The ability to listen and the ability to really hear are two different things. One is mechanical and the other is an art form.

I have been a student of listening for over thirty years now. My journey with my mentor has been a never ending journey of awakening and discovery. Listening is the most profound master teacher that I have ever studied under.

I have had a few great master teachers in my life time! But not one with the power to carry me through  multidimensional levels of awareness in a moment by moment process. My Listening Mentor wears a coat of many colors and just when I think that I have become my own master, my mentor morphs, showing me a depth I never saw before.

The very first lesson that my master teacher shared with me is that HEAR and HEART are only one letter apart. So the first teaching I received at the feet of my master teacher was, “To really hear what is being said you must connect with heart!”

Action Step – try this over the next week:

1. Whenever you are in a listening situation during the coming week, imagine opening a channel from your heart to your head. 
2. Be aware of your heart and your hearts’ capacity to “hear” or feel what is being said.
3. Be aware of your heart as you listen and notice what if you discover. Without judgment or opinions, just listen from your heart and notice what comes up.

Let’s put that another way. We already are incredible intention generators. However, what we are manifesting maybe less than EXACTLY what we want because all of the subconscious programming that gets into the mix along with our pure intention.

It’s as we went to bake chocolate chip cookies. But when they were done they tasted like a combination of hazel butter and chocolate chips because a few hidden ingredients got into the mix. And although the result may taste good, it isn’t quite what we intended.

Our life results sometimes appear that way. Like something strange got into the mix and it turned out to be our lives.

Now here’s the good news! There are so many new clearing tools and methods available on the planet at this time. These allow us the opportunity to take responsibility for much of our own subconscious clearing and transformation. Many of these provide us with never before known avenues of self-healing.

One such avenue available over the past 25 years is something called TFT, EFT or Meridian Tapping. The original work was done by Dr. Roger Callahan. From the time of its inception, it has gone into the hands of hundreds of credible therapists who are now teaching it all over the world.

Here is a little private introduction to EFT by Dr. Tate Rolfs. Dr. Rolfs demonstrates a method of relieving stress by balancing the parasympathetic nervous system using EFT or Meridian Tapping. This is a very informal sharing but I wanted to share it with you.

Our brain is amazing! In fact, neuroscientists tell us that the human brain is the most powerful processor and solution generator on the planet.  We now know that human intention can and does influence the material world in a significant way.

Yet herein is the challenge that we all face. We affect the world around us whether we are consciously intending to or not.

In fact, our lives are a mirror of our thoughts. What do you spend the majority of you time thinking about? What are the repetitive patterns of thought that float through your mind on a daily basis?

Thoughts are things. It has been said, as it is within, so it is on the outside. Our thoughts and attitude shape our reality all day long.

Here’s an experiment. Imagine that you are a scientist and that your life is your laboratory for learning. Then pick an hour during your day. Rather than choosing an hour when its quiet or restful, make it a normal hour during your busy work schedule.

And just for that one-hour, become a witness to your thoughts. Observe them and ask yourself the following:

• Is this (a specific) thought or a repetitive thought?
• Approximately how many thoughts went through in that hour of observation?
• Were most of them positive or negative?
• Then make a note of what you discovered during that one hour.

Did you ever say to yourself, “I love my mom but I swear I will never do that one thing that she does.”  With men, it’s usually the father that you model, and it’s the same question.

Have you ever caught yourself doing something (like a behavior) that your mom or dad did?

Well I’ve seen certain behaviors before. But I just had a flashback the other day and gained a powerful insight regarding thoughts (or weeds) in my mental garden.

A fear took over. I got caught in it for about half an hour. Then I sat down and started the one minute meditation. One minute turned into six or seven. And as I continued to follow my breath, I gained enough awareness to separate from the fear. Then I begin to observe it.

I discovered that it was a thought that came from my parents. It had its origin in the pressures of their life and the decisions they made out of certain events or situations.

Neuroscience calls this harmonic resonance. I call it imprinting. And this was imprinting at its best! My brain had been raised with their thoughts. And their thinking left an indelible imprint on my mind. A neural pathway that didn’t originate with me, was now mine and I had to clear it!

Then I began to wonder how much they had imprinted from their parents. It appeared that the thread of imprinting could be traced back through the generations ad infinitum.

This isn’t about blame or being a victim of circumstance. Far from it. Rather, it is accepting myself and taking full responsibility for my upbringing as well as my present experience.

So here was an unsubstantiated fear. And as I went to face it head on, it morphed into it’s origin in my parents’ decision made a long time before I even knew that I had a choice.

I cleared that one, at least for now. But I wonder if its roots are even deeper than I know. I am now on high alert to notice if it returns. And if it does, my intention is to catch it before it catches me and sends me into a tailspin.

Now I wonder how many more of these weeds have I picked up from my upbringing!

Love to hear of your discoveries. Keep the notes coming as the journey continues. This adventure is getting more interesting with every passing day…

But it’s been a far longer day for the parents of the two young people in the Ohio shooting that lost their fight for life today.

I cannot imagine the agony of the longest prayer and deepest asking a heart can bear that a parent would do at the bedside of their child.

I never had children of my own. But to have a child, to dream of that child growing up, to send my child to school one day and then meet the doctor at the hospital in a fight for the life of my beloved son or daughter and feel the powerlessness that they must have felt…

To not be able to stop the hands of time as they slowly pulled my child from my arms and watch in unimaginable horror as my child slipped through the veil beyond my reach… Is beyond where my heart and mind can go.

I ask myself, “How could we not have seen it coming?” “Didn’t anyone notice something, anything that might have signaled that something was wrong – something was out of kilter?”

We all need to be better at reading the symptoms, signs and signals. They were there. It’s time to take a stand.

One  more time a tragedy has hit our nations schools. The shooting of 5 students by A young boy who had been bullied makes every mother’s heart break for the loss.

This is a tragedy of major proportions…for the children who were shot, for the child who will not see the light of another day on Earth, and for the student who saw this as the only means  of expression.

My heart cries out, “Could this tragedy have been prevented?”

We need to get to the root of issue. Bullying is not an isolated incident! It doesn’t happen one time and cause this kind of a reaction.

Up until now, I said that, ‘Breaking Out of the World Game’ (our anti-bullying program) is an intervention program. Maybe our intervention program needs to be called a prevention program and taught as part of the required curriculum in every school.

Let me say this in another way. Is it time to make an anti-bullying program a prerequisite in every school? If we have come to this, let’s admit it and take a stand as parents and concerned community members. Let’s not lose one more child to our paralysis. Let us act on behalf of every family in America.

It starts with the little abrasive things that we do and say to each other and builds up on daily. If not curbed it turns into teasing and taunting and mental and emotional abuse.

We cannot turn our backs any longer. It is you and I as adults who are on trial here.

I am asking for other voices… your voice to join the call. This is dedicated to our children and our children’s children that they may grow up to live a full life.

My prayers go out to the mother’s and families involved. But are we not all involved? Are we not of this nation and this world? Let the sacrifices stop. For every sacrifice belongs to us if we do not take a stand.

I want to hear from you! Please either click on the blog title and scroll to the bottom of the page or click the word “responses” to take you to the comment area. I look forward to sharing this journey with you.