The Earth-Heart Institute of Vision and Healing and The Total Human™
Vision Quests, Spiritual Retreats, Women's Retreats, Kundalini Yoga & Meditation, Creativity Retreats, Personal Intensives
April 2006
 Welcome to the quarterly newsletter collaboration between the Earth-Heart Institute of Vision and Healing and The Total Human™. Collectively, we offer Vision Quests, Spiritual Retreats, Women's Retreats, Kundalini Yoga and Meditation, Creativity Retreats, Personal Intensives, Healing, and Spiritual Counseling. This newsletter offers thoughts on a chosen topic with simple awareness exercises, meditations, or yogic tips that relate to the topic. We also update you on our class schedules,recommend books or products that relate to living a healthy and conscious life, and offer some web links to check out that support a greater and more unified Vision of the world, the expansion of the human spirit, and the protection of the environment. If you are not interested in receiving these newsletters once each season, you can click on the “unsubscribe” button at the bottom of the page.
Click on our names (above) to visit our complete websites.
Everyone has two choices. We’re either full of love…or full of fear.
--Albert Einstein--
PERSPECTIVES
Students often react with surprise and delight, as well as with a bit of incredulity, when I assure them that their lives are absolutely perfect just the way they are. This assertion startles people who are immersed in their spiritual struggles and are exerting considerable effort to change their lives. I usually make this assertion during the early days of the Personal Intensive class while we are exploring how the students got into the ‘mess’ they find themselves in. Typically, they feel trapped in self-defeating patterns and possibly self-destructive behaviors. Most feel they have not made the progress on their spiritual path that they hoped they would and have come to face whatever obstacles still stand in the way of greater progress.
As soon as I make this statement, I immediately put it in the context that I will continue to build through the entire week. I tell them that their lives are perfect just as the fall I take when I trip over some obstacle is perfect. In other words, considering the speed of my walk, the force of my foot catching, and countless other variables, the fall perfectly follows the physical laws of nature. If I could duplicate my walk and the trip exactly, the fall would be identical every time. It would be perfect because it is lawful.
We live in a lawful creation and our lives are the expression that results when law acts on the contents of our psyche. So I suggest that if they don’t like the perfect life they are living, they can simply create a different perfect life! The reality of the human psyche is that it is a creative mechanism that will, using the law, create whatever we place into it. Furthermore, life is so fluid that it will reflect whatever we vision. Life only appears rigid and hard because we hold so rigidly to the vision of life as difficult and as a trial.
This law can be found in the scripture of every religion. It applies to every level of life from the loftiest to the most common. And it ensures that our lives are perfect. In the bible, the law is expressed in the following way: “As you believe in your heart, so shall you experience.” That statement is the formula for creating the life, the perfect life, that you choose.
Unfortunately, early in our lives the process of socialization sought to mould us into a good citizen rather than help us discover and unfold our unique brilliance and the authentic and original vision for our life. In other words, our creative potential was co-opted by others and their values rather than ours were instilled in our ‘hearts’. Now, with an understanding our full creative potential, we can take back the reins of our life and create the path of life that most fulfills our desire and understanding.
Malcolm
HELPFUL PRACTICES
EXERCISE:
Whenever you find yourself in a place of fear, put your attention immediately into your heart center. Focus there with whatever you’re struggling with. Your heart is the place that knows whether things are really okay, and whether it’s your head creating the fear, or whether it’s something you actually need to act upon. Your head will give you 1000 reasons why you need to be afraid at any given moment. So ask your heart. If you feel a slight release within you when you check in with your heart, trust the feeling and choose not to go with what your head is telling you. It’s a choice you make. It’s a simple technique, and it works every time.
NEWS
For those of you who have been getting the newsletter for awhile, you may have noticed that we have added a new business name to our growing work. Malcolm’s long-standing classes will continue to be run through Earth-Heart ,and Allyson’s solo classes will be held through The Total Human™, while joint classes will be a collaboration between the two. The classes themselves remain the same, and the newsletter will continue to come from the same email address. Check out the new Total Human website!
Allyson is currently in talks with several major internet radio networks about the possibility of hosting a weekly, live online radio show. We’ll keep you posted as that develops; and if it starts before the next newsletter is scheduled to go out, we’ll send a brief announcement about times, which network, and show topics.
COURSE UPDATES
Click on the underlined links below to read about a particular class, or go to Earth-Heart Programs or The Total Human™ Programs to read about other classes not listed here, and Student Comments to read comments from past participants.
There are a few spaces left in The Women’s Retreat running April 23-28. This is a program that some women choose to share with a family member or female friend, though many come alone as well. Either way, it’s a fantastic week with a lot of heart-centered connection! And you learn a lot about how uniquely powerful you are as a woman in the way that ancient cultures understood (the opposite of some of your current perceptions). We already have some women returning again after last year’s program. And this year it’s at a beautiful retreat center in Lucerne Valley, CA. You can check out the retreat center photos HERE .
Lighten Up, our retreat focused on health and creating dynamic energy, will be held at this same retreat center (above) June 20-25. The most common comment we get about this class is about how long the positive results can be felt after the class is over. Some of the many benefits of this program include increased vitality and core strength, a release of old emotional patterns locked deep within the body, a reduction of stress-related symptoms, greater personal power and the ability to manifest your goals, expanded awareness and intuition, improved sleep, deeper connection with others, and an overall increased sense of wellbeing.
For those of you who haven’t been to the website recently, please note that our May Vision Quest normally run in Idaho will be run in Oregon this year (near Ashland). The dates remain the same, May 20-27. See website for other Quests dates and locations, and for information on the Quest Protector course and the Seven Levels of Quest (the only time for the next few years that it will be offered on the east coast!)
Allyson’s upcoming Kundalini Yoga and Gong Meditation workshops at Yoga Desa in Topanga, CA are: Saturday, May 13th (Opening the Heart Center) and Saturday June 17 th (topic to be announced).
Personal Intensive dates are available only sporadically now through the end of the year. Only 2 Intensives are scheduled per week. Dates fill up very quickly. Currently, the dates available between now and Oct 1 st are:
Mon Apr 24 – Sat Apr 29
Sun May 14 – Fri May 19
Mon June 5 – Sat June 10
Sun Sept 10 – Fri Sept 15
Please note that the dates have been finalized for the 2-Week Retreat in Malibu, CA. The dates are Mon Oct 16 – Sun Oct 29. To participate in the 28-Day Sacred Silence Retreat in the fall of 2007, you must have either taken this program or Lighten Up as a pre-requisite. No exceptions.
WORLDWIDE “WEB OF LIFE”
We want to support organizations out there who are working for the uplifting of humanity. If you know of websites that are doing really good work in the world, email them to us for possible inclusion in a future newsletter. We’d like to help get the word out.
http://www.earthjustice.org/
Earthjustice is the nonprofit law firm for the environment, representing—without charge—hundreds of public interest clients, large and small. Earthjustice works through the courts to safeguard public lands, national forests, parks, and wilderness areas; to reduce air and water pollution; to prevent toxic contamination; and to preserve endangered species and wildlife habitat. Many employers will match or double your contribution.
If you're taking part in an Earth Day event this year, National Resource Defense Council can provide you with handouts, including BioGems bookmarks, environmental action guides and reprints of Nature's Voice and This Green Life. To request materials, email them at biogemsinfo@nrdc.org . Be sure to include "Earth Day" in the subject line and let them know your name and mailing address, what type of event you're participating in, and the quantity of materials you are requesting. Supplies are limited.
If any of you newsletter readers have a local place (like a health food store, or yoga center, or community center, etc) where brochures can be displayed, please let us know and we’ll be happy to send you some. We always greatly appreciate efforts to help us get this work out in the world in an ever-growing way.
Many blessings to you all,
Malcolm and Allyson |
