When Worlds Collide: Meeting Your Twin Flame, by Sarah Delamere Hurding.

Many of us know who our Soul Mates are. But do we recognize our other half? Our Twin Flame?

This is a new concept to many of you I am sure. But as 2013 gets underway and your opportunity for growth and spiritual evolution expands, it is time to get ready for the ride of your life.

Your Twin Flame awaits. But be warned it ain't necessarily gonna be a picnic.

Each of us has between 6 to 12 Soul Mates ranging from siblings to spouses to teachers to lovers to friends. Our Soul Mates in this life are the people who support us and whom we are closely connected with. They probably have a lot in common with us and are always there for us, understanding, encouraging and sharing every step of the way.

Our Soul Mates feel familiar to us and this is because more often than not we have had several life times together. In each life time we meet up again and replay our connections, sometimes more successfully than others. We cannot avoid our Soul Mates. Indeed our lives would be pretty empty and meaningless without them. These deep friendships and bonds are what makes life worthwhile. Together we always have the opportunity to transform ourselves and clear the karmas and controversies of previous times.

The purpose of connecting with Soul Mates is to learn, share and grow together. We would find it hard to manage without them. Yet as our spirit develops and changes sometimes we are tested with a letting go process which can be quite difficult and painful. The good news is, these trials and difficulties often pave the way for the real humdinger of a connection – our reconciliation with our Twin Flame.

So if you have been having a hard time of tests and changes in the last couple of years, take heart that a very worthwhile relationship is more than likely just around the corner. As the Year progresses, all roads lead to this magical point. It is where we should all aspire to get to and this is now what many of us will be lucky enough to experience.

Of course many people are in established and happy relationships with their Soul Mates and young families and they do not need to be reading this with a hint of panic. Sometimes the Twin Flame thing is too much for some. This is okay. If it is meant to happen it will do so and if it is not then life roles on, no harm done. What will be will be…

But the reality is that the times ahead will accelerate our lives in ways we have not yet anticipated. There will be unpredictable and unanticipated changes as the energies change. The planet does need more and more spiritually conscious people to get busy on its behalf. This why the Twin Flame thing really could stir the pot and take you by surprise.

Just remember you have free will and you have choice. Even when confronted with your other half, you can just say no if you are happy in your current situation. Just be very self aware if this happens to you and double check that you are not in some kind of unhealthy denial about who you are and whom you should be with.

Twin Flame will stir you up to look deep within. Can you handle it?

Our Twin Flame unions have the potential to be a whole world apart from what we have experienced to date. Other worldly in fact! These advanced spiritual soul mates shine a light on us and reflect all our issues back to us in spades.

Twin Flame relationships are the ultimate challenge. They inspire great healing within but if you are not ready to shift all of your nonsense, dramas and negative patterns it is very unlikely you will ever be lucky enough to fully connect. The Universe only tends to allow this union when both parties have gone through a whole lot and are ready for a whole lot more!

So have you met your Twin Flame yet?

The chances are you have not. These are rare connections and many Twin Flames are in spirit rather than walking the earth plane. Or at least this has been the way of it for aeons.

Up until the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, it was very common for your Twin Flame to support you in spirit. You see your Twin Flame is a completely independent and autonomous unit. Yes, they are your other half; the other part of you. But equally they are whole in themselves and can get by without you.

The chances are you will only connect with your Twin Flame when you have reached such a level of independence within yourself that you can actually manage quite well without them.

This might not sound very romantic. But the Twin Flame connection is so powerful that it is about spirit and soul much more than a mere physical connection; though that is all included if you are lucky enough to hook up in this life time.

Many people connect with their spouse or main Soul Mate during childhood. But it is really not very typical for Twin Flames to connect during childhood. Typically both parties have to have evolved to a certain level of consciousness or vibration before the universe allows the connection.

You do not happen upon your Twin Flame in a casual way, nor do you go out of your way to find them. It is quite simple, when the time is right you find each other.

It is very common for a Twin Flame to be in another country or another continent and very unlikely they will be living in your neighbourhood. Because this is primarily a spiritual connection, the universe likes to test things by keeping Twin Flames apart for quite some time. This is the union of two mature souls who have probably been to hell and back and who have finally found each other and suddenly it all makes sense.

This union is everything you have wished for and more. It is mutual and reciprocal; not unrequited or one sided; not dysfunctional or co-dependent. There is really no separation from your Twin Flame. They are a part of you, even now. Chances are they are waiting to find you even as we speak.

So how will I know if I have found my Twin Flame?

The beauty of this connection is that usually there is a strong telepathic link that dispenses with the need for words. You do not even have to be alone in the silence. Tune into the universe and see what impressions you start to get about your Twin. Do not assume that they are a lot like you. Often times their role is to compliment you, so they may well have had quite a different life path up until the point when you connect.

The universe will start to give you very definite clues in the form of synchronous coincidences. There will be subtle signs which you may well resist at first because you will not quite believe what is happening. There will be magic in the air and yet you may feel some resistance too. Sit loose to it all with a wry smile on your face because of course there really is no panic. You will feel quietly confident and assured deep within. This all makes complete sense as they are your twin. They have been wanting to connect with you just as much as you with them. so why sweat it?

So what are the odds of connecting with your Twin?

God only knows: literally. After all they are one soul in a sea of souls. It is possible to put too much emphasis on finding your spiritual Twin.

Twin Flames? IF we are meant to connect with our Twin Flame in this life time we will cross paths soon enough and both parties will just ‘know’. There will be no doubts. Like magnets drawn together in a compelling, unavoidable way the nature of the Twin Flame relationship is undeniable. It leaves no room for analysis and doubt. All the ‘will he or she’ torture is nowhere in sight.

The down side is that your Twin Flame may indeed be in Spirit in this life time. But as we are in the new groove this is less likely to be so than it would have been aeons ago. As the magical energies building towards 2019, many people will finally connect with their Twin Flame. This is all part of the divine plan and encourages the spiritual evolution of the planet. The babies born from these unions will be something else!

Remember that connecting with your Twin Flame may well be challenging. When you initially connect – after the inevitable fireworks – you may feel some resistance and adjustment. This is only natural. Hooking up with your Twin Flame is a major reality check that can be more than a little bit uncomfortable. It is often like dealing with a part of yourself you have chosen not to look at for quite some time.

This all makes sense in a way. Connecting with your Twin is like looking squarely in the mirror and seeing the naked truth warts and all. No one is pretending that this kind of connection is going to be plain sailing. There is also quite a high chance that your Twin may be coming out of a relationship in which they have had to fulfill certain karmas. So, there will be adjustments on all sides.

Of course the things in the way of this magical connection ultimately work to confirm its validity. The challenges heighten mutual determination but only if it is the right TIME for this connection. Bravery is required on both sides.

Connecting with your Twin Flame does not usually follow the same pattern as the straightforward romantic falling in love process. It surpasses the traditional romantic images of strolls on the beach hand in hand, candlelight dinners and gazing at the stars -  it is much more of a crazy rollercoaster ride. Enjoy!

Practical Tips To Attract your Twin Flame into your life:

1) Eliminate clutter and create space.

2) Create the right conditions to magnetize your mate both within and without: Enhance your living environment with attractive decor.

3) Ditch the past within and without: Let go and embrace the void for a while if needs be. You need to be strong and independent to attract your mate.

4) Clear Obstacles: Release all evidence in your environment that you might be hanging on to the past.

5) Identify and Clarify: Tune in and get a sense of what your Twin Flame might be like. Feel what it would be like to be with them. Magnetize your feelings and trust yourself to draw the right person to you.

6) Love connections: Fully appreciate and experience your Soul Mate connections first. Sort out issues with your nearest and dearest.

7) Forgive yourself past mistakes and do not anticipate you will repeat them. With your Twin Flame you definitely will not do so.

8) Maintain a vibration of love, spirit and openness to all. Prepare your heart and be ready.

--

Read the original post here.

Why generation Y yuppies are unhappy, by Tim Urban.

Say hi to Lucy.

Lucy is part of Generation Y, the generation born between the late 1970s and the mid 1990s.  She's also part of a yuppie culture that makes up a large portion of Gen Y.  

I have a term for yuppies in the Gen Y age group—I call them Gen Y Protagonists & Special Yuppies, or GYPSYs.  A GYPSY is a unique brand of yuppie, one who thinks they are the main character of a very special story.

So Lucy's enjoying her GYPSY life, and she's very pleased to be Lucy.  Only issue is this one thing:

Lucy's kind of unhappy.

To get to the bottom of why, we need to define what makes someone happy or unhappy in the first place.  It comes down to a simple formula:

It's pretty straightforward—when the reality of someone's life is better than they had expected, they're happy.  When reality turns out to be worse than the expectations, they're unhappy. 

To provide some context, let's start by bringing Lucy's parents into the discussion:

Lucy's parents were born in the 50s—they're Baby Boomers.  They were raised by Lucy's grandparents, members of the G.I. Generation, or "the Greatest Generation," who grew up during the Great Depression and fought in World War II, and were most definitely not GYPSYs.

Lucy's Depression Era grandparents were obsessed with economic security and raised her parents to build practical, secure careers.  They wanted her parents' careers to have greener grass than their own, and Lucy's parents were brought up to envision a prosperous and stable career for themselves.  Something like this:

They were taught that there was nothing stopping them from getting to that lush, green lawn of a career, but that they'd need to put in years of hard work to make it happen. 

After graduating from being insufferable hippies, Lucy's parents embarked on their careers.  As the 70s, 80s, and 90s rolled along, the world entered a time of unprecedented economic prosperity.  Lucy's parents did even better than they expected to.  This left them feeling gratified and optimistic.

With a smoother, more positive life experience than that of their own parents, Lucy's parents raised Lucy with a sense of optimism and unbounded possibility.  And they weren't alone.  Baby Boomers all around the country and world told their Gen Y kids that they could be whatever they wanted to be, instilling the special protagonist identity deep within their psyches.

This left GYPSYs feeling tremendously hopeful about their careers, to the point where their parents' goals of a green lawn of secure prosperity didn't really do it for them.  A GYPSY-worthy lawn has flowers.

This leads to our first fact about GYPSYs:

GYPSYs Are Wildly Ambitious

The GYPSY needs a lot more from a career than a nice green lawn of prosperity and security.  The fact is, a green lawn isn't quite exceptional or unique enough for a GYPSY.  Where the Baby Boomers wanted to live The American Dream, GYPSYs want to live Their Own Personal Dream.  

Cal Newport points out that "follow your passion" is a catchphrase that has only gotten going in the last 20 years, according to Google's Ngram viewer, a tool that shows how prominently a given phrase appears in English print over any period of time.  The same Ngram viewer shows that the phrase "a secure career" has gone out of style, just as the phrase "a fulfilling career" has gotten hot.

To be clear, GYPSYs want economic prosperity just like their parents did—they just also want to be fulfilled by their career in a way their parents didn't think about as much.  

But something else is happening too.  While the career goals of Gen Y as a whole have become much more particular and ambitious, Lucy has been given a second message throughout her childhood as well:

This would probably be a good time to bring in our second fact about GYPSYs:

GYPSYs Are Delusional

"Sure," Lucy has been taught, "everyone will go and get themselves some fulfilling career, but I am unusually wonderful and as such, my career and life path will stand out amongst the crowd."  So on top of the generation as a whole having the bold goal of a flowery career lawn, each individual GYPSY thinks that he or she is destined for something even better—

A shiny unicorn on top of the flowery lawn.  

So why is this delusional?  Because this is what all GYPSYs think, which defies the definition of special:

spe-cial | 'speSHel |
adjective

better, greater, or otherwise different from what is usual.

According to this definition, most people are not special—otherwise "special" wouldn't mean anything.

Even right now, the GYPSYs reading this are thinking, "Good point...but I actually am one of the few special ones"—and this is the problem.

A second GYPSY delusion comes into play once the GYPSY enters the job market.  While Lucy's parents' expectation was that many years of hard work would eventually lead to a great career, Lucy considers a great career an obvious given for someone as exceptional as she, and for her it's just a matter of time and choosing which way to go.  Her pre-workforce expectations look something like this:

Unfortunately, the funny thing about the world is that it turns out to not be that easy of a place, and the weird thing about careers is that they're actually quite hard.  Great careers take years of blood, sweat and tears to build—even the ones with no flowers or unicorns on them—and even the most successful people are rarely doing anything that great in their early or mid-20s.  

But GYPSYs aren't about to just accept that.  

Paul Harvey, a University of New Hampshire professor and GYPSY expert, has researched this, finding that Gen Y has "unrealistic expectations and a strong resistance toward accepting negative feedback," and "an inflated view of oneself."  He says that "a great source of frustration for people with a strong sense of entitlement is unmet expectations. They often feel entitled to a level of respect and rewards that aren’t in line with their actual ability and effort levels, and so they might not get the level of respect and rewards they are expecting."

For those hiring members of Gen Y, Harvey suggests asking the interview question, “Do you feel you are generally superior to your coworkers/classmates/etc., and if so, why?”  He says that “if the candidate answers yes to the first part but struggles with the ‘why,’ there may be an entitlement issue. This is because entitlement perceptions are often based on an unfounded sense of superiority and deservingness. They’ve been led to believe, perhaps through overzealous self-esteem building exercises in their youth, that they are somehow special but often lack any real justification for this belief."

And since the real world has the nerve to consider merit a factor, a few years out of college Lucy finds herself here:

Lucy's extreme ambition, coupled with the arrogance that comes along with being a bit deluded about one's own self-worth, has left her with huge expectations for even the early years out of college.  And her reality pales in comparison to those expectations, leaving her "reality - expectations" happy score coming out at a negative.

And it gets even worse.  On top of all this, GYPSYs have an extra problem that applies to their whole generation:

GYPSYs Are Taunted

Sure, some people from Lucy's parents' high school or college classes ended up more successful than her parents did.  And while they may have heard about some of it from time to time through the grapevine, for the most part they didn't really know what was going on in too many other peoples' careers.

Lucy, on the other hand, finds herself constantly taunted by a modern phenomenon: Facebook Image Crafting.

Social media creates a world for Lucy where A) what everyone else is doing is very out in the open, B) most people present an inflated version of their own existence, and C) the people who chime in the most about their careers are usually those whose careers (or relationships) are going the best, while struggling people tend not to broadcast their situation.  This leaves Lucy feeling, incorrectly, like everyone else is doing really well, only adding to her misery:

So that's why Lucy is unhappy, or at the least, feeling a bit frustrated and inadequate.  In fact, she's probably started off her career perfectly well, but to her, it feels very disappointing. 

Here's my advice for Lucy:

1) Stay wildly ambitious.  The current world is bubbling with opportunity for an ambitious person to find flowery, fulfilling success.  The specific direction may be unclear, but it'll work itself out—just dive in somewhere.

2) Stop thinking that you're special.  The fact is, right now, you're not special.  You're another completely inexperienced young person who doesn't have all that much to offer yet.  You can become special by working really hard for a long time.  

3) Ignore everyone else. Other people's grass seeming greener is no new concept, but in today's image crafting world, other people's grass looks like a glorious meadow. The truth is that everyone else is just as indecisive, self-doubting, and frustrated as you are, and if you just do your thing, you'll never have any reason to envy others.

--

Original post in Wait but Why.

How To Tell If It's Love or Just Lust, by Michelle Alva.

Ever wondered if you were truly in love, or truly in lust?

Did you know that falling in love actually happens over time, and the journey from initial attraction to deep romantic love is a predictable course that depends on many different factors?

Love is an intense feeling of affection toward another person. It's a profound and caring attraction that forms emotional attachment.

On the flip side, lust is a strong desire of a sexual nature that is based on physical attraction. Lust can transform into deep romantic love, but it usually takes time.

Two individuals will transform their lust into love when they get to see the whole individual (their strengths and weaknesses) and get past the “fantasy level.

Dr. Helen Fisher, a well-known researcher on the topic of romantic love, has identified three stages to falling in love in her excellent book Why Him? Why Her?: How to Find and Keep Lasting Love and I've been inspired by her research in writing this post.

Which stage are you at?

Stage 1: Lust

Lust is the first stage of falling in love. It's driven by desire. The sex hormones play an important role in this stage. According to experts, this stage may begin immediately and can last up to two years.

Signs that you're in lust:

You're focused on the physical appearance of the object of your desire.

There is a strong desire to have sex, but not deep emotional conversations.

You’d rather keep the relationship on a fantasy level, not discuss real feelings.

You are lovers, but not necessarily friends.

Stage 2: Attraction

This is the “love-struck” phase. When you spend hours daydreaming about your lover; when you lose sleep or your appetite, you know you're in this phase. The neurohormones that play an important role in the attraction or infatuation phase are dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin. These are the hormones that send our heart racing, and might actually make us feel like we are going insane.

Stage 3: Deep Love and Attachment

When a couple has gotten to know themselves beyond the courting phase and they get to see their partner’s “whole” personality, including their strengths and weaknesses, and still choose to love and accept each other for who they are, a neurohormone of love called oxytocin takes over. This is the commitment hormone. It's released during orgasm and believed to promote bonding when adults are intimate.

The theory goes on that the more sex a couple has, the deeper the bond becomes. Socrates was correct when he said “where there is love there is madness.” Romantic love and addiction share similar brain chemistry. Therefore, if you are not interested in a serious committed relationship, Dr. Fisher advises not to casually sleep with someone, because you are likely to bond with the individual with whom you have an orgasm with. Basically we are kidding ourselves when we say we are going to keep it casual. Our brain is wired to bond and connect with a partner with whom we experience pleasure.

Signs that you're in true romantic love

This type of love is not just an emotion, it's also a craving. There is a strong emotional craving, the love drive is even stronger than the sex drive.

Possessiveness. When you desire only that one person, you know you are in deep romantic love.

You want to spend quality time together other than sex.

You get lost in conversations and forget about the hours passing.

You want to honestly listen to each other’s feelings and make each other happy.

He or she motivates you to be a better person.

You want to get to meet his or her family and friends.

You can’t stop thinking about that person.

At this stage, instead of a split between love and lust, your new path lies in the balancing of the two: committed love and red hot sex, security and excitement, continuity and novelty, safety and adventure, comfort and passion. The happiest couples are the ones that can maintain a balance between lust and love.

Enjoy the journey of self-discovery relating with someone for whom you lust. If the chemistry is right, it will transform into romantic love!

Don’t rush it; allow it to unfold naturally. The more you bring love, honesty, passion and romance into your own self-relationship, the easier it will be to attract someone who shares those same qualities.

--

Read the original article here.

On loosing hope, by Chris Cade.

Recently I went through an unexpected breakup, and it has challenged me in a lot of ways I didn't see coming.

For example, this was the first time I'd ever broken up due to an abundance of love and the recognition that being in relationship with this person wasn't for the highest good.

There were no arguments, no friction, no conflict. Just a lot of love that wanted to be experienced and expressed in ways that couldn't work out.

This was new to me. My previous breakups were always due to fundamental problems between me and the other person that eventually led to the breakup. This time, my mind couldn't grasp the idea that an abundance of love was a completely valid, real, and important reason for a breakup.

Because of this, my mind began to notice all the ways I'd attached future experiences to this person...

For example, I had planned some really wonderful date ideas. And perfect gift ideas. Not just good ideas for dates and gifts, but rather, ones that were really attuned to the unique relationship that we shared. We both also knew that we would have lived an amazing life together, especially with incredible synergy in so many different ways.

    

As I felt into those feelings of perfect alignment and an incredible future, I realized how much I had emotionally invested in a future that didn't exist...

After the breakup, my mind kept coming back to all the ways we fit together perfectly. All the amazing ideas and expectations I had for the future. Or in another word:

    

All my hopes.

In really reflecting on hope, I came to understand what one of my spiritual teachers has been saying for years about the Hope / Desire / Rejection cycle.

    

In a nutshell, it works like this:

First we have a hope. An idea about some way we want our future life to be. Then that hope buries itself deeper into our heart as a desire. No longer is it just wishful thinking, it becomes a heartful wish.

At first that sounds great. Especially if we want to get more out of life. Unfortunately, that very cycle of hoping and desiring a better future leaves us in a state of rejection of the present moment. And given that the past is a memory and the future hasn't happened yet, the Present moment is the only thing that exists.

    

In other words, by me continually running the stories (and associated emotions) of a hopeful future, I was rejecting the only thing that actually exists: Now.

And to go deeper with that, every time I find myself sad or experiencing emotional pain, I have been able to trace it back to my hope about a future that I realize will not happen.

This has been an uncomfortable exploration.

My mind doesn't like the idea that my hope is actually causing me pain. It wants to believe that hoping for a different future will somehow bring me happiness. Unfortunately it doesn't. It can't. That's just not how the future works.

Consequently, I've been "losing" hope since the breakup.

Instead of letting my mind and heart get stuck running in circles hoping for a future that won't exist, I'm being more Present with my immediate experience. I'm learning what it means to let go of a non-existent future and to more fully embrace what actually is.

What is coming more fully into my experience is a sense of faith and optimism. I trust that all is for the highest good. I trust that as I deepen into the Present moment, that will cascade into future moments that will continue to be increasingly more amazing.

I don't know exactly how that will look. I just know that by "losing" my hope I'm opening up to, allowing for, and embracing, whatever magnificence the mysterious and unknown future has for me.

Less hope, and more faith. That's where I'm headed. :)

See, faith is fundamentally different than hope...

Hope has a very specific outcome that we attach to. We hope for things to turn out a certain way.

    

Faith on the other hand is unattached. It knows that things will turn out fine, even amazing, and that we can't know or imagine what that outcome will be.

Hope is born of our minds. It's of our egos. It tells us how it thinks the world should be. And then when life doesn't go the way we had "hoped," we feel the pain and rejection inherent within the hope.

Faith is born of our hearts and spirits. It's of our True Nature. It tells us that no matter how the world is, it is for the highest good. And then when life unfolds naturally as the mystery it is, we get to experience ourselves as heros on an adventure. Not knowing where the next turn leads, and still knowing the next turn will take us someplace important.

So yes, I'm "losing" hope. And I'm more optimistic and faithful than ever before. :)

Your Partner In Losing Hope,

Chris Cade

Liberate Your Life

P.S. Some wonderful shifts I'm experiencing by "losing" hope are...

A much faster transition through the breakup process. Pain is much more quickly transmuted into love. Hopes shift into faith and optimism. Unfulfilled expectations flow into gratitude. Feelings of being left behind or abandoned show me all the ways in which I'm incredibly supported.

I also am more fully experiencing and expressing unconditional love. My heart is expanding in directions I never could have "hoped" for, and for which I am grateful.

I've also learned that if I can walk away from an enjoyable, good, and loving relationship because it truly isn't for the highest good...

I'm making space in my life for the truly incredible, amazing, abundant relationship that I know is waiting for me... and that will be in alignment for the highest good.

I have no "hope" or expectation about how that Divine Right Relationship will look.

I just have faith and optimism that the Divine has got this one covered. :)

Gratitude Dispels Fear, by Lynne Forrest.

I was toss­ing and turn­ing dur­ing the wee hours of the night a while back. (I’ve found that the early AM hours are the time when the ego does its worst work.) This sort of sleep­less­ness has assailed me before. I awaken abruptly and lie there for hours com­pletely over­run with thoughts like, “what if this hap­pens or what if that doesn’t work?” –the kind of thoughts that don’t even occur dur­ing day time hours but feel over­whelm­ing at night. My habit in the past has been to lie awake feel­ing com­pletely at the mercy of such thoughts and pray for day­light so that I can escape them into my busy schedule.
But this time was different.
This time when the ego voice awoke me at 3 AM and started in on its pre­dictable rant I rec­og­nized its voice and didn’t take it quite so seri­ously. It still held sway for awhile, going on about about how dire my life sit­u­a­tion is, but this time I didn’t lose sight of who it was in me that was car­ry­ing on with such nay-saying. I decided to ask for help.
I sat up in bed, turned on my bed­side lamp and reached for the bible which hap­pened to be lying on a table near by. I sat with the bible on my lap a few min­utes and asked to be guided with words that would help me deal with the neg­a­tive fear-mongering ego that lives in my own head. I closed my eyes and opened the bible.
When I opened my eyes the first words I saw was the begin­ning of a psalm that said, “Praise the Lord.“I felt an imme­di­ate relief upon read­ing the words and thought, “OF COURSE that’s the answer to ego’s ranting!”
Praise gen­er­ates grat­i­tude; it uplifts the spir­its and raises our vibra­tional fre­quency to a higher vibra­tory level that attracts love and abun­dance. Grat­i­tude defeats ego com­pletely because it is of a much higher fre­quency. Ego can­not thrive in the high vibra­tional fre­quency gen­er­ated by prais­ing Source.
With that aware­ness in mind, I started whis­per­ing an impro­vised song of thanks­giv­ing for the over flow­ing abun­dance in my life. Peace and quiet joy descended. I did not go back to sleep. I did not need to. I was so filled with grat­i­tude that I felt eager to start my day. And it turned into a won­der­ful day — as days gen­er­ally are when I start out in an atti­tude of gratitude.
What is the les­son? Sim­ply this; grat­i­tude is the anti­dote for fear or any stress­ful feel­ing. Use it ceaselessly.
The next time anx­i­ety pro­duc­ing thoughts threaten to take you down, remem­ber that it is the ego that pro­duces fear — always. and turn to thoughts of grat­i­tude imme­di­ately. Find rea­sons to be grate­ful in every­thing you do and in every­thing that hap­pens. Refuse to hang out with the dark thoughts of an angst pro­duc­ing ego and you will find your­self held in the hands of an abun­dant universe.
--
Read the original post.

13 Uses For Lavender Oil: The Only Essential Oil You'll Need

If you only use one essential oil, this is it!

Lavender (lavandula angustifolia) is the most versatile of all essential oils. Most commonly known for its relaxing effects on the body, therapeutic-grade lavender has been highly regarded for the skin. It may be used to cleanse cuts, bruises and skin irritations. The fragrance is calming, relaxing and balancing – physically and emotionally. Carrying a bottle of lavender around with you is like having your own personal first aid kit, perfume and pick-me-up.

Here are 13 ways you can incorporate lavender in to your daily life:

1. Calming

Rub 2-3 drops of lavender oil in your cupped palms, then use the inhalation method to draw the scent all the way into your amygdala gland (the emotional warehouse) in your brain to calm the mind. Then, rub on the feet, temples, wrists (or anywhere) for an immediate calming effect on the body. Great for use in crowded areas like planes or subways to carve out your own personal oasis.

2. Sleep aid

Again, use the cupping and inhalation method. Then, rub a drop of Lavender oil on your palms and smooth on your pillow to help you sleep.

3. Bee sting / Insect bite

Put a drop of Lavender oil on a bee sting or insect bite to stop itching reduce swelling.

4. Minor burn

Put 2-3 drops Lavender oil on a minor burn to decrease pain. I recently did this after I spilled scorching hot tea on my hand at Starbucks and luckily had my lavender with me. Result: NO redness, swelling or pain. NO sign of any burn. Lavender works wonders!

5. Cuts

Drop Lavender oil on cut to stop bleeding, clean wound, and kill bacteria.

6. Eczema / Dermatitis

Mix several drops of Lavender oil with a nut or vegetable mixing oil (coconut, sesame, etc) and use topically on eczema and dermatitis. I have a dear friend who suffers from severe eczema and swears by this.

7. Nausea or motion sickness

To alleviate the symptoms of motion sickness, place a drop of Lavender oil on end of tongue, behind the ears or around the navel.

8. Nosebleed

To stop a nosebleed, put a drop of lavender oil on a tissue and wrap it around a small chip of ice. Push the tissue covered ice chip up under the middle of the top lip to the base of the nose and hold as long as comfortable or until the bleeding stops (do not freeze the lip or gum).

9. Dry or chapped skin

Rub lavender oil on dry or chapped skin.

10. Chapped or sunburned lips

Rub a drop of lavender oil on chapped or sunburned lips.

11. Hay fever.

Rub a drop of lavender oil between your palms and inhale deeply to help alleviate the symptoms of hay fever.

12. Dandruff.

Rub several drops of lavender oil into the scalp to help eliminate dandruff.

13. Cold sores.

Put a drop of lavender oil on a cold sore.

***BONUS: Flavor booster!

Add a few drops of lavender to any recipe you want to enhance. Favorites: add to your water or tea (especially sparkling!), brownies, bars, cookies, dessert recipes, raw chocolate or salad dressings. Enjoy!

As you can see, Lavender is an essential oil that can uplift your life (and mood), heal and entice in a variety of ways. It's a great secret weapon to have on hand at all times!

--
View original post.

I Didn't Love My Wife When We Got Married, by Elad Nehorai.

I'm a ridiculous, emotional, over-sentimental sap.  I guess that's why I told my wife I loved her on our second date.

I had tried really hard up to that point to hold it back, honestly.  I wanted to tell her on the first date, but I knew that would probably be weird.

I still remember her reaction.  She kind of gave me this half-shy, half-amused smile.  Then she nodded and looked off into the sky.

I wasn't heartbroken by the response.  I think part of me recognized that she was much smarter and more modest than me.

But as time has gone on, I also realized that she knew something that I didn't.

Like most Hasidic Jews (we both became religious later in life), our dating period lasted a very short time.  After two months of dating, we were engaged.  Three months after that, we were married.

And that whole time I was swooning.  This fire was burning in me, a fire that burned just like that second date: I was in love.

But then we got married, and everything changed.

Marriage, quicker than I was ready for, did this thing: It started sucking away that emotion.

I tried so hard to keep that fire going, to keep that emotion alight, but it got harder and harder.

I mean, how you can feel that burning love when you're sitting at the table discussing how to use the last $20 in your bank account?

How can you feel it when you get into an argument?

How can you feel it when you think it makes perfect sense to put your socks on the floor after you're done with them, and she has this crazy idea that they need to go in the laundry basket?

There was no way I could keep that dating fire burning as practicality invaded our lives.

And at first, it drove me nuts.  That emotion meant love!  That excitement was how I knew I cared for her!  But suddenly, life was this grind.  Even when I was with her.  Especially when I was with her.

And even worse, it seemed that the harder I tried to be sentimental and lovey-dovey, the less it was reciprocated.

But it wasn't that she wasn't giving me love, it just seemed to come at different times.

Like, when I offered to do the dishes.  Or make dinner after she had a hard day.  Or, once we had a daughter, when I shared the responsibility of watching over her.

I don't think I noticed this consciously for a while.  It just kept happening.

But I think it had an effect on me.  Because as our marriage progressed, I found myself offering to help out around the house more and more.

And after each time, there would be this look she would give me.  This look of absolute love.  One that was soft and so beautiful.

It took me longer than I care to admit to understand what was happening.

But eventually it became clear.  Through giving, through doing things for my wife, the emotion that I had been so desperately seeking naturally came about.  It wasn't something I could force, just something that would come about as a result of my giving.

In other words, it was in the practicality that I found the love I was looking for.

And what was even more interesting was that once I realized this on a conscious level, and started trying to find more opportunities to give, the more we both, almost intuitively, became lovey-dovey.

And now, as I'm a bit older and a bit more experienced with this relationship, I've finally come to realize something. Something I haven't wanted to admit for a long time, but is undeniable.

I didn't love my wife on that second date.

I didn't love her when we got engaged.

I didn't even love her when we got married.

Because love isn't an emotion.  That fire I felt, it was simply that: emotional fire.  From the excitement of dating a woman I felt like I could marry.  But it wasn't love.

No, love isn't an emotion or even a noun.  It's a verb.  Better defined as giving.  As putting someone else's needs above your own.

Why wasn't I getting reciprocal lovey-doveyness when we were first married?  Because it wasn't for her.  It was for me.  An emotion I had in my chest.

And even when I let it out of my chest, it wasn't love.

Being sappy isn't love.  Telling someone you love them doesn't mean that you do.

And that's why my wife just gave me that half-smile.  She knew, even if I didn't, what love really is.

And now that I've tried to change the way I look at love, the more I become shocked at the messages of love I had gotten when I was younger.

From Disney movies, to my favorite shows like The Office, to practically every pop song released, love is constantly sold as an emotion we have before we're married.  An emotion that, once had, somehow magically stays within a marriage forever.

I can't imagine a bigger lie.  And I'm saddened to think about how much those messages bounced around in my head for so long.  And how much I'm sure those messages are bouncing around in other people's heads as well.

I think that might be a big part of the reason the divorce rate is so high in this country.  Imagine a whole nation of people constantly chasing the emotions they had when they were dating.  A country of people trying to live a Disney movie.

That's a recipe for disastrous marriages; for a country with a 50 percent divorce rate;  for adultery (the classic attempt to turn the fire back on); for people who do stay together to simply live functional, loveless marriages.

It's sad to see just how common all the above is.  How many people are in pain simply because they've been lied to.

Those people deserve better.  We all deserve better.

It's time that we changed the conversation about love.  It's time that we redefine it.

Because until we do, adultery will continue to be common.  Loveless marriages.  Divorce.

Living Disney movies in our minds, and tragedies in our lives.

--

Elad Nehorai is a writer living in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Five years ago, he became a religious Jew in the Chabad Hasidic community and has since written about his experience extensively, most recently in his blog Pop Chassid, where this post originally appeared. He's also the CMO of a startup called Charidy designed for people who want to help give to nonprofits. You can find him on Twitter as @PopChassid and Facebook.
See the original post, here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elad-nehorai/i-didnt-love-my-wife_b_3908956.html

10 Signs you've found your calling, by Lisa Rankin, MD.

How can you tell if you’ve found your calling? As a doctor who was called to medicine at a young age but then wound up disillusioned by the system, questioning my calling, I’ve asked myself this question a lot. It’s been a long strange trip- first leaving medicine, then feeling called back, then leaving again only to find my role in healing our broken health care system as a writer, speaker, revolutionary, and teacher of physicians. Along the way, I’ve learned a few things about how to know whether you’re on the right track.

1. You’ll realize you’ve been training for your calling since the moment you were born.

Even the gritty things, the disappointments, the regrets, and the screw ups, they were all prepping you for what you’re now being called to do. You’ll realize that the divorce, the bankruptcy, the death of your loved one, the failure, the rejection- it was just school, teaching you the lessons your soul needed to learn in order to be who you’re being called to be.

2. Mystical things will start happening.

You might be tempted to write them off as coincidences, only they’re too perfect, too exactly what you need in that particular moment, too much like miracles to call them accidents. The synchronicities will fill you with a sense of wonder, because they’re proof positive that you’re being guided, that you’re not in this alone, that Someone is moving mountains to ensure that your mission is a success.

3. When you get off course, you’ll get redirected.

Doors you longed to walk through will slam shut. If you take the wrong fork in the road, your path will be littered with barbed wire and mustard gas and dragons and sharp knives lining the path. You will get the hint that you’ve made a wrong turn, steering yourself off course from your date with destiny, when the journey becomes a relentless struggle.  The deal will fall through. The money will run out. The mentor who’s been providing the magical gifts won’t follow you onto the wrong path. People won’t sign up. You’ll be rerouted just as magically as you were steered to your calling in the first place.

4. You’ll be guided by ease, even in the face of obstacles.

When you find yourself struggling to get through an obstacle-ridden forest, it can be hard to tell- is your commitment just being tested, or have you veered off course?  Obstacles can be part of the growth process, the cultivation of your inner hero, a necessary part of your hero’s journey. But they can also be signs that you’ve made a wrong turn. How can you tell the difference? The guidepost you can trust is a sense of movement towards ease. If the challenges are mounting, things are getting worse, one hard struggle is piling upon the other, you’ve probably gotten seduced off course from your true calling, and the Universe is just waiting patiently, twiddling Divine thumbs because you have free will, but never giving up faith that you will find your way back to your calling, which will always lead you to your own holy grail. When you’re back on track, things start to flow again.

5. Magical mentors will appear just in the nick of time.

Just when you need it most, the right people will show up, with just the tools you’ll need to support you and your journey in an almost mystical way.

6. Your health is likely to improve.

A strange but welcome side effect of finding your calling is that your health is likely to improve. You may notice fewer cravings for unhealthy foods, you’ll have more energy for moving your body, aches and pains that used to plague you might disappear, you’ll feel less tired, and chronic illnesses you may be battling may start to get better.

Take Andy Mackie, for example. At 59 years old, Andy Mackie had undergone nine heart surgeries and was taking fifteen medications to try to keep him alive, but the medicines left him feeling horrible, so one day, he told his doctors he wanted to stop the drugs. They told him if he did, he would die within a year, so Andy decided if he was dying, he wanted to do something he’d always wanted to do. So he took the money he would have spent on his medications and used it to buy 300 harmonicas, and he gave them away to children, complete with harmonica lessons. The following month, he was still alive, so he bought another 300 harmonicas. Thirteen years and 20,000 harmonicas later, Andy Mackie finally passed away.

7. You may find that money flows in just as you’re ready to throw in the towel.

I’m not suggesting that you won’t wind up in debt or staring at an empty bank account when you used to have a full one or even bankrupt. But if you’re on the right path, you won’t wind up living under that freeway overpass near what used to be your house, and you may find that money appears almost magically once you’re really right in the dead center of your life’s purpose.

8. You may feel strangely peaceful, even when you have every reason to be anxious.

Everyone around you will likely think you’re crazy. A part of you will agree with them. But a wise inner knowing, that part of you I call your Inner Pilot Light (link), will be so comforted by the fact that you’re finally on the path to your purpose that you may feel unusually calm- until your rational mind kicks in.

Our souls long to express what we’re here on this earth to express, and when you finally fall into alignment with your calling, your soul does a little happy dance.  It may appear as if everything else in your life is falling apart, but you’ll have this sense of peace, a huge relief, that at least- finally- you know what you’re called to do.

9. The Universe will roll out the red carpet.

When what you’re being called to do is what is needed for the highest good of all beings, the Universe will bend over backwards to hand you whatever you need on a silver platter. No request is too small. A copywriter may volunteer to help you just when you were thinking you needed to write a sales page. Someone will donate a printer when it’s time print a flyer. You’ll feel so supported, so lucky, that you’ll know you’re on track, even if you’re not quite clear what you’re on track to do.

10. Your people will find you.

Few can fulfill a calling alone. Most of us need a tribe to lift us up as we do brave, scary, world-changing things. But don’t worry. When you’re really on purpose, your people will find you, if only you’re courageous enough to be vulnerable about what you’re being called to do.

Do Any Of These Sound Familiar?

Have you found your calling?  Or are you still looking for it? If you’ve found your calling, YEAH! The world needs you! Blessings to you on your hero’s journey.

If you haven’t, don’t worry. We won’t leave you hanging. Martha Beck, Amy Ahlers, and I recorded a free 90 minute teleclass to offer you tips on finding your calling. (You can listen to the recording here.) We’re also about to start a whole program Find Your Calling: Awaken Your Life Purpose, Clarify Your Vision, and Do Your Soul’s Work. Read more about the 7 week teleclass series and sign up here.

Trusting your journey, wherever you are,

--

Read the original post, here.