Your Golden Essence

One of my favorite teaching stories, which we've just captured in my soon-to-be-released documentary If Shadows Could Talk, is the story of the Golden Buddha. It's an important story and a story we should all remember.

In 1957, a monastery in Thailand was being relocated and a group of monks was put in charge of moving a giant clay Buddha. In the midst of the move, one of the monks noticed a crack in the Buddha. Concerned about damaging the idol, the monks decided to wait for a day before continuing with their task.

During the night, one of the monks came to check on the giant statue. He shined his flashlight over the entire Buddha. When he reached the crack, he saw something reflected back at him. The monk, his curiosity aroused, got a hammer and a chisel and began chipping away at the clay Buddha.

As he knocked off piece after piece of clay, the Buddha got brighter and brighter. After hours of work, the monk looked up in amazement to see, standing before him, a huge solid gold Buddha.

Historians believe the Buddha had been covered with clay by Thai monks several hundred years earlier before an attack by the Burmese army. They covered the Buddha to protect it. In the attack, all the monks were killed, so it wasn't until 1957 that the great treasure was discovered.

Like the Buddha, our outer shell protects us from the world. Our real treasure is hidden within. We unconsciously hide our inner gold under a layer of clay. All we need to do to uncover our gold is have the courage to chip away at our outer shell, piece by piece.

If you want to chip away at your outer shell, I recommend the latest book by one of today's spiritual icons, Michael Bernard Beckwith. I know Michael to be a heavenly man with a huge heart and a commitment to transforming the world. If you feel the desire to wake up to new levels of consciousness and to access the gold that is already within you, curl up with Spiritual Liberation. It will nurture and inspire your soul. I love this man!

Transformational Action Step

In times of stress, there is only one real remedy and that is to step into a level of consciousness where everything is as it should be. What could you do this week to elevate your consciousness? What could you say to yourself? What could you do for yourself? What could you throw out or get rid of that is weighing down your psyche? Take a giant leap. Be brave and do something you've been putting off for months. If you're struggling right now, hold on. It will all pass soon. The heavens will open and you will be met with more love, more grace and more peace than you have ever imagined. This is a promise.

With love and blessings,

Debbie Ford

Love From Me To You

Happy Valentines Day! My heart wouldn't be full if I didn't share how much I love and appreciate you. Thank you for all the love and gratitude you send my way. Thank you for being part of the solution instead of maintaining the status quo and remaining part of the problem. Thank you for allowing your light to come forth this year and for shining brighter than those who came before you. I'm blessed to be connected with you and feel inspired to share space on this planet with YOU. And if you need some extra love right now, just close your eyes, take a deep breath and feel my love traveling over to you. You are very important and a special part of my life. I will never forget you.

You hold the key to someone else's heart and your sweet words will open doors that they may have shut long ago. This is why we are here -- to open hearts and turn the light back on within another's soul. Your love matters!

On this very special love day, we can all come together and cause another gigantic shift on this planet. You and I both have the opportunity to send more love out than we can ever imagine taking in. Please join me and my beloved community of Integrative Coaches -- The Collective Heart -- today in blasting LOVE to everyone you know or can reach.

How do you do that? Easy.

Reach out to others and share with them the love in your heart, the love that can transform a moment of pain to a moment of joy, a day of loneliness to a day of possibility. Love your kids, neighbors, co-workers, public officials, friends and anyone else you can communicate with. Allow the Divine and the love that pulses through your precious and irresistible heart to touch another's life.

During our yearly Love-A-Thon, a ritual of love and appreciation, we commit to making those around us feel inspired and loved. Today and all of this week, you can be a part of the magic of our collective heart.

We are out to cause a revolution of love today! So please join in and be a link in our love chain. Become the lover you want to have. ;) Use your phone, email, text messages, ecards, hugs, Facebook connections, or face-to-face conversations to reach out. Make February 14th, 2009 a day you'll never forget.

With love and blessings,

Debbie Ford

A New Dream

I'm really inspired by all of you who are doing the New Year's Ritual and committing to make this an incredible year, even with all that is going in the world. I'm excited because, of course, tough times call on us to go a little deeper, to hold on a little tighter, and work a little smarter. During my meditation Friday morning, I had this dream for you.

My dream is that you are free from the bondage of your wounded ego's needs, fears, doubts and greed in 2009 and that you wake up every day and see the goodness in yourself and in others. My dream is that today you accept the past for what it is -- the past -- and you open up to a whole new future unlike anything you've seen before. My dream is that this year you will love like you've never loved before, that you love your brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, children, neighbors, and even enemies in ways that you didn't think were possible. And that you devote yourself to living in peace and prosperity by telling yourself and others the G-d's honest truth. And, of course, my greater dream is that all nations lay down their arms, deal with their shadows, and resolve their conflicts. (We're happy to help.)

On this beautiful first weekend in January, you are called upon to begin 2009 by allowing a new dream for yourself and the world to emerge. It's not enough to write out a short vision or list a particular goal. In order to step into the next greatest expression of your soul's highest desires, you must dare to dream. You must allow a dream that already exists in your soul to come to the front of your conscious awareness. You must unconceal a wanting, a longing that is consistent with the state of being you most desire. This should not be your ego's dream but rather G-d's dream for you -- something that the divine has been waiting to give you until you were ready to ASK, LISTEN, and RECEIVE.

Dream today. Allow the powers that be to give you a glimmer of a future that is wanting to emerge this year. Don't try to insert your will on to this divine dream. Just invite it into your awareness over the next few days. Write it down. See it in all its color and glory. Bless it, feel it, and thank the higher realms for giving you a peek at what is available for you this year if you allow your soul to be your guide.

I know that, if you are willing to reach deep into your heart, you will see a bigger dream for yourself and the world than you ever imagined.

With love and blessings,

Debbie Ford

 

p.s. Know that myself, Cliff, Jeff, Julie and the rest of the amazing staff will walk closely with you on your journey this year.

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Get Some Big Love

We all remember the great lyrics, "All you need is love." No truer words have ever been said. We need love for ourselves. We need love for our families and our friends. We need love to heal our broken hearts, to let go of our resignation, to wipe away our sorrows and regrets, to lift us up from any pain-filled history and to deliver us the warm feelings that we all crave. I've watched people struggle in love for so long, but the one thing I know is that when somebody really wants a particular kind of love and if they're willing to hold the vision and do their own work, that love will emerge.

I watched my sister Arielle struggle in relationships for years, never quite finding the exact love that her sweet heart was looking for. But one day, she came to me with a vision so strong and so clear. She was going to go after and find the man of her dreams. She had kissed enough frogs to find her prince. Her past had supported her in perfecting her list of exactly what she wanted and what she didn't want. And voila, some feng shui, some visualizations, a lot of processing from her sister, and a whole lot of other love rituals delivered her one of the greatest men I've ever met, my brother-in-law Brian.

When Arielle tells the story in her new book The Soulmate Secret: Manifest the Love of Your Life With the Law of Attraction, it is inspiring to see how the universe can respond to a clear request and a powerful vision. If you're looking for love, this is the year to have a guide -- someone who has been there before -- to take you through the journey to big love, the kind of love you deserve.

If you are already with the love of your life, you might want to pass it on to your whining friends or family members who keep saying they're looking for relationships. But make sure you take a peek at it yourself because, even if you already have the love you want, it will support you in refining your vision, remembering why you wanted love in the first place, and letting go of the past so that the love can reach deep into your heart.

Also, this week, take a moment to send some love to all those who are in war and conlict around the world. It's amazing how love can travel.

Wishing you a year filled with big love,

Debbie Ford

The Shadowy Figures of This Week

I hope this finds you well and thriving. There is always so much I want to share with you but so little time to actually sit down and send you my thoughts on all the Shadowy figures that show up in our daily news. But since we have been bombarded this week with the redemption tour of the former reverend Ted Haggard, I thought I would remind us all of how easy it is to fall from the top of the mountain and land on the icy hard ground below. And as Ted Haggard, two years into his fall from grace, goes from Oprah to Larry King, apologizing and asking for forgiveness while grappling publicly with his dark side, we simultaneously witness the defiant denial of now former governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich. Both men were driven to make a difference and serve the greater whole. But at the end of the day, they will not be remembered for all the good that they did but instead for the destruction that followed. Both men fell prey to the same hidden forces that drive any of us to commit unbelievable acts of self-sabotage and self-destruction. Both were trapped in the grip of their shadows.

We should all understand that our shadows are always lurking, and either we will deal with them or they will deal with us.

We've all heard the stories; they show up on the evening news, on the front page of newspapers, and as headlines in the weekly tabloids: the Olympic sports hero who falls from grace after being accused of injecting steroids; the TV evangelist who gets arrested for soliciting prostitutes; the schoolteacher who carries on an affair with one of her students; or the baseball star who gambles on his own games. These are the public demonstrations of good people who have gone astray, and they have become our national obsession.

While it's easy to point our fingers and gawk at these people, we must remember that they were once considered good, not common criminals, psychopaths, or sociopaths whose histories might predict their unscrupulous behavior. They are people like you and me, people who started out with big dreams for their future. But despite their best intentions, these so-called good people did some very bad things, most often without even understanding why.

The underbelly of the human psyche, what is often referred to as our dark side, is the origin of every act of self-sabotage. Every aspect of ourselves that we've denied, every thought and feeling that we've deemed unacceptable and wrong, eventually makes itself known in our lives. The impulses that we hid away 5, 10, 20 or even 50 years ago come up one day and destroy everything that is important to us.

Your self-destruction might not be big enough to hit the evening news. It may be something as small as picking a fight with your husband right before you are about to go out on a long-overdue date, or criticizing your child in front of her friends after spending months trying to build her trust. It might be procrastinating on updating your resume and missing a huge opportunity, or spending a night in front of the refrigerator after dieting for three months. Maybe it manifests itself as oversleeping and missing your best friend's bridal shower or calling your lover by the wrong name. Maybe it's making a smart-ass comment to yourself while thinking someone had already hung up the phone when actually they had not.

But all of these acts of self-destruction and self-sabotage, whether big or small, are warnings. They are reminders that when we reject, deny and suppress our dark urges and impulses, they will build up and erupt, destroying our lives. But if instead we acknowledge, accept and embrace our dark side, we finally cease to be our own worst enemy.

excerpt from Why Good People Bad Things:

How to Stop Being Your Own Worst Enemy

So we must remember that all public figures are here trying to support each of us in the evolution of our souls. They are here to mirror our own flaws, greatness and imperfections as well as our good and bad behaviors. Today, we can bless the likes of Ted Haggard and Rod Blagojevich as we allow them to serve once again by reminding all of us that if we don't deal with our unconscious emotional pain and denied impulses, they will deal with us.

With love and blessings,

 

Debbie Ford