If we are blessed to live in a place where we can choose our beliefs and express them freely, then we are ripe to tailor make a system of belief that suits the individuality of our spirit. A life lived with Faith is simply easier, less stressful, and healthier than a life lived without it.
Faith is belief and trust that everything will work out for good. That life has an innate goodness to it: that the good things of life will be yours- fun, love, abundance, creativity, right livelihood. So many people ask me ‘How can I believe that when bad things happen to good people?’ My answer is that conflict and challenges are a part of life. They give us character and strength. And there is always a solution. If you look at it as though obstacles are only temporary hurdles on the road to a good thing you are much more likely to have the drive to get to the other side of it. I believe to every grey cloud there is a silver lining and that when we go through hardship, we are guaranteed to attract a blessing.
I learned this through personal experience. One of the greatest periods of pain and suffering was transformed into the single most meaningful and deeply loving times of my life. I was a thirty-something entrepreneur, consumed with promoting myself as one of Chicago’s premier jewelry designers. On my way to an event where I was to be featured, I got a call from my father asking me to come over because my mother was very sick. My immediate and self centered reaction was No! I told my dad that I would call him the next day. He put his foot down explaining that my mother was barely conscious. I remember the feeling of self-pity and restriction that I felt as I resigned myself to honor my father’s request.
As I walked in the door, I felt the gravity of the situation. We rushed Mom to the hospital where we discovered that she had stopped breathing and if we had not brought her in, she would have died during the night. My mother had suffered from depression throughout her life and had apparently given up, her lungs had deteriorated and she was severely oxygen deprived. Wow, deprived of the gift of life!!! Slowly committing suicide from shallow breathing! The doctors said she could live a few months.
I was flooded with intense love for my mother and a vigilant desire to go to any length to heal her and give her the love and attention that had eluded her most of her life. She just couldn’t leave the planet yet without knowing how much I loved her.
My father, my brother, and myself were united for the first time in many years in a strong and united purpose. We were going to prove those doctors wrong! A stabbing pain in my heart was an astounding motivator for me to turn to my Higher Power, a loving God, to bring relief from the pain and healing to my mother and my family. I remember sitting in the coffee shop of Michael Reese Hospital reading The Daily Word and praying with with an intensity, a belief, and a connection I had never in my life experienced.
My mother was soon well enough to go home. I devoted my life to her care.I continued to work from my office in the Jeweler’s Building, but promoting my designs was no longer important to me. My priorities had changed. The feeling of despair and self-pity had disappeared as a joy and meaning came over me. After work on Fridays I would not leave downtown without a shopping spree for mom. First a stop at Burny Brothers Bakery for a cinnamon bundt cake . Flowers, stuffed animals, cards, I came always bearing gifts for little Ruthie, as we called her. Ruthie was like a flower drinking in the nourishment of love and budding for the first time in her life. She was so appreciative of every small word and for all of us being together. There was a happiness, a harmony and a vibration of love and light that far surpassed anything any of us had ever experienced before.
We did prove the doctors wrong. Ruthie lived well beyond the initial few months the doctors gave her and when she eventually did pass on, she knew she was loved.That time changed the course of my life. Yes indeed, a great hardship turned into a great blessing. To love deeply is one of the greatest gifts of life. Through this experience I was lifted out of a self-centered life and the little things I couldn’t endure no longer bothered me. I received a deep and abiding faith that has seen me through the ups and downs of a well traveled life. I left the jewelry business and became a Spiritual Counselor.
Did I have faith when this happened so long ago? The truth is, I did not.
I had heard that all I needed was the willingness to believe. Willing to believe that my prayers would be heard and that love, rather than fear, had the power to sustain life. The beginning of faith is to act as if you believe.
by Gail London
We are exactly where we are supposed to be. The world is composed of people who passionately refute this or people who wholeheartedly believe this . I am a believer. How did it begin?
I turned to spiritual principals not because I thought it would be interesting, but because I was desperately in pain. My life had reached a series of dead ends and I was depressed and physically ill, unemployed and coming out of an abusive relationship. I didn’t know which way to turn when my brother invited me to hear a man speak on ‘doing what you love and the money will follow’. Very 1980′s.
The year was 1984. We piled in a car to the Unity Church in Evanston to hear a small Jewish lawyer from New York named Arnold Patent speak about solving the toughest of life’s challenges with what he referred to as Universal Principles.
Simple things like the Universe handles the details. Non-judgement. Peace.
The one principle that I had never heard before was that feelings serve a purpose. Painful feelings are not random punishment from an unjust Universe . They are symtoms of that which needs healing.
The Red Sea parted for me as I exiled my depression. I devoured all of Arnold’s books, attended all of his ‘Celebration of Abundance’ seminars for the next decade , and developed a deep and healing relationship with he and his wife Selma,where I experienced unconditional love for the first time in my life.
Learning to live according to spiritual princples improved my health physically, mentally, and emotionally. I went on to study mind-body healing and I knew that I had found my calling. I had gone to conventional doctors for years who had told me there was nothing wrong with me: that it was all in my mind. I was too emotional. I felt like there was something deeply wrong with me. Finally I understood that there was something deeply right with me. I was trying to heal ! My emotions had stories they needed to express. My physical pain had lessons it need to teach me. All I needed to do was to learn to interpret the language of the emotions and the body.
I soon learned that ’Feelings’ are vibrations or energy in motion which reside in our hearts and bodies. This energy needs to circulate out of our bodies in order to be healthy. Our bodies become sluggish and symtomatic of dis-ease or we experience difficult and repetative patterns when our energy is stuck. Our feelings/energy need to be released in orer to heal.
Painful experiences will turn into blessings which attract great things as your truth is found and expressed.
So remember you are exactly where you are supposed to be. You are on the brink of a breakthrough.
Don’t give up before the miracle happens.
For every desire, there is a mechanism for its fulfillment.
You have to get through what you are going through to get to where you want to be.
The healing occurs not by understanding these spiritual principles, but by accepting them.
Gail London GailNLondon@aol.com
Spiritual Intuitive Healer
by Gail London
So you are beginning to tune into your needs. You realize you need time to yourself, time for self-care and nurturing. You just can’t find the time. So your life coach suggests that you prioritize your life and less important things might need to go to make room for the new.
Ask yourself what are the things you are doing out of obligation. I am not talking about must do chores like house cleaning, taxes, or the dentist. I am talking about that obligatory lunch with Aunt Fiorde which you dread every time because you never really liked her to begin with.Or girls night out with the crew you no longer have anything in common with, including fun. Are the things that you are filling your life with providing you with pleasure? Are your activities in alignment with your life purpose?
If the answer is no, get rid of the people, places, and things that are cluttering your life and draining your energy. Replace those things with that which makes your heart sing and you will free yourself up. You will also set free the people you were holding hostage to an unpleasant situation. No-one wants to be where they are not fully wanted and appreciated. Remember, if your response to an invitation is not a resounding YES, its a no!
by Gail London
The greatest gift we can give ourselves is the gift of honesty. Honesty in our dealings with others, honesty in our dealings with ourselves, and honesty with the world. If all of us told the truth all of the time, there would be no war. That is what the sages say. At least the war with myself would stop if I said what I am feeling, rather than what I think people want to hear.
When I people please under the guise of being polite or not wanting to hurt people’s feelings, I do a disservice to myself. When I say that I want to do this, when I do not, my spirit diminishes and gets smaller. Pleasing another becomes more important than pleasing myself because I have been taught that pleasing myself is selfish.
I have learned that to be the best me I can be and to live in my purpose and destiny, I have to be selfish. I have to learn who I am, what my needs are, how can I best get them met in this lifetime, and what I have to offer others. If all of my energy is focused on pleasing others or on being what my parents and society want me to be, then I have no energy to be who I am.
All of us have our own God given talents and abilites which are unique only to us. It is our responsibility to nurture and culivate those gifts and to freely circulate them to others. My intention in writing this blog is to reveal my process of finding and expressing my gifts and to assist others in finding and expressing their own gifts, purpose and destiny.
