Spiritual Maturity

"Today many seekers are trying to infuse their daily lives with a heightened consciousness of the sacred, striving to act as if each of their attitudes expressed their spiritual essence. Such conscious living is an invocation, a request for personal spiritual authority. It represents a dismantling of the old religions' classic parent-child relationship to God and a move into spiritual adulthood. Spiritual maturation includes not only developing the ability to interpret the deeper messages of sacred texts, but learning to read the spiritual language of the body. As we become conscious and recognize the impact of our thoughts and attitudes — our internal life — upon our bodies and external lives, we no longer need to conceive of an external parent-God that creates for us and on whom we are fully dependent. As spiritual adults we accept responsibility for co-creating our lives and our health. Co-creation is in fact the essence of spiritual adulthood; it is the exercise of choice and the acceptance of our responsibility for those choices."
Anatomy of the Spirit: The Seven Stages of Power and Healing

Energy Medicine

"Everything that is alive pulsates with energy and all of this energy contains information. While it is not surprising that practitioners of alternative or complementary medicine accept this concept, even some quantum physicists acknowledge the existence of an electromagnetic field generated by the body's biological processes. Scientists accept that the human body generates electricity because living tissue generates energy.

"Your physical body is surrounded by an energy field that extends as far out as your outstretched arms and the full length of your body. It is both an information center and a highly sensitive perceptual system. We are constantly 'in communication' with everything around us through this system, which is a kind of conscious electricity that transmits and receives messages to and from other people's bodies. These messages from and within the energy field are what intuitives perceive.

"Practitioners of energy medicine believe that the human energy field contains and reflects each individual's energy. It surround us and carries with us the emotional energy created by our internal and external experiences — both positive and negative. This emotional force influences the physical tissue within our bodies. In this way your biography — that is, the experiences that make up your life — becomes your biology."
Anatomy of the Spirit: The Seven Stages of Power and Healing

Entering Into the Nature of Mystery

"A central misconception of today's holistic culture is the belief that all illness results from personal negativity either from tragic past experiences, from negative attitudes that contaminate our minds and bodies, or from bad past-life karma. Yet negativity is not the only source of illness. It can also emerge as the answer to a prayer. It can physically guide us onto a path of insight and learning upon which we would otherwise never have set foot. It may be a catalyst for expanding personal consciousness as well as for understanding the greater meaning of life.

"As terrifying as disease is, it is also an invitation to enter into the nature of mystery. Our lives are made up of a series of mysteries that we are meant to explore but that are meant to remain unsolved. We are meant to live with the questions we have about our lives, even use them as companions, and allow them to lead us into the deepest recesses of our nature, wherein we discover the Sacred."
Why People Don't Heal and How They Can

Woundology

"We are not meant to stay wounded. We are supposed to move through our tragedies and challenges and to help each other move through the many painful episodes of our lives. By remaining stuck in the power of our wounds, we block our own transformation. We overlook the greater gifts inherent in our wounds — the strength to overcome them and the lessons that we are meant to receive through them. Wounds are the means through which we enter the hearts of other people. They are meant to teach us to become compassionate and wise."
Why People Don't Heal and How They Can

Illness as Part of Your Spiritual Journey

"When an illness is a part of your spiritual journey, no medical intervention can heal you until your spirit has begun to make the changes that the illness was designed to inspire. Medical intervention, complementary healing modalities, changes in nutrition, and overall lifestyle may all help to some extent and should certainly be used. But the most effective healing option, when you are facing an illness as a spiritual challenge, is to rely on your spiritual practice to bring you the insights you need. Your practice can be a means of enduring the disease and healing it through increasing the strength and wisdom of your spirit — or it can prepare you for the release of your life, if that is the Divine will for you. You need to redirect your faith from the physical to the spiritual realm."
Why People Don't Heal and How They Can

Your Sacred Contract

"Learning to manage your personal power means that you have to become aware of how you work with energy and whom you give it to. 'Those who overcome themselves are strong,' wrote Lao-tzu. It's also about how much you are willing to surrender to divine guidance, which comes to you in the guise of inner tuition. By finding your inner compass and acting on its promptings, you come into your full power and fulfill the life mission you were born to complete. I call this mission your Sacred Contract and it includes not just the daily work you do, but every relationship you have and every person you meet, everyone you help and everyone who helps you."
Invisible Acts of Power: Personal Choices That Create Miracles

Kindness

"Years ago I had a conversation with a man who told me that the most important truth he had learned was to be kind. He learned this, he recounted, during a cab ride in New York City. As he was paying the driver, he said, 'Thank you, sir.' At this, the driver leaped, ran around the back of the cab, and opened the door for his passenger. Startled, the man got out and said to the cab driver, 'You didn't have to do that,' to which the driver responded, 'I wanted to. You are the first person in this country to honor me by calling me sir, and I thank you for that respect.' The man had never before considered the power inherent in a respectful gesture, but from them on, kindness became the pillar on which he built his life and the legacy he hoped to pass on to his children. The exchange, he said, changed his life."
Invisible Acts of Power: Personal Choices That Create Miracles