Thanks for The Growth 2014, Welcome to the Party 2015: We're Going to Have A lot of Fun

The other day I was reviewing the notes I have made on my iPad's Notes app and one I had jotted down from the "Abraham-Hicks" Facebook page caught my attention.

We want you to have the feeling of sort of freely flowing in this, rather than the attitude of "I'm going to get it right this time."  Because the attitude "I'm going to get it right this time" causes you to remember what wasn't right and activate it within your vibration and then makes sure that you do all those things again, that you don't want to do.

This seems incredibly important to me because it goes against what I once would have termed "human nature."  I've always believed that the best thing about mistakes is that they give us an opportunity to learn from them.  I've lived an incarnation where, if you had asked me, I would have said it was irresponsible to forget your mistakes.  We've all heard that famous quote at one time, haven't we?

Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.  

Edmund Burke

There is an interesting counter quote by Kurt Vonnegut.

We're doomed to repeat the past no matter what.  That's what it is to be alive.

Viewed in light of the Abraham-Hicks quote, perhaps we do all that repeating because we refuse to let the past go.  In fact, in light of that quote, I wonder just how often we condemn ourselves to what we don't want by the very methods we utilize to improve our lives.  For instance, New Year's Resolutions.  

res-o-lu-tion:  noun   1.  the act of finding an answer or a solution to a conflict, problem, etc; the act of resolving something;  2. an answer or solution to something

New Year's Resolutions would seem to be the very heart of what the Abraham-Hicks quote is talking about.  We are essentially ending our year by saying, "Ok I didn't like this and this and this about last year so I resolve to change them next year."  From a Law of Attraction standpoint, it would be considered focusing on what you don't want and expecting to get something different.  With that in mind, I would like to propose an alternate year end ritual celebrating our growth and achievements, jaw dropping moments of awe and beauty, and quiet moments of love and inspiration.  

Here, let me lead by example.  In other words, I'll go first.

In 2014, I:

1.  ... more fully appreciated just how sweet my ginger cat, Peabody, is.  I already knew that I was blessed with a creature who I sometimes wake up holding like he is a rag doll, only to hear him purring in appreciation.  I am having some construction done at my house and, as a result, I only have a half bath currently in use.  It is situated on the other end of my house from my bedroom.  I didn't realize until having to walk through two of my larger rooms (one of which is currently under construction) to get to the toilet twice nightly, that Peabody, who tends to sleep next to me, actually accompanies me on every trip.  Not only that, but he tends to lead me as if he is the President's motorcade.  He walks ahead of me, looking back and checking on my progress every three feet or so.  He waits patiently until I am done and then sometimes walks to where his food dish is or the spot where I tend to give him treats, but equally as often, he simply escorts me back to bed.  My love and appreciation for this gentle sweet creature is absolutely limitless.  

2. ... more fully appreciated the value of letting go.  I had a saying painted over my kitchen door before it got demolished.  "Don't push the river, it flows by itself."   A former micro-manager of micro-managers, I put it there as a reminder of who I didn't want to be and what I didn't want to do.  From making more money on a house I was selling than I would have on my own personal time frame to sorting out relationships where I was trying too hard, 2014 has repeatedly rewarded me as I have learned the patience, optimism and wisdom to let life unfold rather than force it through my planned circuits.  At the same time, I have gained trust that even the events which look sad or regretful at the start, turn out to be blessings infused with opportunities for kindness and grace.  

3. ... invested in myself and I was rewarded with wonderful new experiences, opportunities for growth, mentors who shared invaluable knowledge and friends who were kindred spirits.  

4. ... discovered that we never really lose anyone.  On paper, 2013 and 2014 witnessed me losing my final parent as well as friends I never expected to lose.  I realized I lived in a world where, if I chose to view it that way, it could start feeling very cold and lonely.  Instead, I found a wellspring of love and affection.  I realized that, my experiences of other people actually live within me.  My enjoyment and appreciation exists within my own heart and head and, really, are not something that can whither and die or be forcibly taken away from me.  Loss does mean a certain closing of a book, for instance, the last time I saw my father, he was watching television from his convalescent hospital bed.  The expression on his face was remarkably like that of a little boy.  That will remain my last image of my father and we will not build any new memories together, but whenever I want to touch the love or kind feelings I have for my father, I have only to picture that 79-year-old boy, happily watching television as I left the room.  I've learned too that it is a choice.  Dwelling on any number of less kind or gentle moments, will never rewrite them.   While sweet memories, held gently with love, can never be taken away from me.  I can never lose the love in my heart.  

5. .... appreciated friends who helped me clean up after an earthquake; who opened their tubs and showers to me while I had none; who welcomed me into their home for the holidays; or who sought out my company or advice.  Old friendships, new friendships; I know I am enveloped with love and good wishes and I am truly blessed.  

Thank you 2014, you have been a kind and gentle year with unexpected surprises.  I'll never forget you. 

Happiness and Choices

This week a friend sent me this:

11 TED Talks That Will Help You Lead a Happier Life

The first one I watched, Dan Gilbert Asks Why Are We Happy, was brilliant in that it had the answer to the question I hadn't even asked yet.  In it, Gilbert points out humans have something that is called a "Pre Frontal Cortex," which allows us to have experiences in our heads before we try them out in real life.  Remember that, it's important.  He also tells of a variety of experiments where humans receive an outcome other than what they had wanted and afterwards report of being happier with the outcome they received than they would have been with their previous choice.

Of course, my question was about those people who didn't feel that way.  Were there any people who were still unhappy that they hadn't received the outcome they wanted?  Because I was positive I was probably in that group.  Those were my people.

It turns out the people who perceived that they had a choice were the people who were unhappy.  The people who received the outcome and it was done, over and there is no going back, simulated happiness.  The people who were told they had a choice, worried themselves to the point where they couldn't even be happy with the outcome they had wanted in the first place.  They weren't even happy when they reversed their choice.  Essentially nothing could make them happy.

I have lived a very blessed life, but those few moments where I was disappointed or where things didn't turn out as I would have liked?  My "Pre Frontal Cortex" has driven me mad with endless scenarios of things I could have done differently to produce a different outcome.

A long while back, I watched a show called "Celebrity Rehab" and saw something that actually delivered a very similar message.  I knew I had witnessed something important, but I didn't personalize it quite as well.  In the show, Sean Young was trying an exercise where you try and get a horse to lift his foot.  No matter how she pushed or pulled at the horse's leg, he stood firm.  While she was trying, a therapist was talking to her about her life and she was focused on the notion that her career went sideways and her life went all wrong when she lost a certain movie role.  The therapist asked who got the role instead of her and when she answered, he asked, "What have you seen her in lately?"  Of course, the answer was "Not much."  The actress who won the part got to be in that movie, but otherwise, her career and life was not measurably more desirable than Young's.  It was a living demonstration of another point Dan Gilbert makes.  Humans tend to give too much weight to the difference between two outcomes.  The difference between a happy person and an unhappy person was simply an individual's capacity for saying, "Well, that didn't work out, but I've got this other possibility on the horizon."

Another thing I listened to this week was CD 1 of The Sedona Method.  In it Hale Dwoskin, while he makes similar points to the Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron, regarding the impermanence of emotions, he also references our desire to analyze or understand why we feel as we do.  When he asked his recorded audience, "Do you know why we do that?"  I found myself answering aloud, "To prove we are right and justified in feeling that way."  Dwoskin's answer?

"Because we are planning on feeling that way again."

Essentially, I think we gave the same answer except for one important aspect.  Repetition.  Dwoskin takes into consideration that which I did not.  The fact that we will do this over and over again throughout our lives.  Half of us will repeat it, perceived offense after perceived offense; while half of us will literally stop in our tracks at one outcome, label it as a mistake that we made, and never recover.  We will replay it over and over again.  Worrying the details to death.

If only ..... if only ......   if only.

A lifetime ago I heard a safety lecture at my workplace at the time.  An OSHA representative gave a presentation about back injuries.  In his slide show, he showed an employee and an IBM Selectric Typewriter.  (If you haven't seen one of those things, take my word for it, they are very large and very heavy.)  The typewriter falls off the table and the worker grabs it to protect it from falling and permanently screws up his back in the effort.  OSHA's point?  It may take a bit of money to repair the typewriter if it breaks, but the damage the worker can do to himself is far greater.  In other words, DROP THE TYPEWRITER.

A close friend of mine who also heard the lecture and I have revisited the words "DROP THE TYPEWRITER" many times when we have witnessed someone holding onto something he or she should have let go of long ago.

You know that saying, "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade?"  If life gives you lemons, the secret to happiness is to either make lemonade or give the lemons to someone else who wanted lemons.  Do either or something else entirely.  Just don't sit there, holding your lemons, thinking "if I had done this better or differently, maybe I would have gotten strawberries or apples or oranges." 

Let the typewriter (lemon, ex-partner, missed job opportunity) drop.

It turns out your happiness depends on just how capable you become at simply letting things go.

That ex who hurt you?  The job you didn't get?

Try it.  Just let your feelings go.

Let them drop.


It's time to move on to something new.

A Little Self Knowledge

It's Tuesday and time for me to try to make sense of the lessons I've learned this week and the whirlwind of accompanying thoughts.  This week I have been reading four books.

Dying to Be Me:  My Journey from Cancer to Near Death, to True Healing by Anita Moorjani

What if It All Goes Right?  by Mindy Audlin

A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin

Cat Fear No Evil by Shirley Rousseau Murphy

Go ahead and think it.  "Four books!  What are you, crazy?  Aren't they meant to be consumed one at a time?"  I used to think that too.  It came to the point where, instead of reading several books at once, I read no books at all.  A foolish solution because reading has to be one of the top ten things I enjoy doing.

My coaching coach, Gil McIff, frequently says, "The cause of suffering is ignorance of our true nature."  In my experience, it is a somewhat uniquely Buddhist concept and is referring to our attachment to what Eckhart Tolle would call "The World of Form."  While we wear this suit of flesh, we forget that we are more than this suit of flesh.

I think that is actually limiting things a bit.

This week, I would say that the cause of all suffering with a capital "S," the life and death questions, is because of our ignorance of our true spiritual nature.  The cause of the "every day" sufferings, the mere annoyances that give us road rage and petty grievances at least some of the time, might just be our ignorance of our true nature while living in that suit of flesh.  In other words, not knowing who we truly are.  Like forcing ourselves to read one book at a time, when our mind wants to juggle four.  It turns out there is a moment in each of the books that illustrates just what I'm saying.  Well, except for "Cat Fear No Evil."  Cats, whether they are real living breathing ones, or fictional talking ones, always seem to know who they are.

In "Dying to Be Me" cancer survivor Anita Moorjani tells us of her multicultural upbringing and how she tried to force herself to comply with the expectations of her own culture despite having a personality which thrived on much fewer limitations.

In "What If It All Goes Right?" Mindy Audlin describes a moment I recognized as very similar to ones I myself have had, where she makes assumptions about a person based on her own beliefs of shortcomings or limitations.  In other words, she judges someone as being guilty of judging her.  What does she think the person is judging her about?  She doesn't say it outright, but all of the things would seem to be the big bad ugly things she sometimes tells herself or hears in her head.

In A Clash of Kings, George R. R. Martin gives us poor Theon Greyjoy.  Born a Greyjoy, but raised by his father's enemy Eddard Stark, Theon has no idea who he is or what he thinks.  Desperate for love and acceptance, to the Starks he will always be a Greyjoy and to the Greyjoys, he seems uncomfortably indoctrinated as a Stark.

In my coaching studies, I've learned that negative emotions are good indicators that you are resisting "what is."  Eckhart Tolle sees it as a special sort of madness, resisting "what is" and wanting it to be something else.  These moments of mad negative resistance are also good signposts to limiting beliefs.  In my case, one of them is "others will see and understand things the same way I do."  

Have you ever found yourself doubting a romantic partner because "if he/she really loved me" he or she would behave in a certain way?  I had the opportunity to talk with a partner I had formerly questioned like that.  Before my coaching studies, I found him very aggravating and compared talking to him with talking to a dog.  (As Mindy Audlin, who suggests if we are making assumptions about others, we should always make good ones, would say, it wasn't a very empowering way to view him.)

Specifically, there were times when we were together where I would have preferred he spent the night at my house or showered there instead of going home.  When I mentioned it to him at the time, we both would behave as if we felt our own opinion and approach was the more sensible one. Since learning about NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming,) I've come to understand that he and I have very different reference maps as to how the world works.  That's at the core of why we see things differently.

At the same time, if it was just a question of different maps, why did the misunderstanding strike me as a lack of love on his part?  As it happens sometimes, asking myself that question was like finding a corner piece in a jigsaw puzzle.  Things suddenly made a lot more sense.  You see, one of my favorite things to do in most of my relationships, has been to spend some quality time, frequently by myself, in a partner's living space.  Not to do any snooping.  I have never once searched a partner's drawers.  For me, there is something deliciously intimate and special about sleeping where my partner sleeps or showering where he takes a shower.  Every time I offered my living space to my partner, I was offering intimacy.  Every time he rationally chose to go home instead, "because that's where my stuff is," I felt rejected and unloved.

My aha! takeaway?  Those moments of resistance and disappointment?  What if, instead of using them to judge partners as to whether or not they are a comfortable fit, we used them to better understand ourselves?  After all, if we all have different maps of how the world works, how can your partner begin to understand yours if you don't understand it yourself?

At the same time, we are told that before we can truly love someone else, we have to love ourself.  I don't necessarily agree with that.  You see, my "self love" has always been there.  It's a stubborn persistent sort of thing.  I know it's there because I never really give up on myself.  At the same time, I have had an instance where I was willing to sacrifice myself nearly completely for someone else because I loved him.  It was a futile exercise, pointless, misguided and doomed to fail.  Totally resisting "what is," in other words "mad," but that doesn't mean it wasn't "love" and it has given me a blueprint for what I need to do.  With that same intensity and detailed emotion, I need to sacrifice my Theon Lovejoy-esque need for love and acceptance nearly completely.   For me.  Because I love me.

I think we fall in love by meeting someone, noticing things about him/her and telling ourselves stories as to who that person is.  We fall in love with our own stories.  This week I got to know Angela a little better.  She likes to read four books at once and sleep in a bed or with a pillow scented by someone she deeply cares about.  Isn't she great?  I just love her.

Change is a Dance with Two Left Feet

I was talking with a friend the other day and mid sharing my thoughts about what she was saying, I had an aha! moment that maybe I was completely screwed up in what I was saying.  Have you ever had that moment?  A sudden understanding, mid-sentence, that what you are saying might be codswallop?  I had been looking at what she was talking about from a Law of Attraction point of view.  She had some unpleasant things recently visit her life and I was questioning whether she had learned the lessons they brought and thereby put that particular brand of unpleasant thing to bed.  (The lessons you don't learn will return until you do learn them.)  The conversation brought to mind three important things:

1.  The only thing that matters is this moment now.  We were talking about things she had done and I was speculating, using the Law of Attraction, about them.  In the moment we were talking, she had already done those things.  My speculation, just ego or "data."  Unimportant mind chatter that keeps we humans "busy."  Besides, speculation about something that has already happened and whether or not it was the "right thing" as Eckhart Tolle would point out, is insanity.  You can't rewrite moments that have already happened and the practice of obsessively revisiting them falls under doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, which Albert Einstein would point out is insanity. (In case you don't follow that one.  You may be doing different things throughout time, but if you are constantly rethinking them and speculating about their accuracy, the thinking and speculating fall under "always doing the same thing.")  Life is essentially one big tennis game with the ball perpetually and constantly landing in your court.

2.  No matter how much I change or try to change, I end up with that moment, egg on my face, realizing I have merged the old way of being Angela into the new way of being Angela.  After a lifetime of using criteria to control my own behavior so I would be a "good" or "valuable" person, I realized the other day that I come to the point where I was doing it again.  This time with the Law of Attraction.  I had shifted to a place where I judged actions by whether or not they would attract good things or bad things into your life.  Or, in this case, my friend's life.  There is no right or wrong action.  I know you're going to fight me and disagree on this point, but I really think there is no right or wrong action.  There is only whatever action you take.  See, life may be a tennis game where the service is always coming towards you, but it is YOUR life.  Those choices are YOUR choices and create your path.  You know what they say about that.  "No one else can walk your path.  Only you."  It doesn't mean I was bad or wrong to share those opinions with my friend, she is someone I care about and I was trying to be helpful.

3.  My own path is the complicated dance of someone with two left feet who is always moving one step backward for every two or three forward.  I think humans are always drawn to that which is familiar.  No matter how much meditation or clearing on limiting beliefs, eventually my guard comes down and my subconscious drifts back to old habits.  It's like setting yourself up in a new apartment in a new town and the first time you let your mind drift during your commute, you find yourself getting off the bus at your old place.  The trick is, when you find yourself doing it on that larger scale, blow it off in a sheepish, "silly me" sort of way.  Just like you would the bus mishap.  Call it a silly freak occurrence, not something that labels you a "failure."

As my mind swum in all of this "data," I realized something else.  A lot of the platitudes we use in personal growth communities, are just that, because they aren't really very useful.  For instance, the one about not caring what other's opinions of you are.  When you read it or somebody tells it to you, it is all about being true to yourself and not caving in to peer pressure.   Many times I have told people who accused me of it, that I do not care what other people think of me.  Which on the one hand is true, but on the other hand is a complete fantasy.  OF COURSE, I care what people think of me.  I have people I care about.  People I love.  For those people I sometimes edit myself or behave in ways I know will bring a smile to their face.  I care that the people in my life experience me in a positive way.  I enjoy people being happy to see me.  I don't think that's a bad thing, but of course, it is subject to the same "nobody's home" subconscious habitual behavior.  It's one thing to turn your car radio station to jazz because your friend who loves jazz is riding with you; it's entirely another to never switch the radio back to your own preferred station because no one but you likes it.  In the former, you are being a gracious and thoughtful host.  In the latter, you are erasing your own existence.

Still, all of it, the thoughts and labels, are all just data.  Just ego "busy work" to keep you entertained while you're alive.  Just like you, your ego thinks all of it is important.  It thinks it has to "sort all of this out and make sense of it."  We gather our data and cling to it as if it will allow us to hold onto our past or somehow predict our future.  None of it matters.

What does matter is what you do right now.

Taking Responsibility and Ho'oponopono

Over Thanksgiving I was listening to Joe Vitale and Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len's Zero Limits: The Secret Hawaiian System for Wealth, Health, Peace and More.  The recording was done at one of their Zero Limits workshops and included audience questions.  If you're not already familiar with it, The Secret Hawaiian System is known as Ho'oponopono and Dr. Len once used it to cure a mental ward of criminally insane patients without ever personally seeing any of the patients.  Here is a link to Joe Vitale's blog entry about Dr. Hew Len and Ho'oponopono but, essentially Dr. Hew Len would look at each patient's chart and then clear on whatever came up within himself about what he read.  He looked within himself to see how he created that person's illness.  By clearing, he performed the Ho'oponopono meditation which is to repeat the words:  I'm sorry, Please Forgive Me, I Love You and Thank you.  After three years, Len's work was such a success that the unit was closed.  

Ho'oponopono is one of the techniques I was taught during my coaching lessons and it is in the curriculum I share with my clients.  Although I don't have anything as remarkable to report as an entire mental ward being closed down due to my efforts, it has been one of the clearing tools I use in my own life.  Over the weekend, I felt like I understood Ho'oponopono a little bit better and although it feels a bit like juggling slippery goldfish, I want to attempt to explain some of my understanding here.

I had some resistance to Ho'oponopono in the beginning.  Particularly to the words I'm sorry.  At some point it had been explained to me:

When you say "I love you" ... you are touching compassion.
When you say "Thank you" ... you are touching gratitude.
When you say "I'm sorry" ... you are touching humility.
When you say "Please forgive me" ... you are touching sincerity.

I have no problem saying "I'm sorry."  I have spent a lifetime of saying it.  So when I would try to say it in connection with Ho'oponopono, it would get tangled up with a lifetime of baggage.  The last time I told somebody that (my coaching coach) he once again explained that the "I'm sorry" was all about humility.  I spent days asking myself if all of mine had been about humility.

humility:  (noun) a modest or low view of one's own importance; humbleness.

By definition, yes, my apologies were humble.  The resistance stemmed more from who I was saying the words to rather than from where they were coming.  First, I would say those words when a friend or acquaintance would tell me about something that was disturbing them.  I would say "I'm sorry" to express my sympathy.  Increasingly that was being met with, "Why?  It's not your fault."  Which was probably due to the second instance when I would say those words, when one of the people in my life who had convinced me I was responsible for his or her feelings would get upset.  I said "I'm sorry" so often when trying to stem someone else's anger that it began to feel like I was apologizing for my very existence.  Frequently when we use clearing methods, even though we are mostly meditating alone or talking to ourselves, it is when we perceive something is wrong or has happened.  It was hard to separate the new Ho'oponopono "I'm sorry" from the earlier ones.  I even questioned if I had inadvertently benefitted even though I had never understood the greater implications.

This weekend, what caught my attention was the talk about taking responsibility for our lives.  The more I listened, the larger the concept grew and the more different it became from being responsible for how someone else feels.

My assumption is that most people who at some point during their adolescence used the words, "You made me ..." or "Look what you made me do" has heard the lecture that no one can "make" you do anything.  You are personally responsible for your emotions and behavior.  People may be unfair, unkind and unpleasant, but you are responsible for your own response.  There is a meme that floats around the internet:  How other people act is their karma.  How you respond is yours.  

It seems to me that most people think of karma as being a big bad deed boomerang.  "What goes around, comes around."  "You reap what you sow."  During my internet surfing about the subject, I've learned there are two interpretations of karma.  The first is the commonly held one I already mentioned, but the second is essentially that you will continue to be faced with the same life lessons until you have learned them.  In other words, people will be who they are and you will experience the same people over and over, until you have learned how to respond to them.  I would like to suggest Ho'oponopono is the kindest, gentlest, easiest, and most responsible way to respond to them.

In Zero Limits, Dr. Hew Len refers to the stuff you are clearing as "data."  There is us and there is all this data.  Others like Eckhart Tolle, using a model that is a bit more Buddhist in nature, have referred to what Len is calling data as "ego based states of consciousness."  

Think of it this way.  You are sitting at a restaurant and a man at an adjacent table belches.  Loudly.  You mumble under your breath, "What a pig."  The facts or what is:  a man belched at a restaurant.  The data or ego based state of consciousness:  "What a pig."  Data or ego based states of consciousness are your personal judgements about things that happen around you or others' behavior.  Your parents may have raised you not to belch out loud and told you it was an impolite thing to do, but there are other cultures where it is not frowned upon and can be even seen as a way of complimenting the cook.

So the first thing that is important with Ho'oponopono is being able to distinguish between fact or "what is" and your own thoughts, labels, or judgments.

The more energy you have about something, the more it will return as a karmic lesson, so chances are you won't encounter a stream of restaurant belches.  But how about that reoccurring boyfriend?  Or a mean spirited gossipy friend?  You are attracting them into your life for a reason and purpose.  Think of it like the movie Groundhog Day.  Your day isn't repeating, but the circumstances are.

Before I had a life coach, decided to become a life coach or had ever heard about Ho'oponopono, I had a relationship where I really tried to embrace the notion of unconditional love.  I wanted to be the best partner I could be.  With no guidance, my brain created a set of theorems.

1.  Unconditional = no conditions
2.  Loving someone with no conditions means loving them no matter what emotions they have inadvertently triggered.
3.  I am responsible for my own emotions and behavior.

I tried.  I didn't know about Ho'oponopono, but I tried really hard.  When something happened and I was disappointed, angry or sad, I would walk myself through mini pep talks to get myself off the ledge.  Of course, everything that was happening were things one or both of us had a lot of energy about, so karmic lessons were in abundance.  I can say with a great deal of love and optimism that I hope neither of us has that relationship again.  In other words, that we learned the lessons we needed to learn and will level up.  At the same time, even though I had few skills or tools to help me in my attempt, the more I study Ho'oponopono, the more I think I had it right.

The problems of our lives are not what actually troubles us.  It is our reaction to them.  We tend to look for offense like we want to be offended.  One of the speakers on Zero Limits spoke of how using Ho'oponopono had enriched her family life.  When her children would do something that irritated her, rather than chastising them or demanding that they change, she said the clearing words about the feeling within herself.  She said the clearing words about her own judgment that her children were being irritating.  As Dr. Hew Len pointed out, she did not suggest her children or any other family member do the Ho'oponopono themselves.   In her case, she said that she knew if she did the clearing, all of them would be clear and fine.  At the same time, just like you can't control others, Ho'oponopono is taking responsibility for your part in the equation of life, not urging others to do so.

Of course thinking like that, makes me think about my clients.  How much of the service I'm providing should be teaching them the tools I have been taught and use vs. actually using those tools on my part in the equation of our relationship.  After all, using the Dr. Hew Len model, it is not unreasonable to consider speaking the words to clear on anything about which you become unpleasantly aware.

War.  GMO's.  Politics.  Global warming.  Ferguson.

Mother Teresa once famously said that she didn't attend "Anti-War Rallies," but if anybody ever had a "Pro Peace Rally" she would.  You attract things based on your energy.  Focus on what you want, not on what you don't want.  When what you don't want enters your sphere of attention:  Ho'oponopono.

I'm sorry for whatever energy I brought to this situation.

Please forgive me.

I love you.

Thank you.