Saina guides a group of committed students through year 1 of Gentle Healing who would like to make consistent, gentle progress toward genuine peace, joy, and love. This group meets weekly on Thursdays at 6-8 pm ET and all members are committed to specific assignments and practices between group meetings.

Listen to the Audio

Please note: it may be necessary to download the audio to listen to it fully.

FunPlay for the week:

1. Assignment A: Workbook lessons 108-114 including tips for those lessons. Here’s a direct link to Regina’s tips: https://devwp.awakening-together.org/interact/gentle-healing-group/reginas-tips/
   a. Review your visualization plan daily.
   b. Practice the “Loving All” Method.
2. Assignment B: Adyashanti Guided Meditation – The Art of Listening, which can be found in the Gentle Healing Playlist. Listen to the audio
3. Assignment C: Practice Awareness Watching Awareness for 10-15 minutes.
4. Assignment D: Read Chapter 3 of Untethered Soul by Michael Singer.

We have been asked to surrender. Today’s reading shares tips on how to surrender effectively.

Guidance is Now

Guidance is the highest vibrational option available in the current moment. It’s important to realize this. People often want to seek guidance about some point in the future or about some imaginary problem. Guidance has nothing to do with future possibilities or imaginary problems. Guidance is the highest vibrational choice available now about now. Pay attention for current guidance, and the future will take care of itself.

Problems and Solutions

The thinking mind and the ego are synonymous—two different terms pointing to the same phenomenon. The ego maintains its sense of existence by creating problems and resolving them. It is a problem-solution mechanism.

Most humans believe that thinking is the way to solve a problem. What they usually don’t see is the same mechanism that solves problems, creates new problems as soon as old ones are resolved. There is no end to the mind’s problems, because if the mind ever ceased creating problems, the ego would cease to be.

When this ongoing problem-solution loop is seen clearly, one realizes that peace will never be found with the mind. It promises peace as it encourages you to think through the current problem, but it never delivers on that promise. Instead, it delivers a new problem. The only way to be free of the mind’s ongoing problem-solution madness is to stop listening to the mind. That’s the purpose of surrender, which is living by intuition instead of by thinking.

The Pitfall of Questioning Guidance

Whenever we seek for the current highest vibrational option, one is present. One is always present. By looking for it, we find it. However, the mistake that many people make is questioning that option once they’ve seen it. For example, “Am I sure this is the best option for me? Maybe I should …”

When we question the option that is provided through intuition, we reengage the thinking mind. Since the thinking mind wants to be engaged, it is happy to respond by giving you plenty to think about. Through questioning intuition’s answer, the thinking mind continues to thrive.

Oops, I Did it Again

Anyone who is learning to follow guidance will forget to tune within sometimes. Living by thinking is a strong habit, and so we all fall back on that habit repeatedly during the learning process. What are we to do when we discover that we’ve relied on thinking again? As soon as we notice, ask intuition, “What am I to do now?” As stated earlier, a current highest vibrational option is always present. That includes now, even after forgetting to be tuned in intuitively for a time.

See that Thinking is a Mess

Today’s reading asks you to watch the thinking process and see what it is. Typically, we just think of it as ‘me’ or ‘my thoughts’, so we don’t look to see what thinking is really doing.

Watch to see what happens in your thinking today. Some of the things you might find in thinking include:

• Desiring something that you don’t have.
• Wanting to change something that you do have.
• Thinking about problems.
• Replaying old conversations or imagining future conversations.
• Narrating what you are doing, just so thinking can reemphasize the “I” concept over and over. For example, “I think I’ll take my umbrella with me today. It might rain, and I don’t want to get wet.”
• Questioning whether you are happy with such-and-such or so-and-so (such as a job, a home or a partner.)
• Constantly self-assessing and judging yourself, either favorably or unfavorably
• Defining how you want to be seen by others, and then thinking about things you can do, or should avoid, in order to be seen that way.
• Thinking about what you think others think of you.
• Worrying about financial security or some other sense of security, such as health, beauty, power, popularity or belonging.
• And etcetera.

Thoughts of Awakening # 73

Forgiveness is remembering
there is nothing you would hold to
that blocks the awareness of love.

~From our Holy Spirit

Yesterday, we saw that although the true Self is present and pure, it is still helpful to purify the mind. Today’s reading recommends purification too, which it calls “healing.” It reminds us that in order to heal (purify the mind), we must replace old habits with new habits, especially with the new habit of surrender.

Although we have been asked to teach, today we are asked to see ourselves as students. Our teacher is the combined wisdom of NTI and inner spiritual intuition. In NTI, these two are referred to using the Judeo-Christian symbol, “Holy Spirit.” Remember what NTI Luke 4 said about the Holy Spirit:

Jesus came out of the desert a teacher, but the one who taught through him was the Holy Spirit. This is the same one that teaches you now, so that no time has elapsed since Jesus seemed to teach until the time that I am teaching you now.

In other words, your inner teacher is the one who taught Jesus. It is also the one that Jesus became as he merged with the inner teacher. That means Jesus is your teacher too.

It is one teacher that has led everyone who has ever awakened. Everyone who has ever awakened dissolved into the one teacher, so they are the teacher too.

Today, the teacher asks you to adopt two new perspectives:

1. Be grateful for every circumstance in your life as an opportunity to learn and to practice.
2. Keep the Holy Sprit’s Word foremost in your mind throughout the day.

I would like to echo the importance of these two recommendations.

When I was going through the purification stage, I was ‘religious’ about seeing every circumstance as an opportunity for my healing and as an opportunity to listen within for the highest vibrational option (guidance). Each upsetting circumstance was an opportunity not to react from my old conditioning, including my beliefs, fears and desires. Instead, each circumstance was an opportunity to find peace by letting go of old conditioning.

I cannot emphasize how helpful it is to see one’s life as a setup for healing, as if every detail is put in place to help you awaken. That is its purpose. See every person as an actor, who plays a role perfectly so you can purify your mind and awaken to who you are.

It’s also really beneficial to develop the habit of keeping inner wisdom in the forefront of the mind. This is why we use the Thoughts of Awakening. Each day there is a new thought from inner wisdom for us to read and mull over many times throughout the day.

Have you developed that habit yet?

If not, are you willing to give it more effort now?

Thoughts of Awakening # 72

Love casts out fear,
because love does not believe fear’s stories.

Get in touch with love
by remembering your purpose,
and fear cannot be
a true temptation for you.

~From our Holy Spirit