won't have to sit and think about my day for a little while.

What's in your gratitude journal entry today?