Using color to heal?

I’ve always understood how colors affect us in different ways. Especially when I studied with the Builders of the Adytum that focuses on the tarot and Kabbalah - color and sound are important parts of both of those systems. But the other morning, the use of color to heal was impressed on me in another way.

I have been reading a review book that won’t be out until February so I can’t give title or author yet. But the book focuses on light as well as the way various colors can affect us. While reading this, all of a sudden I remembered how I used to see colored eyeglasses in some metaphysical shops and had always wondered how a person could use them to heal.

In the book, the author talks about how having a client look through turquoise glasses healed her vision. I thought to myself, “I wonder if I could use these eyeglasses to bring my body and chakras into better balance? I wonder if color could help bring my heart back into a steady rhythm and heal my mobility issues?”

A few days later a set of seven colored surround eyeglasses sat on my kitchen table along with two books on color healing.

So far, I’ve used the green, yellow, and red ones, sometimes just sitting and looking through them while visualizing myself immersed in the color and other times walking outside with the glasses on. It’s too soon to know results which I suspect will be subtle at first, but I am keeping records of what transpires so will let you know what happens! Oh, and yes, there are rose-colored ones; so, some days I do look at life through rose-colored glasses!

Happy Thanksgiving and a gift for you!

Today, right now, I am sending each of you warm wishes and a huge thank you for being in my life. I don’t know who all of you are because I don’t have a list of who reads my blog! But I feel you there and I feel your support.

Because I haven’t done a good job of it, many people don’t know I have made several guided meditation MP3s. Well, I have! And to thank you for reading my blog and being in my life, I am giving you one of them free today. It is one of my favorites and whether or not you believe in chakras, I think you’ll find this little 20-minute process powerful. Here’s how to get your free MP3 until 11:59 tonight.

Go to anoasisforyoursoul.com/audio-video programs and put the Chakra Clearing meditation into your shopping cart. Check out and put HAPPY (all caps) in the code box. You will be sent insrtuctions to download the file!

I wish each of you the best always and in all ways. Thank you for being in my life!

Which frog?

There’s a story I was reminded of by Ananda Minister Nivritti at our meditation/study group this past week. It is a story told by Paramhansa Yogananda and one of my favorites so I’m going to share it with you here.

One day there were two frogs who were playing around in a barn and they jumped into a pail of milk. Uh-oh. The sides of the bucket were slippery and they discovered they couldn’t jump out of the pail. They swam and swam around in circles. Finally one of them said, “I can’t keep doing this. I’m too tired. I’m going to give up.” And he did. He sank to the bottom of the pail of milk and drowned.

The other frog was sad to lose his friend but said to himself, “There’s got to be a way out of here. I have to keep swimming.” He kept swimming round and round and then he felt something solid under his feet. He realized he could step on this and use it to jump out of the pail. He did and his life was saved. What had he stepped on? Butter - his swimming had turned the milk to butter.

The point of the story is, of course, to never give up. Just when things seem to be the most difficult or times seem the darkest, this is the time to keep swimming. Tell yourself, “Just one more lap.” For all you know, you’re making butter!

Sometimes I scare myself - do you?

When I was driving home from Ananda yesterday, I was listening to a talk called How to Love Yourself given by recently deceased Louise Hay, founder of Hay House and author of You Can Heal Your Life.  She explains that we can't heal if we don't love ourselves and then lists ten things we can do to love ourselves more. One of them is "Don't scare yourself."

We all do it sometimes. Even though my doctor assured me I can live a long life, when I heard I had a heart condition one of my first thoughts was that death was only a breath away - or more humorously, a heartbeat away!  Better get my affairs in order fast - I don't want my spouse to have to deal with all my books, journals, rocks, etc.... And my study is a mess - better get it tidied up. As Louise said, as soon as we feel a little pain in our body, we're already planning our funeral. We scare ourselves! We terrorize ourselves!

As a meditator, I have experienced myself as a spiritual being and I know that when I die, I won't cease to exist; I will just change form. Even so, facing the imminent thought of dying scared me because I didn't feel prepared. Mostly, I was concerned about the effect this would have on others once I was gone. And what if I haven't completed my life's work, whatever that is? Will this affect future karma?

For someone else, they hear rumors at work and decide they will be fired. Or someone's spouse looks at them sideways and they figure a divorce isn't far off. Or we scare ourselves by wondering if one of our president's tweets will start a nuclear war. In other words, we allow ourselves to immediately think the worse of whatever situation we're facing. We scare ourselves. And people who are scared can't heal.

The solution? Louise says to think of a person or situation that makes you feel calm and happy. It could be a person you know or a saint or your dog or cat, a waterfall or garden  - something or someone that makes you feel good. When you discover you're scaring yourself, think about this person or situation right away. She says if we do this often enough, we will eventually stop jumping to negative conclusions right away.

Here's one of my pictures that makes me feel calm and happy......

Let me tell you about Maggie

During the time I worked in eldercare, I had the good fortune to get to know people in their 80's, 90's and even a few in their 100's. Some of them were delightful people and others....well, not so much, as the saying goes. Lately, I've been remembering and thinking of a 94 year-old woman named Maggie.

Maggie was a statuesque woman who used a walker to get around. She was pleasant, had a great sense of humor, and seemed very wise. One day she took me aside in the hallway, looked me severely in the eyes and said, "If I die, don't you dare resuscitate me. If I have to, I will have NO CPR tattooed on my chest."

She was referring to a state law that said the staff had to perform CPR on someone who died, even if they had a do not resuscitate order on file. The reasoning was that only a doctor or EMT were qualified to declare death; so until that happened, we had to perform CPR.

I reminded Maggie that this was a law for which I or the staff could be held liable. Here's what she said to me.

"I'm 94 years old. I've lived a wonderful life. I know it doesn't look like it now, but I was very active and used to hike and climb mountains. I've had and raised my children who now don't have anything to do with me. I have inoperable lung cancer and I'm ready for whatever comes next. Don't you dare bring me back if I have died. Let me go. I'm ready."

I told her what a role model she was. Live life fully. Live out loud. Do what you came here to do and when the day comes be able to say, "I've lived a wonderful life with no regrets and I'm ready to move on."

The irony here was that Maggie still smoked cigarettes. Our community had just come out with a new no smoking in the building policy - residents had to go outside to smoke. Maggie would hide in her apartment and smoke in her bathroom with the exhaust fan on. The smoke would go into the apartment beneath hers. That resident would come and complain to me and I had to go to Maggie and tell her not to smoke in her apartment.

Her response was a wicked smile of defiance when she said, "OK." We both knew she didn't mean it. We both knew I would be back, asking her once again to take the smoke outside. I often wonder if one of the things that kept her going to 94 and beyond was that inner spirit of defiance.

I ask each of us: where can you live more fully and who or what do you need to defy?

What I learned by preparing to lead a study group

As I was preparing to lead the new Ananda study and meditation group we've started in Monroe, I realized something I want to share. I think I've written about this somewhere before, but not here and not recently. Here's what I realized and want to share.

The best way to learn something is to give a class in the material you want to master!

To prepare for the group, I had to go back through the book we're using: How to Awaken Your True Potential by Paramhansa Yogananda. I had to read it more slowly because I would be asking the people who came to the group to discuss the material. I had to read and digest it in a different way than when I was reading it only for myself. I took notes to help clarify my thinking and to help me keep the group discussion on track. All of this caused me to learn the material better than I had before.

What teaching a class or leading a discussion group does is imprint the material more deeply because it heightens our attention and ability to remember something. If you want to learn something, prepare to give a class in it. Even if you never give the class, you'll learn the material so much better!

In other news, I'm sleeping normally again and waking up automatically at my usual time. Some folks I know who love their CPAP machines think me a bit odd if not downright crazy. For me, it only proves once again that we're all different - and how wonderful it is to celebrate and honor those differences instead of letting them divide us. Now if only we could get some other people to embrace this concept of honoring our differences. Someday it will happen. I just know it will.