Mantra

When “The Secret Doesn’t Work!”

September 19, 2017 by @candesscampbell

In my niche, there are only a few people I know that have not seen the film The Secret, which came out in 2006. If you have not seen it, I am sure you’ve seen shows or videos online about manifesting.

“It isn’t working!” exclaim many of my clients! Even when they know what they want to create, when they have clarified every detail, and even created a vision board, they wait and nothing happens. In deeper exploration of this, I realized a problem.

https://youtu.be/EC_YmdPy2h0

What happens when you get clear on what you want? Are you excited and you match the energy of others who are successful? And then . . . You begin to doubt! All of the sudden, a voice within raises its ugly head saying, “You can’t do this.” You may think others can do it but not you or that you are doing it wrong. You may think you are not doing it long enough, hard enough, right enough. Then all the questions come up. What are you going to do with . . . What would you do about . . . What will others think? You’ll have to change everything; where you live, how you dress, where you go, your friends. . . it all hits at once.

[clickToTweet tweet=”Open your arms and heart and allow the Universe to gift you with your greatest desires!” quote=”Open your arms and heart and allow the Universe to gift you with your greatest desires!”]

What do others do who are successful? Well, a couple of things. One is they “do the work” and get underneath the issues that create this fear, increase their self-esteem, find support in groups of people who are similar, or they feel the fear they experience and do it anyway.

One way to do the work is to write out what you hear yourself saying and challenge it! An example from my own life is when I started filming the Reality TV Show for Soul Ltd. My biggest fear was what do I wear? If you are reading this I am offering a free download of my Abundance mp3. You can find it under products and use the coupon code 2015AbundanceGift. Enjoy! My mantra was I would live in my pajamas if I could. I boasted that I defended my dissertation with my adviser and others from the University over the Internet wearing my pajama bottoms. I did dress professional from the waste up!

What I told myself to calm my fears was, “I will be who I am. I love being comfortable and relaxed.” For 95% of the time, I can be in my pajamas or wear comfortable clothing. I can go make-up free and just be! I realized it was only for a small fraction of time I need to prepare for the camera. Only a small percentage of time I needed to be “on!” Once I understood this, I took a deep breath and realized there could be a million reasons I could make up not to take the next step. This was only one excuse. Once I understood that I do have control over my thoughts and actions, I was relieved.

[clickToTweet tweet=”You only have to learn to receive! ” quote=”You only have to learn to receive! “]

The second way to deal with this fear is to feel it and do it anyway. Now many of us have heard this before, but how do you do it? What I have learned to do when I felt fear is to sit down and close my eyes. I focused on my breath and relaxed myself. Then I brought my attention up out of my crown chakra at the top of my head up into the heavens. From there I looked down at myself and saw that I was “running fear” in my body. It was easy to see from above that my body had some responses that were irrational. I felt compassion for myself and understood it was just a physiological and emotional response. I noticed what I was feeling and allowed myself to witness myself from above. This fear is similar to when someone comes up from behind you and startles you or how you react immediately to a bee landing on you or when you see a spider. This is only a quick reaction. Soon it will pass.

So to recap – When you are creating a goal in your life, or when you are setting an important intention, negative self-talk may appear.

Write out what you hear yourself saying and challenge it. It is important to write it out because you have more control over your thinking when you write.

Sit down and close your eyes. Focus on your breath and relax. Bring your attention up out of your crown chakra at the top of your head up into the heavens. Look down at yourself and see yourself. From this distance you see that you are fearful or “running fear” in your body. Send compassion to yourself and allow yourself to be comfortable with the fear. You CAN create in your life what you desire the most!

You can do it!

Now you only have to learn to receive!

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Prayer and Meditation

August 30, 2017 by @candesscampbell

In my office, when counseling and offering psychic readings and healing to my clients, I find that many are responding to the political climate of the time and experience a low grade fear, underneath what else is happening. You can feel the fear it in the air. It reminds me of when I was in Japan a couple months after the Tsunami in 2011. What I was reading in the United States newspapers was not what the Japanese were reading and I could feel the fear, even though I could not speak the language.

Today I am republishing my article originally published in Live Encounters Magazine.

I hope you find comfort.

Prayer and Meditation by Dr Candess M Campbell, #1 Best-selling Author, Intuitive Mentor, Speaker, International Psychic Medium Healer.

In this series on self-healing and transformation, prayer and meditation play an important part. Given these writings are from the book 12 Weeks to Self-Healing: Transforming Pain through Energy Medicine, this Live Encounters article will not be a overview of world wide prayer and meditation practices, but rather some of my own experiences and some tools for developing a practice.

When you have experienced pain or illness for a long period, I would imagine you turned to prayer. In exploring how important prayer is, let’s examine and revisit the way in which you pray.

Prayer

A verse in the Christian New Testament Bible assures that, “You will receive all that you pray for, provided you have faith” (Matthew 21:22). The way your parents and grandparents prayed may be different from how you pray today. Dr. Larry Dossey writes extensively about the power of prayer and healing in his 1993 book, Healing Words. In it, he cites a study by Herbert Benson of Harvard University Medical School.

Working with his fellow researcher and physiologist, Robert Keith Wallace, Benson showed that when subjects meditated with a mantra that consisted of an Asian word containing no meaning for the meditator, with use it became charged with ritualistic value, and healthful body changes occurred. These included lower blood pressure, slower heart rate, and lower metabolic rates. Benson believed there was no magic in the mantra.

To test this suspicion, he taught people to meditate using the word one or any other phrase they found comfortable. He then studied Christians and Jews who prayed regularly. He asked Catholics to use mantra phrases such as “Hail Mary, full of grace,” or “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon me.” Jews mainly used either the peace greeting of shalom or echad, which means “one.” Protestants frequently chose the first line of the Lord’s Prayer, “Our Father who art in heaven,” or “The Lord is my shepherd,” which is the opening of the Twenty-third Psalm. All of the mantras worked, and all were equally effective in stimulating the healthful physiological changes in the body that Benson called the “relaxation response.” But Benson also found that those who used the word one, or similar simple phrases, didn’t stick with the program. Conversely, those who used prayers rather than meaningless phrases continued.

One way to pray is to be repetitive and this study shows using a word or words that are meaningful to you, affect your consistency. If you have ever used prayer beads or the rosary, you know this. Recital is another form of prayer. Many people use scripture from their religion as prayer. They may do this repetitively, or they may read scripture and then reflect on what it means. Others talk to God, Buddha, Allah, or their Higher Power as they would to a friend. I have often heard it said that prayer is talking to God, and meditation is listening.

Journaling is another way to connect with the Divine. “Dear God” letters are often effective in clarifying where you have become stuck. Having a heart full of gratitude is another way of praying. When you expand your view of prayer this way, you may find that you pray often through the day. I am a believer in the notion that whatever we focus on becomes greater and grander in our lives, so take some time to focus on gratitude and love. See how this affects your pain.

Meditation

Before I share with you about meditation, I want to acknowledge that you may experience resistance to meditation at first. You may be fearful to sit and really experience what you are thinking or feeling, or you may not want to become aware of the sensations in your body. Even this morning as I awoke, I quickly shifted my thoughts from meditation to something else. Why did I do that? Why was I so afraid to listen to what my mind was saying? Usually I awake with new ideas and plans and creative ventures. This morning I didn’t want to hear what I was thinking. I went back to catch the thought, and it was gone. When I sat up to read on my Kindle, I felt good. I looked at the calendar in my iPhone, and my day was set to write. It was a good day. What was I afraid to think about? I am sure it will surface in my meditation.

You may have this same experience. You may think there is just too much information in your mind, and you would never be able to quiet yourself, but it’s really not so difficult. Take a moment and just sit with your eyes open. Look at what is in front of you. Look at whatever you see and focus on the detail. Experience your senses. Feel the chair under you. Notice how your breath changes. You are becoming more aware, more awake, more alive, and you are beginning to come to a meditative state. Another way to do this is to close your eyes and listen. Listen to the sounds that are far away. Now listen to the sounds that are close by. Allow yourself to become more aware and more meditative!

Here are a few choices to begin a meditation practice.

Concentration Meditation

When practicing concentration meditation, you focus your attention on your breath, an image, or a sound (mantra) in order to still your mind and allow a greater awareness and clarity to emerge. This is similar to zooming in and narrowing the focus to a particular object or field.

Breathing Meditation

The most common meditation practice is focusing on your breath. Through this continued focus, the “mind clutter” begins to quiet, and you gain a sense of calmness and relaxation. Over time and with practice, the thoughts that were once racing or popping into your mind calm down, and a sense of peace takes over. As you focus on the breath, the rhythmic inhalation and exhalation deepens the breathing, and your mind and body become tranquil.

A more intense practice of focusing on the breath is pranayama breathing, which is a yogic practice. According to Swami Sivananda Rhada, this is a process of breath control. She says the purpose of this type of meditation is to connect with the cosmos and gain control over your central nervous system and mind. It is best practiced with character building and to learn to manage the lower physical self. This is a practice of alternate nostril breathing. “Character building” and “managing your lower physical self” means taking control over your thoughts and behaviors that no longer serve you, while creating new, positive, healthy thoughts and behaviors.

I first became aware of pranayama breathing when I traveled to India with a friend of mine who has a home in India but currently lives in the United States. He said that his uncle taught him this practice. When we were at his home in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), he sat cross-legged on the floor every morning and practiced this breathing for twenty to thirty minutes. This practice increases the alpha waves, and the benefits if executed correctly are to calm the mind, gain control over the emotions, refine the senses, and remove all selfish desires while gaining a sense of peace and harmony. It has also been said to balance the right and left brain.

Various teachers may instruct you to do this differently, but a simple method follows:

Close the right nostril with your right thumb, and inhale through the left nostril to the count of four seconds.
Then close the left nostril with your right ring finger and little finger. At the same time, remove your thumb from the right nostril. Exhale through this nostril to the count of eight seconds.
Next, inhale through the right nostril to the count of four seconds. Close your right nostril with your right thumb, and exhale through the left nostril to the count of eight seconds.
This is one round. It is recommended to start slowly with a few rounds and build up.

Focusing on an Object

Focusing on an object is another choice for concentration meditation. There are several objects you can use, but I suggest you find one that is pleasing to you. You could focus on an external object such as a candle flame, a bowl, a flower, or a photo of someone you love. You could also choose a photo of Jesus, Buddha, or an angel. Another method is to focus in the center of your head—the space above and behind your eyes, in the middle of your head. This is a place of neutrality. You may instead choose to focus either between your eyes or in the center of your heart. Another commonplace to practice focus is in your belly, three fingers below your belly button and inside a few inches. The conscious focus in the above examples is on the candle, photo, or particular body part. However, in focusing on those literal objects, you become aware of the breathing as well, and you experience a calm, relaxed, tranquil state of being.

Using a Mantra

A third concentration meditation involves using a mantra. A mantra is a short phrase with an easy rhythm used to increase results. A mantra is used to suggest a favorable state of being. My favorite walking mantra is, “I am strong, healthy, and fit.” Mantras originated in the Vedic tradition of enlightenment in India and have since been incorporated by many traditions.

According to “The Power of Mantra Chanting,” an article by Gyan Rajhans, “The sacred utterances or chanting of Sanskrit Mantras provide us with the power to attain our goals and lift ourselves from the ordinary to the higher level of consciousness.” This is believed to be so because “different sounds have different effects on the human psyche.” Repeating a mantra is a spiritual technique that calms the mind and makes one more attuned to Spirit.

Mindfulness Meditation

The practice of mindfulness meditation comes from Buddhism and has been also been taught by many in the West. In mindfulness meditation, you focus on the present moment and not the past or the future. While you notice your thoughts, you realize that they are just thoughts and let them go by. This is done with awareness that that your thoughts are simply your thoughts, and that you are not your thoughts. This meditation can be done at any time. It is a daily practice of awareness in the present moment.

There are many ways to practice mindfulness meditation. One that I particularly enjoy is to focus on the sounds close by and then the sounds that are far away. This takes me into a state of meditation that I enjoy, which is just being present.

Guided Meditation

Guided meditation is similar to hypnotherapy. In guided meditation, a person or a recorded script guides you into a meditative state. You can also take yourself through guided imagery with a script or with awareness of the images you would like to create.

As with hypnotherapy, guided imagery uses all of your senses, yet guided imagery is different in that it focuses and directs your imagination. When your mind is imagining, your body responds as if what it sees is true. An example of this might include imagining a vacation. Let’s pick a beach resort. As you are sitting at your desk at work, you find yourself drifting to the beach, feeling the sun on your face, smelling the sea, and imaging the taste of a fresh, cold lemonade next to you. Your body may relax as your breathing slows down and time speeds up. This is an example of going into trance and experiencing whatever you imagine.

Guided imagery is used for many purposes, and the imagery selected will depend on your goal. For instance, if you want to manage your pain, the imagery may be full of metaphors that help you to connect with your subconscious mind. For example, when I awake in the morning with pain in my neck from sleeping, during meditation I image a blue light coming down from the top of my head into the painful areas of my neck and shoulders. As I do this, I see the blue light cooling off the inflammation in my neck and shoulders. Within a minute or so, the pain is gone. (Remember that I have been practicing for quite some time, and this technique is a result of the practice. Do not be discouraged if you try this and it does not work for you immediately. Keep practicing!)

If you are interested in learning a guided meditation that teaches you self-healing tools and takes you through a process of clearing your chakras, you can use my CD, Chakra Clearing.

Make no mistake, whether prayer or meditation, the process stills the chatter and voices within so you can hear your own inner guidance—the voice of the Divine, God, the Goddess or your Guides. Prayer and meditation allow you to open yourself to wisdom and healing beyond what your Ego dictates or allows. No matter what you call it, when you achieve inner peace, you affect the world around you by increasing the peace of others.

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Live Intuitively: Journal the Wisdom of your Soul!

Candess M. Campbell, PhD is the author of the #1 Best-selling book on Amazon, 12 Weeks to Self-Healing: Transforming Pain through Energy Medicine and Live Intuitively: Journal the Wisdom of your Soul. She is an internationally known Author, Speaker, Intuitive Coach and Mentor and Psychic Medium. She specializes in assisting others to regain their own personal power, develop their intuition and live a life of abundance, happiness, and joy.

She specializes in DNA Activation and Karmic Clearing with a group of Ascended Masters called The Lords of Karma who include the Great Divine Director, El Morya, St. Germain, Maitreya, Kuthumi, Athena, Kwan-Yin, Clyclopea, Mary, Sananda and Lady Portia. Candess has been guided by this group of Masters since she was young.

At the core of her business, Vesta Enterprises, Inc., is the belief that all healing is self-healing and that becoming conscious and making positive changes increases one’s personal power and enjoyment of life. Firmly maintaining that people grow and benefit from feeling safe and receiving, her life’s work is in bridging spirituality and mainstream beliefs to promote and foster healing at all levels. https://energymedicinedna.com

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© Dr Candess M Campbell

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Interview with Swami Samayananda Part 3

September 3, 2011 by @candesscampbell

This inteview was conducted at the Yashodhara Ashram in British Columbia, Canada on the beautiful Kootenay Lake.This is part 3 of 3 parts.

(Some sections have been edited for grammar.)

Candess: When you are talking about that, some of the yogas like the Divine Light Invocation is one of the tools I have been using here and there are so many tools. It has been incredible. What is one of your favorite tools?

Swami Samayananda: For me, one of my favorites is Mantra. I have had a mantra practice since early 1980s. I also do my practice with a harmonium, which I like. There is that whole practice of having an instrument. I tend to be restless by nature so it gives my hands something to do. Also, singing has been a big part of my life. To be able to channel all of that into the mantra and to have a practice like that that doesn’t get old, it just keeps getting deeper and deeper and it feels to me like a dear friend. It is where I go each day and it offers me tremendous support.

Candess: I love the Satsang. The chanting and the mantra is so beautiful. I have a book coming out in January that is called 12 Weeks to Self-Healing: The Gift of Pain. What way would you say that one of the Yoga practices would be helpful in self-healing?

Swami Samayananda: Swami Radha wrote a book called The Yoga of Healing. In it, there are several chapters. Some I remember are working with the Light. It is a small book and at the end of each chapter it has four practices you can do. The first one is on the Light and the Divine Light Invocation is one practice. There is also a section on breath. We know that connection with breath and our own healing and when we get anxious, the breath shortens, shortens, and shortens. That is not healthy for the body. Working with breath is healthy and calming for the body. Also, Hatha Yoga, especially when it I approached from more than the physical. What is my body saying to me as I am going into the pose and doing the pose. Mantra, absolutely for sure. Especially the Hari Om mantra is a healing mantra. Using mantra is healing as well. Relaxation is very healing. Those are a few.

Candess: That is great! One of the reasons I came her is to rest. I had been pushing myself too hard. We had a whole day on learning to rest. I learned so many tools that I would not have known before. It’s been very helpful.

If someone wanted to go on retreat here, what would be the best way for them to find out about the programs?

Swami Samayananda: The best way would be to go to our website and just take a look at what we offer. There is a whole range from weekend workshops to 3 day retreats, 4 day retreats, 10 day retreats like you are on now, to our 3 month Yoga Development Course. There is just about something for everybody. Our basic retreats really introduce people to the practices we offer here, Swami Radha’s teachings. There are some specific ones, like we have one coming up called the Inner Life of Asanas which is a way of going deeper with the Hatha Yoga practice. We had one this summer not too long ago called Facing Change, Exploring Options, so there are lots of different ways for people to come and be here. People can also come on private retreat and join with us for a couple hours in Karma Yoga so they feel connected in the community. The rest of the times, they can enjoy the prayer rooms. It is beautiful as you said. The trails, the lake, the Temple, the library are all available for people when they are here.

Candess: I went to the Temple the other night and I could just feel Swami Radha there. I thought, this must be her favorite place.

Swami Samayananda: – It is.

Candess: It was so clear to me. It was so beautiful there.

Swami Samayananda: – She said when she died, that is where she would go.

Candess: I have another guide that I work with and I was connecting with this guide, but Swami Radha was right there, so I thought OKAY!

Is there anything else that would be helpful for people to know about being a Swami or your life path or being here at the Ashram.

Swami Samayananda: I think one thing that is important for people to know about coming here is it is a time of renewing, learning some practices, some tools as you said to take away. There is no dogma in yoga. There is not doctrine. It is not a religion. I think it is really important. We are an Ashram; it is a spiritual community, so we have people who come who are Buddhist, who are Christian, who practice in the Jewish faith, Muslims, and people who have no particular tradition that they follow but are open to that spiritual dimension and they just want to take a step further. I think that is often a relief.

When people come, we do have imagery around. Imagery and symbolism whether we know it or not is very important to us. We live it anyway and symbols are there simply as a symbol that is reflecting some in ourselves so sometimes for some people, and part because of our Christian Judaic background in the West, images can be a little off-putting; but they are so beautiful and the have so much to say to us if we open them up and take them apart. I think the biggest thing is it is a beautiful place to be, to heal, to renew, to gain perspective and then take what is meaningful back out; bridge it back out to your life, back home, family, friends, work, whatever. Often people will come back and get a little bit more and take it back, back and forth. That is what I did for years.

Candess: That is wonderful! It took me probably to day eight until I started feeling myself again, so it was such a wonderful place to renew and relax. Thank you so much.

Swami Samayananda: Namaste

The end. . .

Interview with Swami Samayananda Part 2

September 2, 2011 by @candesscampbell

This interview was taken at Yashodhara Ashram in British Columbia, Canada on the beautiful Kootenay Lake.

(Some sections have been edited for grammar.)

Candess: When I hear you talk, it sounds like what’s happening is that you are keeping the truth of what Swami Radha had in terms of living out what she taught, to truly keep living it and not have a separation.

Swami Samayanda: Yes, and no matter what the changes are that happen, there is that very solid core that cannot change, because that is what an Ashram is. It is the center of one teacher’s teachings and we are all committed to that. To what she gave us and in our gratitude, that is what we give back. These have to be applied to what is happening in the world. Our focus now is to be carbon neutral by 2013. We are not cut off from the world. Our sustainability, how do we care for our forests? Our development, Yashodhara Heights, three cabins that we built are all extremely green. We are very much in tune with what is happening with the world and what the concerns are in the world, and bringing them right in to our community, right here. We are always asking. We can go back to her teachings and it is all there. Carbon neutral, it is all there. Sustainability, it is all there. We say, “I am sustained by Divine Light, I am sustained by the teachings.” So how do we bring that out then, into the actual physical place we work and to the people who come.

Candess: That is exciting. The more I hear about this, I am so grateful I am here. My connection with the Spokane Radha House has been mostly through Yoga for Health and Healing and the Dream Yoga. There are a lot of forms of yoga other than the physical. Can you tell me more about yoga?

Swami Samayanda: It is interesting in the West, we have taken one yoga practice out of the entire yogic system and we call it yoga. It’s basically Hatha Yoga. It’s working with the body. It is mainstream. When you say the word yoga, everybody thinks of a studio and doing postures and that kind of thing. Yoga, actually if you look at the original sutras, the yoga sutras by Patanjali; asanas are a very tiny, tiny, part of the yogic system. Their original intent is to prepare the body to be still for meditation and other yogic practices. I see that changing in the West, where a lot of people were just interested in the physical part of it. More and more I hear people say, I know there is more. What more is there? There has got to be more to this. There are probably about 39 kinds of yoga, of which Hatha is just one. What Swami Radha brought back were several that we work with here.

We work with Dream Yoga, which is the interpretation, learning to interpret our own dream messages. We work with Kundalini Yoga which is the study of, really of how we use energy, how we express ourselves, the choices we make and how that comes out in our speech, in our behavior, in our thoughts. We also work with the Yoga of Light and our primary way of doing that is through the standing practice of doing the Divine Light Invocation. We focus on Mantra Yoga, which is the yoga of chanting, sound, vibration. We work with Karma Yoga. Karma Yoga is the basis actually of our Ashram which is the yoga of action. Work is service. It is different than just volunteering. We actually do the yoga and ask ourselves what we are learning from it. What is the work teaching us? It is not just doing the work, getting the work done itself, its what we are learning in that process.

(next . . . Part 3)