Hello my friends:

Towards the end of the book he talks about the process of creation and how thoughts, words, and deeds are the tools with which we create. I also find that my emotions are the way I navigate the world. No longer are these reactive emotions, but a constant habitual evaluation of how I feel as I walk through life.

What I'm also struck by is how easy the book makes changing our idea, feelings, and understandings sound. Sometimes, I lean toward putting myself down about this, because in the thirteen years I've been studying this material and trying to practice it in my life, I can share with all of you that changing my core beliefs, my understandings and feelings about hurtful or traumatic events in my life has been anything but easy or quick. But I can also say that working through what I have, while having been quite an arduous journey, has been the most valuable experience of my life.

This is what I can share from my own experience. There are events and things that happen to us in our lifetimes that are sometimes devastating. It's as if we're wounded at a core level and often it feels as if nothing we can do will heal the wound completely.

Sometimes these events have so deeply wounded us that we've even repressed them and have no conscious recollection of them. Yet, they are still impacting our thoughts, our feelings, and how we act or react to certain stimuli. There are also things that may have impacted us in our early childhood, earlier than we have memory of, but they're still playing a role in our adult lives, though we may have no awareness of it or, if we do, we don't know where it's coming from.

Lastly, I believe we also have things that may be influencing this life that are either coming from past lives and/or the collective consciousness. They, too, may be playing a role in our lives. When you add all this together, the idea of changing our ideas and thoughts about things becomes a bit bigger than the CwG material often conveys. Or that is my experience.

None of this is to say that any of this is unconquerable, nor is it too big a mountain for any of us to climb. What I've found is that the secret is in learning how to climb the mountain well, to fully commit to reaching the summit, and to develop a slow and steady pace, so that you can. Also learning to fully utilize all the resources that Life/God has to freely offer us is important.

Ok, so what does that REALLY mean? Learning how to climb is about getting tools in your tool box that will serve you along the way. For instance, I think first you need deep commitment. For me I knew I wanted a life that was better than I was living. I also knew that CwG spoke to my soul, it was as close to my personal truth as I could find in any one set of books.

I also knew, or came to know, that I was willing to do anything to have an improved, possibly joyful experience living life. I didn't know exactly where the journey would lead me, I sure couldn't see the summit (not even sure I can now) but I had the tools of absolute commitment, willingness, and deep desire. Those were vital.

While those elements were there, I had to ask myself, "what next?" The next thing that was necessary was direction or instructions. What I found is, when you've got the commitment, willingness, and desire, plus the understanding that God speaks to each of us ALL the time in as many different ways as he can, all you have to do is start paying attention to what shows up.

For instance, early on in my journey, I found an audio book in one of my CD cases. I have no idea where it came from or how it got there, but I know for sure that I neither bought nor placed it in the case. At any rate, I was driving cross-country with my children and it was something to listen to. It was an audio book of Phil McGraw's "Self-Matters" and all it was was a step-by-step process to reveal your authentic self-or what CwG calls "who you really are;"

I still recommend this book often, because very simply and without a lot of drama, this book systematically walked me through what Neale and God talk about in many of the other books. That is, re-examining the ideas and beliefs and feelings you hold about that which you've experienced in life.

Right there in my CD case, with all the time in the world to listen, was my first map toward the summit of my mountain. All I had to do was watch, pay attention, and be willing to try. This is just one instance of how my path has been revealed.

These indicators, these guides, have come in so many forms over the years-emails from people I didn't even know or some I knew well, brief and/or lengthy encounters with special people along the way that taught things I needed to know, it's been in lifelong friends and family, it's been in books, television shows, billboards, a clerk in a store. All the tools you need, all the directions and instructions and more assistance than you can imagine, is right before you if you pay attention and you're looking for it.

Lastly, there are times when nothing seems to work. When there has been nothing else to do, but be with the hurts, or traumas of the past, and deeply feel them. Some reoccur over and over, but what I've learned about these is that they don't kill me or even harm me.

They may feel really really bad, but if I go into the feeling of it-if I can embrace the pain and suffering, it is in this act that I allow the healing to take place. It's my experience that in these instances you can try all the mental gymnastics in the world to change your thinking about it in order to change the feelings of it... but to no avail.

Sometimes it's just a time to be with whatever hurts you deeply. As CwG says, to look at it head on, and in doing so, eventually it disappears. This I have found to be a truth, and while trying to go at such issues intellectually may work for some; it hasn't worked for me in cases of deep wounding.

Yet, if you're willing to be with the feelings, sometimes repeatedly over the years, working through the layers of the hurt or suffering as you can, there comes a day when you notice, sometimes quite unexpectedly, that a trauma or what used to be a deep wound no longer holds energy for you.

That is, you remember it, you know it's something that was part of your path, but when recalled it just doesn't produce feelings of any sort, or you experience it from a detached place. It is then that you know the wound has fully healed, and that now you can effectively use your experience of it to help others, should they have similar experiences.

I go into this for all of you that may be challenged by the idea that changing your ideas to change your experience or feelings is always easy and cut and dried. There are many instances that can be quick and easy and there others that just may not be that way at all.

The secret to all of it is to love yourself through it. To be gentle and kind to yourself, to understand that there's no right or wrong way to the summit of your mountain. It's just a way and to give yourself all the credit in the world for doing the very best you know how to do even when you find yourself at your very worst.

Until next week, be gentle to yourself and others and remember, we're all making it up as we go right along with you!