Goddesses Never Age: The Secret Prescription for Radiance, Vitality, and Well-Being (46 page)

In
Chapter 4
, I explained the phenomenon of aligned cardiac activity called coherence. The Global Coherence Initiative at
www.glcoherence.org
, launched by the Institute of HeartMath, is a project that uses coherence to shift global consciousness toward balance and collaboration. It involves people using conscious intent, affirmation, prayer, and meditation to alter the electromagnetic field (EMF) of the earth that is affecting all of
us. They’ve actually measured EMF activity and found correlations to global crises, such as 9/11, when our human hearts are all affected by something that big. On the other hand, they have also seen results when many concentrate their intention to raise the vibration of the EMF through joy. Our human energy fields affect the field of the earth herself! And yes, they’re using scientific research methods to track their progress. They often send out a call for global prayer and meditation at a particular time, such as for ten minutes on a specific date. Robert Fritchie of the World Service Institute (
www.worldserviceinstitute.org
) and Lynne McTaggart (
www.lynnemctaggart.com
) both have large networks that coordinate these activities as well. And spiritual leaders are joining in the call—especially when a crisis is brewing. Everyone who participates in raising the vibration of the EMF is contributing to changing the EMF, and the effect is cumulative.
¹⁰

Connecting with other people in prayer or meditation, whatever form it takes, is an excellent way to stay connected with Spirit. Churches or synagogues often help people feel a sense of safety and belonging, and they meet important social needs. Jesus said, “Whenever two or more are gathered in my name, there shall I be also.” In other words, when at least two people choose to come together in vulnerability, with the intention of connecting to the Divine Beloved and their own spiritual selves, it is very powerful and nourishing for the soul. Research shows that regular church attendance is associated with better health and greater longevity. Twelve-step meetings of all kinds, too, work very nicely for bringing people together to remember that Spirit is the healer of addictions. Be forewarned, however: while a church, synagogue, sangha, prayer group, or 12-step group can give you emotional sustenance and help you feel your connection to the Divine Beloved and to the greater community, the group can also be weighted down in personal politics and psychological dysfunction. If you’ve had a bad experience with churches or spiritual communities, don’t let that stop you from joining or creating one, or improving the one you’re in so that it’s more supportive of everyone’s spiritual well-being. Look around in your own community. Talk to people you know who are tapped into various networks. You can also find a group through the Internet.
Or you can set the intention to connect with like-minded people who don’t require a building or a schedule in order to tune in to their spirituality. We no longer need specific buildings called synagogues, mosques, churches, or temples in order to actively connect with Spirit. When I was growing up and attended church with my father, my mother always went out into the woods. She’d say to my father, “You go to your church. I’ll go to mine.” Now
that
was a profound childhood imprint about spirituality!

Where you hold your gatherings doesn’t matter. All space is sacred space when you remember that God is within you. But you might find it’s especially enriching to meet up in nature, in a beautiful public space, or in a place where people have prayed for centuries. Some of the old cathedrals in Europe sit atop sacred springs recognized by people who lived in those areas before Christianity came in. Sedona has always been considered a holy space by the indigenous people in that area, and it’s become a magnet for people eager to experience and express their spiritual nature. When I first went there, my first thought was,
Wow. This place is holy. It’s a sanctuary.

You don’t need the formal blessing of a religious leader to form a congregation or group of spiritual seekers or to explore your own spirituality. Reconnecting with the Divine Beloved means letting go of the old idea that you need someone to serve as a go-between whenever you want to feel connected to Spirit. What we’re seeking is the Divine within, not something “out there.” All of us are worthy of having a direct line to this nourishing force.

When we feel this connection, we know there
is
a divine plan. The plan also becomes easier to see as we get into our ageless years and have likely experienced the fact that the Divine does indeed work in mysterious, extraordinary, and exquisite ways.

GOOSE BUMPS AND INNER KNOWING

The Divine Beloved communicates with us in many ways, but we have to get out of our heads to receive the messages. That’s controversial to say in a culture of domination that’s dismissive of intuition and divining arts, but I’m saying it anyway! As women,
we know deep down that intuition is powerful and that we can trust it. Intuitive, wise women have been shamed and marginalized for centuries. Saying, “I can’t explain why, but I just know this situation isn’t right for me”—listening to your inner knowing—can be difficult because we’re told we need to logically justify what our hearts tell us. But as the feminine way of knowing becomes stronger and stronger, it’s easier and easier to take this stance unapologetically.

You know yourself and your heart. If you feel resistance to something, explore your resistance. Once you sit with an idea for a while, or remain mindful in a situation, your true feelings and beliefs will become much clearer. Become still and listen to your inner knowing—and your goose bumps. I’ve always been fascinated by how our bodies can create this physical response in unfiltered form. If someone tells you about an uncanny coincidence, or you experience a perfect synchronicity, or you suddenly have a strong sense that you’re being guided by a loving and protective force, you’ll often get goose bumps. They’re a sure sign that whatever you just heard has special significance. Here’s the anatomy of a “goose bump”: an electrical signal activates the tiny muscles in the skin that supply a hair follicle. The hair literally stands on end. That electrical signal itself is activated when a deep truth inside of us connects with the deep truth of something outside of us. We experience a resonance field between that outer truth and our own hearts that links them like points on a big grid. Goose bumps are the sign that our grids are in sync with a profound, intuitive truth that we may not be able to articulate fully.

If you find yourself feeling tired or sad for no reason and you’ve just been in a cemetery, bar, or hospital, it may be because you’ve picked up on energies there that are dark and heavy, or there are spirits lingering about. The late Peter Calhoun, a former Episcopal priest who became a shaman, told me that the native people he worked with often said, “You white people don’t know how to let go of your dead. You’re surrounded by dead people.” Many of us were taught that if—and it was “if”—souls live after death, they go away to a place where we can’t sense them and they can’t communicate with us. But many souls don’t get across
the portal if their loved ones are still hanging on to unresolved feelings about them. I can’t begin to tell you how many women have been helped by the knowledge that it’s okay to release their mothers or other loved ones after death. One of my friends noticed that she felt her grandmother’s presence more after she died than before. This grandmother had been mentally ill and, especially in later years, had been a major burden on the family. Sure enough, a healer friend of mine noted that her grandmother hadn’t gone through the portal and was still hanging around, making life a bit heavier for everyone. When the healer helped the grandmother cross over, my friend said she could feel a weight lifting from around her ankles!

It’s comforting to know that many people connect regularly with loved ones after their passing. This is beautifully depicted in the movie
What Dreams May Come,
which I highly recommend for those who may be having trouble letting go. Messages and communication from loved ones who have crossed over are common, but again, our intuition and experience of what can’t be proven is shamed and dismissed in a dominator culture. Let’s reclaim this experience. It’s real and we know it. I like to think of life as similar to being at a big fairgrounds—you get disconnected from someone and you eventually hook up with them again.

COMMUNING WITH THE DIVINE

Each of us is a being of light with consciousness, a form of the Divine who has come back to Earth to remember and experience her sacred essence. The fact that we are beings of light—and that we, in fact, emit light—has been demonstrated by researcher Gary Schwartz, Ph.D., at his lab at the University of Arizona. (You can learn more at
www.drgaryschwartz.com
.) Your soul probably came here with the intention of doing some learning while you’re in human form, but you aren’t here to prove anything to anyone. You don’t have to earn the love of your Creator. It’s a given. Many religions say that God is love, and that’s the truth. Divine love is bestowed on you regardless of what you do or think. It’s up to you to accept it and connect to it. If you believe otherwise, it’s a sign you need to reconnect to what you
know deep down: that you are a divine, ageless, beloved goddess worthy of unconditional love. Own it!

Agelessness means engaging in the creative process of life itself, not being constricted by a preconceived notion of how you are “supposed” to act or to age or to commune with the Divine. The Divine just wants you to connect with it. It is not issuing orders about where to stand or sit or how to hold your hands or what words to say.

Though the Divine is always there for us, it’s easy to feel disconnected in a culture that keeps God locked in a box labeled “religion” and tells us that we don’t have access to God without specially trained go-betweens. Nevertheless, prayer is powerful because it invokes the Divine and helps you actually feel that connection. There are many different forms of prayer, so if one doesn’t feel right to you, try a different one. Some people find that singing, speaking, or just silently reciting a prayer they know well allows Spirit to resonate in their bodies. The words evoke a feeling of being connected to everyone who ever said that particular prayer. Speaking words or prayers changes the vibration around you, too, so if your prayer is one you make up on the spot, it can still be very powerful. There’s a Jewish tradition of prayer for everyday blessings. Why not make a habit of saying a prayer of gratitude for everything you can think of as you go about an everyday task? “Thank you for my good cookware and my knowledge about how to use it to prepare a delicious meal. Thank you for my full refrigerator, and for the zucchini being fresh and in season. Thank you for my knives being sharp.” Try it sometime! Prayers of gratitude are powerful tools for wellness.

I absolutely love Tosha Silver’s Divine Beloved prayers. I’ve already introduced several in the course of the book, and you’ll find more in the 14-Day Ageless Goddess Program in the next chapter. Tosha says she invented this form of prayer after working with many spiritual teachers who instructed her to “just let go” and puzzling over how to do that. Eventually, she came up with her Change Me prayers as a way to engage the Self to help the self. The Change Me prayer is a very effective way to bypass the death grip of the ego that always wants to know “how, when, where, how high,” and so forth. In effect, you are asking your
Higher Self to take the wheel and align you with Divine Order. When you pray, “Divine Beloved, please change me into someone who is open to this experience and all it has to offer me,” you are also inviting Spirit to help you have faith in Divine Order. You are sending a message out over the crystalline structure of your body connected with your heart and waiting to receive guidance. Since your cytoskeleton is precisely designed to both send and receive, and is masterminded by your heartfelt desires, you can be sure that your prayers are being both sent out and received.

However, the vibration at which a request is made or a prayer is said is often quite different from the vibration of the answer. It might take several weeks or months or even years for your prayer to be answered. It may be that you won’t get your response until you raise your vibration—and you do that by shedding old resentments, grief, or beliefs that are keeping you from experiencing your good. Sometimes, as I’ve said, Spirit’s answer to a prayer is “No, not yet” because you have some work to do first. Remember, soul contracts are agreements to resolve what’s been unresolved and to experience things we want to experience. You may need to do some growing and healing before you’re ready to receive what your mind and heart are longing for.

I love invoking a wiser, stronger part of myself and asking it to change me into someone who is organized, who receives easily, who trusts, or whatever. The idea that you can ask for help, that it doesn’t all have to come from you, is one that hasn’t been as much a part of the New Age as it should have been. Women think it all has to come from them—we have to make it happen! But God is there to help us every time. When you ask for help from God, you acknowledge that being a perfectionist and trying to micromanage the world is too damn exhausting and that you are worthy of divine intervention! Here’s a prayer you can say daily: “Divine Beloved, change me into someone who relishes my goddess nature and my connection to you and to the earth. Change me into someone who truly trusts in Divine Order. And while you’re at it, please send me a few signs that remind me I’m always connected to you.” When you say it, let yourself feel it.

Another form of prayer is affirmations. When you say them, you articulate what you wish for as if it were true right now, in the present moment. Thoughts have vibrations, evoke emotions,
and change the electrical potential that gets sent out along your grid. If you want to change your emotions, you have to change your thoughts and be mindful of negative self-talk. Energy flows where awareness goes. And in the brain, neurons that fire together quite literally wire together. If you think about problems instead of solutions and opportunities, your problems expand. If you have a health challenge and that becomes your main focus—what you talk about, what you post about on social media to all your friends, family, and acquaintances—you give illness a lot of energy that could be directed toward joy and health. Think about what you want to affirm—that you’re ill? Or that you’re actively repairing your body’s cells, organs, and tissues even as you’re living a luscious, joyful life?