Category: <span>Meditation</span>

Published November 2, 2016 by

Reconnected: A Spiritual Awakening Memoir Really Does Reconnect! Kindle Book Free Today

Share this
FacebooktwitterlinkedinFacebooktwitterlinkedin

Reconnected: A Spiritual Awakening Memoir

Reconnected: A Spiritual Awakening Memoir really does reconnect, according to “Hall of Fame, Top 1000” Amazon Reviewer Dr. Joseph S. Maresca. Dr. Maresca goes on to say that, Reconnected: A Spiritual Awakening Memoir by Christine Hoeflich is an excellent book on the mechanics of tuning into the spiritual domain. Christine explains the inner self, accessing intuition and showcasing creativity.”

Reconnected explores the steps needed for strengthening the relationship with, and developing trust in, the higher self, in intuition, despite societal expectations. It lays the foundation for how readers can understand their soul’s bigger plan, and how to access Interconnectedness.

Christine said that she discovered on her journey that when people work with more than simply their will alone, they gain the support of the divine, helping miracles and magic to occur that might not have been possible through their will alone.

This Kindle book is available today, Wednesday November 2, 2016 until midnight PST time at no cost. Readers may download the eBook onto their Kindle, laptop or smartphone for free. (Amazon.com has free downloadable apps for reading Kindle books on laptops and smartphones.)

The following excerpt is just a small sample of what’s in store for the reader, from the “Superconductor” chapter:

After what had happened in merely a matter of months, I was only motivated to connect further to become an even clearer conduit of creative energy, to see what would be possible continuing on this course of listening within for guidance. I had a sense this was only the beginning and I wanted to see what was next, and how far I could go.

With a pounce onto my chest, our kitten awakened me from a dream the day I was revising this chapter. I was on my way to Alaska as a passenger in what looked like a new, comfortable European-style city bus. In my dream, I was aware that I’ve never been to Alaska, only to Canada, and I was thinking that going to Alaska would be just as easy as going to Canada.

The bus traveled through a picturesque, green valley in between beautiful snow-capped peaks, maybe ten miles from one side to the other. It reminded me of the area around Davos, Switzerland, still snowy in the higher elevations though it was almost summer. The bus meandered, switchbacking up an incline, went here and there, stopping for passengers to get on, taking its time. Impatient, I asked a woman sitting next to me how long this trip to Alaska would take.

“It’ll be around four hours,” she said.

Four hours? That was way too long for me! I wanted to get there sooner! I explained to her that if I drove my own car, it would take me only two hours. So I decided to get off public transportation and drive my own vehicle. I pulled the signal to stop and got off the bus. That’s when the cat woke me up.

So if the key to memory and the key to dreams is metaphor, was this dream telling me to forgo mass transportation or public direction and follow my own, to power up my vehicle and drive up the spiral of evolution? Furthermore, I got that Alaska doesn’t have to be viewed as some destination or end point because in reality, once you get to Alaska, there’s a whole new, big wonderful state to explore.

With a new level of enthusiasm I began to do a second meditation (a grounding meditation) to strengthen my connection with the heavenly dimension and with my environment, so as to help clarify and completely unveil my mission for this lifetime. (The “heart and soul” meditation described earlier in this book connects you to your inner core, while this grounding meditation helps to further strengthen the “vertical” connection of the above with the below.)

At least twice a day, I practiced a simple three-to-ten minute exercise for this purpose, an exercise slightly modified from one I had learned in the Soul Recognition Workshop.

Standing with my feet shoulder-width apart, my hands hanging loosely at my sides, my knees slightly bent, my eyes closed, and exhaling slowly, I’d imagine energy or sunlight flowing from the sun (or source, or the dimensions above) down to the top of my head, entering my body at the crown of my head and going down through my body in a line as straight and as coherent as a laser beam, down my spine all the way through to the bottom of my feet, to the core of the earth. Then inhaling slowly I’d imagine this energy reflect back up from the center of earth, through the bottom of my feet and the rest of my body to the top of my head and back up to the sun, or the higher dimensions. I would repeat this several times, imagining the energy or light flowing up and then down; inhale energy going up, exhale energy going down, with a short pause at each endpoint, and sometimes as long as I could hold it. (Alternatively, I sometimes imagined this energy going out to the universe with each out-breath and coming back into my inner core with each in-breath.)

I’d do this exercise expecting the connection to both my physical environment and to the heavenly or angelic realms strengthen and the energy to flow in between with more clarity and ease. This grounding exercise, as well as paying attention to my inner voice throughout the day, helped deepen the connection to the interconnectedness and made the inner guidance clearer. It was a simple practice I could do anywhere, but it seemed to do the job. –excerpt from Reconnected: A Spiritual Awakening Memoir

Christine is seeking more awareness and more reviews for her book, and the Amazon eBook free day is one way to help spread that awareness.

Dr. Joseph S. Maresca finishes his review by writing, “Overall, Christine’s book covers the intuitive side of being in a way that few psychology, philosophy or theology books succeed in doing rationally.”

Go to the following Amazon link today, November 2, to get the eBook, Reconnected: A Spiritual Awakening Memoir for free … and remember to write a review!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M7MDGQI

Thank you!

Share this
FacebooktwitterlinkedinFacebooktwitterlinkedin

Connecting with Your Higher Self intuition meditation Spiritual Awakening Spiritual Awakening Memoir

4 Comments

Published August 29, 2016 by

Yoga and Your Higher Self

Share this
FacebooktwitterlinkedinFacebooktwitterlinkedin

You and Your Higher Self

My sister’s friend asked about yoga helping connect her with her higher self. This article explores how effective taking a yoga class is for strengthening your connection with your higher self and developing your intuition.

You may want to reconnect with and strengthen the relationship you have with your higher self so that it becomes more evident and real to you. Your meditation practice should help you with this goal. However, as with most things in life, some meditations are more effective than others. If your relationship with your higher self isn’t where you want it to be and you want to know what kind of meditation is effective for accessing your higher self and developing your intuition, read on …

Let’s begin with the basics first. To strengthen your relationship with your higher self, it’s not how you sit or how you breathe that’s all that important. And it’s not whether you have the “right” mantra. What’s important is whether your meditation helps you connect to that “higher self” part of you as directly as possible and whether you then hear and allow that sacred part of you to guide you daily in your life.

I’ll explain what I mean by “as directly as possible.” But first, I’ve found that for the fastest, easiest and best results in any area of life-doesn’t matter whether you’re baking a cake or grouting your kitchen tiles or connecting with your higher self-it helps to follow a good “recipe.” You’ll get better results when you accurately follow a proven mixing ratio (recipe), rather than just being “in the ball park.” The cake will come out light and tasty and the grout will have maximum strength and performance if you follow a good recipe. This also holds true for connecting with your higher self.

A Meditation … From the Counsel of Light

Over 14 years ago, the Counsel of Light gave me a meditation they said was a “shot in the arm” for connecting with my higher self. (Channeled for me by Flo Aeveia Magdalena of Soul Support Systems.) In this meditation, they had me place my left hand on my heart and my right hand on my “soul seed.” They called this area my “sacred space.”

They said the heart in my meditation symbolized my current life and the soul seed symbolized my infinite life (my higher self, soul, which never dies). During the meditation they had me imagine that I was doing a figure 8 (the infinity sign) around my hands. In essence, the meditation integrated my current life (heart) with my infinite life (soul, higher self). During the meditation, I was mixing the two areas together, integrating them.

Activating Your “Sacred Space”

After I got into this meditation practice, I noticed that this area of my body they called my “sacred space” would get warm and tingly just before I’d get an important guidance. In fact, sometimes I’d get this warm, intense glow in the center of my chest close to my heart even when I wasn’t paying any attention to this area.

I could be driving my car, for example, on some mundane errand, when all of a sudden I’d feel this intense warming up at the center of my chest. I’d feel a warm, peaceful, uplifting glow even when my life was in chaos and I felt scared, sad, and disconnected.

Moments after feeling this warm glow, I’d notice that I’d get a new insight, or some sort of inner guidance-guidance that helped me resolve specific problems in my life at the time. Having this warm feeling helped me at a time when I wasn’t yet confident in my ability to correctly distinguish my true guidance from my mental conditionings, fears, hopes, or imaginations. It also helped me recognize which inner guidance was important for me to follow.

Listen up … if your higher self gives you guidance it deems important, even critical for you to follow (so that you fulfill your higher purpose), wouldn’t it make sense for you to receive a sign that would be hard for you to ignore?

Touching Your Sacred Space Also Helps Calm You …

Placing your hands on your body as described above while lying down actually helps to calm you, to reconnect you to your true self. (Try it for a while and see.)

Furthermore, this kind of meditation also affirms that your power is within you, not outside of you, and that this is your direct connection to the Divine.

Yoga and the Martial Arts Provide Health and Physical Benefits

The Counsel of Light distinguished between connecting to one’s life force through the practice of martial arts and yoga (which increase the body’s well-being and energy level) and connecting to one’s higher self through the sacred space.

They said martial arts and yoga can connect you to your life force (your chi). Practicing yoga stretches in the morning and martial arts is a way to connect to and increase life force-to heal the body and increase the energy level and general well-being. That makes sense, doesn’t it?

However, they also said that the heart and soul meditation would provide more of an “instant wisdom hit,” for my purpose here wasn’t so much to “work with my chi but to work with the wisdom that comes from universal chi.”

In other words …

Yoga and the martial arts are best at increasing your body’s strength, life force and well-being …

While the heart and soul meditation is best at strengthening your connection with your higher self, accessing its wisdom and developing your intuition. (So that when you act by following your inner guidance, you have Divine will behind that action.)

In summary, yoga will help you focus on your breathing, calm your mind and may even help you reflect on your life, but will it activate your sacred space? If you want to strengthen your connection with your higher self and develop your intuition as quickly and easily as possible, you’ll want to use a meditation practice that connects you to your higher self as directly and as effectively as possible.

Photo credit: Anne’ Phillips Photography, based in Tampa, Fla.

Share this
FacebooktwitterlinkedinFacebooktwitterlinkedin

Connecting with Your Higher Self divine will inner guidance intuition meditation yoga Your Higher Self

16 Comments

Published August 11, 2013 by

How Meditation Helps You Be The Change You Want To See In The World

Share this
FacebooktwitterlinkedinFacebooktwitterlinkedin

My last post, “The Bigger Picture And Divine Plan – It’s Not What You Think It Is,” which is about the importance of fulfilling your higher purpose as well as the idea that you won’t consciously know what your individual, specific higher purpose is (and you certainly won’t be able to understand the bigger picture)–not until you have made it a practice of following through with your inner guidance daily and then seeing what happens over a period of time–generated a few comments from people thanking me for the reminder for them to make it a practice of meditating daily and listening to their higher guidance. (Whew! That was a lot to cover in one sentence!)

My friend Joshua Tilghman, who is the force behind The Spirit of the Scripture blog, wrote,

“Good post, Christine. I just wanted to add that the process can be sped up a little by living in the NOW and daily meditation.”

Another person shared that she wishes she could make daily meditation a habit, instead of doing it once or a couple times a month.

I agree that daily meditation is the place to begin. However, it is worth examining what your intention behind your daily meditation is. Is your intention behind meditation about receiving higher guidance for your daily life that you will then follow? Or is it because meditation is part of our pop culture now and a “spiritual” thing to do? Or is your intention something else altogether?

Most people have to learn to meditate, they have to learn to focus on hearing that inner guidance, that still, small voice within. Daily meditation (a deliberate and intentional connecting with your higher self / higher guidance) is often needed in order to overcome the very strong inertia and habit of ignoring our inner guidance. (I know this because before I made a conscious commitment over a decade ago to meditate and then follow through with my inner guidance consistently I ignored much of it. And then I noticed that what often happened is that I would feel regret or remorse that I had ignored it; I would regret not having followed through with my intuition in the moment, regret having ignored it or put it off due to simple procrastination or the habit of “remaining small.” And the reason I regretted it is that I realized I had lost some kind of an opportunity that would have given me and those around me joy, or else I got myself into some sort of trouble that made my life more complicated.)

So what did I do to overcome that powerful inertia? Besides making it a practice of meditating 10 to 15 minutes right before I went to sleep at night and right after I awakened (I did the heart and soul meditation described in a post I wrote early on in this blog), several times a day I stopped what I was doing (just for about 30 seconds to a minute) and focused on what I was feeling in my “sacred space” at the moment. What was my heart feeling? Was I feeling or sensing anything different in the center of my chest? Was there any guidance for me to follow at the moment? I had already by then made the commitment to follow through with my inner guidance and now was “checking in” with my higher self, learning to pay attention to subtle feelings, learning to anticipate guidance so that when it came, this time I’d be “on it,” this time I’d follow through. There would be no regrets.

Meditation does not have to be hard, you don’t need to be a “pro” at it, and you don’t need to do it the “right” way, i.e. sitting Indian style with fingers in the right place. It’s not about that at all, I discovered. I tried it the “traditional” way years before and it didn’t work for me and then I “meditated” in bed lying down, right before I fell asleep at night and a little when I woke up. That (and the strong desire to hear and follow through with my higher guidance) was all I needed to finally get things rolling, meaning, experiencing favorable, sometimes amazing synchronicities, new insights, new inspired actions, new connections, plenty of personal growth, as well as feelings of joy and expansion, regularly. In other words, you are being the change you want to see in the world. (Isn’t this why we meditate?)

When you hear the inner voice and you DON’T follow through, well that’s not helping you go forward at all, you’re just remaining stuck in the same old place.

Regarding “Living in the Now,” being connected to that divine part of you and following through with your guidance NOW (promptly, in the moment) is what “Living in the Now” is about. It’s about not worrying about the future because you know that by taking care of what there’s to take care of today you’re transforming your future and you’re being the change you want to see in the world.

What will you do today that will help you be the change you want to see in the world? Don’t put it off any longer!

 

Share this
FacebooktwitterlinkedinFacebooktwitterlinkedin

Being the Change you want to see in the world inner guidance meditation Your Higher Purpose

8 Comments

Published May 2, 2012 by

How To Pray So That Your Prayer Is Heard

Share this
FacebooktwitterlinkedinFacebooktwitterlinkedin

How do you pray in such a way so that your prayer is heard? What makes a prayer effective? This blog post discusses how to pray so that your prayers are answered–regardless of whether you’re asking God, the Universe, or beings in the higher realms to respond to your request.

I have found that prayer has worked much more effectively for me not when I ask God (or Jesus, or the Universe) to do things for me, but when I ask for guidance on how to resolve the situation I’m in and I follow through with the guidance I’m given. The kind of praying that we’ve traditionally been taught in religions (such as the ritualistic repetition of someone else’s words, asking God or higher beings to do things for us, to sweep the problems away) does not work much anymore, if at all. Much more is expected of us now than ever before. We’re being encouraged to raise our consciousness and become the masters of our lives. We are supposed to look out for our loved ones. So, prayers for teenage sons or daughters can provide God’s intervention and direction for their betterment.

I am clear that only those prayers that ask for empowerment within the Divine Plan will be answered. (This is one reason why the “Law of Attraction”–as it’s superficially understood–hasn’t been working.) Rather than praying for divine intervention to fix a problem for us, we ask for guidance and insight and understanding into the problem so that we can resolve it.

When we beg mindlessly, we inadvertently block the help we could receive if we included ourselves as active participants in the solution. In other words, only a supernatural prayer asking for empowerment, insight, and understanding can receive answers. This is particularly relevant now, as we’re being challenged to raise our consciousness and view ourselves as co-creators of a new world that benefits everyone. Our own insight, inner awareness, and self-empowerment are the means by which we can save ourselves.

So rather than imploring or repeating the words of others (as if prayers written by others have more power than our own words sincerely spoken), it makes sense to spend more time listening (receiving inner guidance, or God’s input), and then to integrate this guidance into our lives (by making changes that are congruent with it, by following through with the guidance).

The following is an example of a memorable prayer I spoke one night about 13 years ago when my car was stolen. What happened is that my husband’s teenage cousin had borrowed the car to go sightseeing in San Francisco and parked it at a train station in Sunnyvale (ironically one of the lowest crime rate cities of its size in the U.S.). When she returned that evening, the car was gone. The following is an excerpt taken from my book, What Everyone Believed: a memoir of intuition and awakening:

“Right before I went to sleep that third night [after the theft] I was inspired to say a prayer: I thanked God for having given me such a wonderful car; it had been so dependable for so long. I told God that the person who stole my car probably did so because he had met some unfortunate set of circumstances and couldn’t see another option for himself. And if that car wasn’t going to turn up, I asked that it provide for the new owner the same kind of reliability that it had provided me.

That was it; I was done with my prayer. I went over to W. who was working late on the computer, gave him a hug and a kiss, and went to bed feeling serene.

I didn’t know it clearly then, but this is what it means to say a prayer: you speak what is in your heart, you let things go (you become detached to the outcome), you send it off into the Universe (by simply having that intent), and then you allow the prayer to do the rest. (This is especially true in the case when there’s nothing you yourself can do about the outcome, i.e. you can’t just go out on your own looking for your stolen car.)

Around one in the morning the phone rang and I spoke with an investigating officer from the Mountain View Police, who informed me that my car had been found about 2 hours earlier (right around the time of my prayer). I listened as the officer explained that the car thief had asked a couple of unsuspecting youths for assistance in pushing my car to a gas station as it had run out of fuel. Then when a police car turned the corner and headed in their direction, the thief got out of the car in a flash and ran off, leaving the youths standing with my stalled car. Wow, I thought as I put down the receiver.

I suppose I stand corrected on my “problem-free” car–my fuel gauge had been reading inaccurately for some time. But the thief, of course, had no way of knowing this, and neither could he have known just how reliable to me my car really was…”

The interesting details of what happened were not lost on me–the fact that it was stolen in low-crime “Sunnyvale,” and found by the “Mountain View” Police. My car being found soon after I said my prayer. And the fact that what got me my reliable car back was my dysfunctional fuel gauge.

My understanding of prayer has increased since then. The way to pray so that your prayer is heard is to speak your own words from your heart and ask for guidance, listen to the still small voice within you, and muster up the courage to follow through with your guidance when you receive it. Know that you absolutely do need to be proactive about your higher purpose (your unique contribution to the new world) and that the feedback you receive from God / the Universe is what will help prevent you from being discouraged on your path.

Share this
FacebooktwitterlinkedinFacebooktwitterlinkedin

Connecting with Your Higher Self inner guidance meditation Your Higher Purpose

16 Comments

Published January 30, 2012 by

Meditations For Connecting With Your Higher Self

Share this
FacebooktwitterlinkedinFacebooktwitterlinkedin

I have tried several kinds of meditations over the years, including some that claim to help you access your higher self. If you’re happy with what your meditation practice does for you with regard to reconnecting and cultivating a real, palpable relationship with your higher self, don’t read this post. Go call a friend, or do something else instead. But if you’re frustrated because your relationship with your higher self isn’t where you want it to be and you’d like to know what kind of meditations are most effective for accessing your higher self, please read on…

Okay, let’s begin with some basics first. I have learned that to access your higher self, it’s not how you sit or how you breathe that’s important. And it’s not whether you have the right mantra. In fact, I have found that mantras actually distract and deter from this particular goal.

What’s important is whether your meditation connects you to that “higher self” aspect of you in as accurate a way as possible and whether you integrate that part of you into your life through your daily actions. It may not always be simple to enter that higher state of consciousness, but with a little bit of practice (and the support of professionals from WiccaAcademy.com or others), you may be able to get closer to achieving that mindfulness.

I will try to explain what I mean by “as accurate as possible,” first in general terms. I have found that for best results to happen in any area of life–doesn’t matter whether it’s cake baking or engineering or fixing cars–it helps to describe the situation as accurately as possible. What I mean is that you will get better results when you are right on target with your understanding of the situation, rather than just being in the ball park. I don’t think many people will argue with me on this point. (Later in this post I will explain why this also holds true for meditation.)

People may also be interested in spirituality and spiritual awakening. And truthfully, it has nothing to do with prayers. By attaining the spiritual awakening, you can feel closer to the universe and manifest a better understanding of your surroundings. It can also help to get in tune with you and your loved ones’ feelings. There are different Stages Of Spiritual Awakening, six to be precise. You can do more research about this, if it is something that interests you.

Anyway, I am writing about meditation and mindfulness because I recently came across a meditation for accessing the higher self that I understood (and intuitively knew) wouldn’t be all that helpful. The not-so-helpful meditation goes like this: You are to imagine that your higher self is standing (or sitting) in front of you and you are connecting to it through your open palms that are out in front of you. You imagine your higher self mirroring you, palms touching, while affirming that your new “best friend” will give you the highest of guidance. You are asked to “breathe through your hands.”

The problem with this meditation is that your higher self is not outside of you, and it never really was. I will explain why it’s important that the meditation you choose reflect reality as accurately as possible. The following are three points I discovered when I was seeking a meditation that would reconnect me to my higher self as quickly and as effectively as possible:

  1. About 10 years ago, the Counsel of Light gave me a meditation that they described as a “shot in the arm” for connecting with your higher self. (This meditation was channeled for me through medium Flo Aeveia Magdalena.) In this meditation, the Counsel of Light asked me to place my left hand on my heart and my right hand on my “soul seed”–which is in the center of the body between the rib cage. They said that the heart in my meditation represented my current life (my current incarnation) and the soul seed represented my soul, my higher self (my infinite life). During the meditation they had me imagine that I was running a figure 8 (the infinity sign) around my hands (i.e. a circle around the left hand, and then a circle around the right hand, over and over again in a figure 8 ) so that what appeared to be happening is that my current life was integrating with my higher self right under my hands.
  2. After I got into this meditation practice, I noticed that this area of my body would get all warm and tingly just before I’d be given important guidance. I would get this warm, intense glow in the center of my chest close to my heart (where the Counsel of Light said my “soul seed” was) even when I wasn’t paying any particular attention to this area. What I mean is that I’d be driving my car, for example, on some mundane errand, when all of a sudden I would experience this intense hottening up of the center of my chest. I would feel this warm, peaceful, happy glow in my center even when my life was in chaos and I was feeling scared, sad, and disconnected from loved ones. Then a moment or so after I acknowledged this warm feeling, I noticed that I would get a new insight, or some sort of inner guidance–guidance that actually helped me resolve specific problems I had in my life at the time. The warm, intense feeling definitely got my attention. It helped me at a time when I wasn’t yet confident with my ability to correctly distinguish my true inner guidance from my mental conditionings or imaginations. It also helped me to recognize which inner guidance was extremely important for me to follow. (And if your higher self gave you guidance that was deemed very important for you to follow, wouldn’t it make sense that at the same time, you’d be given a sign that you couldn’t ignore?) After all, the Divine Plan works extremely well!
  3. Placing your hands on your body as I described above while lying down actually helps to calm you, to reconnect you to your true self. (Try it for a while and see for yourself.) This kind of meditation also affirms (and helps your mind get) that your power is within you, not outside of you, and that the source of your power is your direct connection to Source (to God)–which I believe will be extremely important and useful in the near future.

I have written in detail about how to do this meditation in both my eBook and my memoir. Everything you need to succeed in this meditation is shared in detail. Furthermore, in my memoir I share several instances of how I was driving, or walking, or even cleaning the house, began to feel the familiar welling up of warm energy in my soul seed area, and then the words and the guidance that came to me not long afterwards. I also share how the guidance I received helped me solve specific problems I had in my life at the time.

Besides the meditation shared above, I also like meditations where you imagine yourself walking down a spiral staircase, and with each slow step you go deeper and deeper into yourself. This meditation is very calming and helps you learn to “drop in” to yourself quickly.

There is no doubt in my mind that reconnecting to and integrating with your higher self is the source of your spiritual awakening. It’s what this “Great Shift” in consciousness is all about. Just make sure to use a meditation that connects you to your higher self as quickly and as effectively as possible.

Share this
FacebooktwitterlinkedinFacebooktwitterlinkedin

Connecting with Your Higher Self inner guidance meditation Spiritual Growth The Great Shift The Great Shift in Consciousness Your Higher Self

16 Comments