Tag Archives: peace
Amazon readers have given 100% 5-Star Reviews to Greg Pacini’s new book, Journey Beyond Hardship. Here are their powerful and positive reviews:
Two Thumbs Up!
This is a positive, affirming book that helps take you through the ups and downs of life. The easy-to-read format offers clear guidance to take you along your journey. The “rest stops” are great tools to come back to when you need a tune-up. I highly recommend this book for anyone who is struggling to find their way to a peace within themselves.
—Lynne Christman
Profound and Insightful!!!
Greg Pacini has written a book that shares many profound insights with his readers. The book is written as if the reader is on a road trip. This format encourages a way of exploring the journey through the hardships of our lives. The idea of rest stops along the way suggests the reader should stop and reflect on varied ways of self-care that are offered at these junctures in the book. Life can be filled with ups and downs and Pacini’s book offers many ways to work through the hardships presented to many of us in life. I particularly enjoyed the chapter: “Further Destinations: Matters of Spirit.” This book offers compassionate and hopeful insights to all who read it. I would recommend this to all who are seeking a path that gives meaning to the many facets of suffering.
—Mary Francis Hoffman PHD, RSME, RYT
An Insightful and Practical Resource.
This book offered clarity and hope at a difficult time in my life. As I experienced multiple hardships at once my inner world was chaotic and frightening and the journey metaphor offered a practical approach and first steps and is easy to understand. I’m now rereading both this book and Journey Beyond Diagnosis as they are packed with good stuff and have many layers. Still on round two I’m comforted by curling up somewhere cozy with this book.
—Mamamia
See the reviews on Amazon or order your copy by clicking the Amazon button on the “Book” page of this website.
My great-niece, Maisey, is a star. Of all that I’ve posted on Facebook over the years, only three posts have broken the 150 mark for views. Two are pictures of Maisey. How come? 
There’s no question, she is a beautiful and precious child. But something tells me it’s more than that. Take a good look at her most recent picture-the one with the blanket partly over her face. What do you see?
Here’s what I see. I see a child so full of love from those around her that it radiates from her. Does she get fussy? Sure, every child does. But there emanates from her something we cannot turn from. I believe it’s love.
We’re like moths to light that way. When we encounter pure love, we can not help but draw to it. Sometimes what we draw to in this way is physically beautiful: majestic mountains, a spectacular sculpture. Other times what draws us is emotionally beautiful, like a couple having a difficult but honest conversation. Perhaps it’s the rawness of this love that captures us. And not just the love between the two halves of this couple, but the love each person must have for self to be this clear and strong with another person.
Any sense can draw us into love: rapturous melody, breathtaking touch, even an earthy smell like horses.
Most people appreciate the love we feel near puppies. But sometimes we’re surprised when love shows up. Have you ever felt a sense of love when a healthy plate of food is put before you? Perhaps it’s the love we feel for and from the person that prepared it. Maybe it’s something emanating from the food itself. After all, some of the healthiest food we eat is still alive when we eat it.
Or what about the love we might feel when witnessing acts of heroism or faith. Even if we don’t share the same beliefs, sometimes we can feel love for someone who has given her or himself to a worthy cause.
But how could we feel lovingly toward someone who doesn’t believe as we do? Love is the answer. I think love, as described in the above ways (and so many millions of other ways) is discernable to us, no matter how disguised. What if love is more than a word or a feeling? What if love is some kind of signal or impulse? And what if each of us is born with the equipment necessary to detect that signal? And what if all the people in all the countries, with all the beliefs and disbeliefs, in spite of their best efforts, cannot turn this equipment off in self or others? What if this unifying signal or tone is the one absolute? And what if that tone is the key to healing the world?
Science is pretty clear on this one: love brings healing and wholeness. Fear, anger and doubt bring compromised immune function and unhappiness. So for your sake, why not add more love to your life in the New Year? 
We know from lots of studies that living in a state of peace and love and happiness strengthens our body’s ability to fight disease. The research is so consistent and prolific that most accept it now as common knowledge.
But we forget. We get politically fired up, or fired up on a basketball court, or fired up at a co-worker or neighbor. This is where the research can be a bit tricky to understand.
Research seems to suggest that getting “fired up” or angry isn’t a bad thing. However, if we blow a gasket on a daily basis, or if we hold our anger in and act like everything’s great all the time, then our bodies can pay the price. So it’s not anger itself that’s bad for us. It’s explosive or suppressed anger that will cause physical problems.
Same for sadness and fear. We all have regular occasion to be sad or scared or doubtful. These emotions are part of life. Problems arise, though, when we completely avoid these more difficult emotions, or when we get stuck feeling one for long periods.
Sure, there are times in all our lives when we seem to get angry a lot, or we just can’t shake the blues. But the healthier we get, the less fear, anger, doubt and sadness linger.
All emotions deserve a place at the table. Just make sure it’s you sitting at the head.
With practice, each of us is capable of naming individual emotions as they rise up. And mastery comes when we see each emotion simply as a wave that has splashed up from the ocean of our minds. We remain in peace as each feeling crashes the surface of our thoughts, knowing that soon it will return to the deep and quiet ocean it came from.
Our job is to watch these emotion waves rather than become them. When we become each individual wave or emotion, we can get tossed about. However, when we simply watch each wave, we stay calm like the ocean deep; like the deep waters of the still mind.
When we practice this emotional witnessing, we return more quickly to the peace and love always available to us and in us.
So to help add a little love to your New Year, consider trying one or two of these:
- Put your hand on your heart, and feel your own heart beat.
- Feel your lover’s heart beat.
- Make a donation.
- Get a massage.
- Give one.
- Send a card to someone who could really use it.
- Build something; bake something.
- Commit to doing something special next week that you really enjoy.
- Laugh hard.
- Sing.
- Let someone love you in a very specific way.
- Say, “I love you,” with conviction.
- Send loving thoughts to someone you don’t understand.
Here’s to more love, peace and joy in 2016.
Had an article all queued up two weeks ago for this last Thursday in 2015: all about the uselessness of worry. Then life served up a chance to practice what I was preaching.
St. Louis saw record rainfall earlier in the week. This photo is my front yard on Monday. On Sunday, the lake my home sits on breached its containment, and the watch ensued. Levels held pretty steady until about 3 a.m., and from there the water steadily rose. 
By 10 a.m. on Monday morning, the lake seemed close to crest, still needing another foot plus to reach my basement. Feeling pretty confident that my neighbors and I had bested the worst of the storm, I went downstairs to exercise a bit.
Well, well, well. What have we here? When I reached the bottom of the steps, the carpet splashed. So even though the water hadn’t reached the exterior level of my basement, the sewer system supporting these low-lying homes couldn’t handle all the water, and it was tumbling up out of my basement drain.
Pretty sure there was one f-bomb, then to work. First I put soup cans somebody gave me under the legs of a table I’d made, and put my drum kit on top of that. Next was the P.A. system up the steps. Then albums and all sorts of stuff where stacked on metal chairs. Lastly, boxes of CD’s and books were taken upstairs.
Eventually, the drain started acting right, and water went back underground. I used a sheet of plywood like a big ole’ squeegee, and pushed water to the drain. Thankfully, the basement is not finished, so only the carpet at the bottom of the stairs was soaked. In time, I hosed down the little sewage that came up, hit the carpet with a shop vac, dried the whole thing with fan and heater and lastly did some disinfecting.
Who knew life was gonna offer up an occasion to experience myself in higher stress. And while my mind wanted to spin scary stories, it didn’t. And that was the whole point of the original article about the uselessness of worry. Unless we’re being chased by a dog or somehow seriously threatened, worry is useless.
Worry cops our energy. It weakens our focus. It steals oxygen from the brain, making clear communication and thinking difficult.
So why do it? Worry can be companion to a mind hooked on overactivity. Worry can give a place for anxious energy to land. Worry can also give us a a sense of self, albeit a broken one. When you think about it, worry begins to sound somewhat self-involved.
So if you care to, please join me in leaving any habit of worry in 2015.
Here’s a three step process to help:
Step 1. Get familiar with your worry. Notice when it’s beginning and ending. Your body can help with its Stress Activated Signals (S.A.S.). These signals include things like ears getting hot, tightness in chest, sweaty palms, choppy sentences and stomach upset.
Step 2. Recognize in this moment of worry, you have the following choices: fight the situation, get away from it, freeze with fear, or flow by taking the next right step, trusting the step after that will be clear once you take the next right step.
Step 3. Choose*
*Consistently, the flow response has proven to be for me the most effective, efficient and comfortable way to react to worrisome situations. It’s also the one that comes with the most peace.**
**May peace visit those whose homes and livelihoods have been seriously compromised by the flood.
When we are loved, just as we are, we learn to trust our own instincts. Once we trust our own instincts, we move forward in life with a sense of sureness or resolve.
Love is a powerful thing. It’s like light. Doesn’t that TV commercial say the human eye can detect the light of a single match in the dark, ten miles away? Dang.
Love seems to operate in the world like that. The unconditional regard from one person to another can bring light to years of darkness from abuse, rage or hurt.
And when years of hurt and darkness in a person are illuminated by the light of love, that loved person goes forward with a new light that brightens the eyes of many that person sees over the course of a lifetime. And then all those people touched by that light which was once darkness bring more light into the eyes of all those they see. Love has this power in the world. Love has this power in the heart.
The resolve born in the heart of a person who feels truly loved changes the way life feels for that person.
First the person loved begins to feel strong enough to look deeply into the eyes of his or her own emotions: fear, anger, sadness, joy, hope.
Once those emotions are fully accepted in the self, those emotions provide better guidance. With better guidance, now from within, the self creates a life that feels better.
From this life that feels better, the self loved deeply by another begins to love deeply the self. When we love ourselves deeply, we become more clear about who we are and what we want.
As we become more clear about who we are and what we want, decisions come more easily. As our decisions, based on guidance from our own feelings, produce a better life, we walk moment to moment with a core, solid, palpable sense of resolve. This quality of resolve supports us feeling safe in the world, because we feel safe with ourselves.
Fear seems contagious, but so does love. Which will you catch?
New York Times bestseller, Gary Zukav, introduced me to the love/fear paradigm years ago through his book, The Seat Of The Soul. It’s become clear to me, after 35 years counseling folks in all kinds of pain, that , more often than not, we are walking in either a state of love or a state of fear. Thank goodness, shift happens.
Trust, peace, tenderness, openness, gratitude, kindness, and healthy power: these are all emotions born of an inner experience of love.
Doubt, anxiety, anger, confusion, discontent, bitterness, rigidity, impatience and unhealthy power: these are all emotions born of an inner experience of fear.
Love and fear, like all emotions, are just that–emotions. Period. One emotion is no better than the others. All are just sign posts on the journey of our lives.
But here’s the important difference between those emotions in the love category and those emotions in the fear category. Those emotions born of an Innernet of love make us feel good. Those emotions born of an Innernet of fear make us feel bad.
By the way, I refer to these two states as Innernets because these core emotions have a measurable effect on a core aspect of our brains, the neuronets.
So while no emotion is bad, all emotions have a good or bad impact on how we feel, which affects our hormones, neuropeptides and neuronets. And this has a good or bad impact on our bodies.
Fundamentally, what helps us and our bodies most is to experience whatever emotion shows up and then gradually shift ourselves to an Innernet state that feels good or better.
This shift is not about thinking. To access an Innernet state that feels better, you have to deal with feeling.
So here’s a quick, three-step technique to make Shift Happen:
- Ask yourself regularly, “What’s my core feeling: love or fear?”
- Ask yourself, “Does this core feeling serve me right now?” Sometimes we are given guidance by our anger, sadness or fear. As a result, sometimes it’s important that we experience those emotions.
- If your core emotion right now does not serve you, gently shift what you experience at a core level, in your gut, to a feeling more like love.
In making Shift Happen for yourself, it’s important that you gauge the shift with your gut and not your mind. Your body can help here. Your body has ways of telling you that you are moving into an Innernet state of love: breathing slows, face relaxes, stomach quiets, and body movements become more fluid, just to name a few.
If you’re having trouble creating a shift in yourself to loving kindness, it’s OK. Be gentle with yourself. Don’t force or wrestle yourself into a state that feels better. Simply set an intention regularly to feel more of this inner goodness, and then invite that better feeling when you can. Again, the real shift happens at the emotional and physical level. To truly make a shift in this way requires fundamental shifts in body chemistry and form. This can take time. Please be patient with yourself.
If it helps, try going for the feeling you have when you’re in the arms of someone you love. Again, the feeling matters more than the thought. Or go for the feeling you have when holding a baby, or a puppy. Thoughts can take you there, but the destination we’re after is the feeling. Let your whole self and body bask in this feeling. Then Shift Happens.
refinedguy.com
You’ve probably seen those commercials with Jeff Goldblum as Brad Bellflower for Apartments.com promoting the Apartminternet. At the end of the commercials he proclaims, “Change your apartment, change the world!” Well, that’s close.
All of us have had experiences we wish we could change. Things we’ve done we wish we hadn’t. People we’ve hurt we wish we could unhurt. More painful still, there are those among us walking around feeling badly about themselves while every one else thinks of them as remarkable people.
And yet compassion for ourselves just the ways we are, and including those aspects of ourselves that feel dark to us, brings a light that can “heal forward.”
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