Love Yourself. For Real. ebook. March 12-19, 2018

Transcription

1 Love Yourself For Real ebook March 12-19, 2018 All Rights Reserved Nicole Nardone, LLC 2018

2 Welcome!... 4 The Root of Love... 4 Kundalini Yoga... 5 The Spring Equinox... 6 How This Works Day Practice... 7 Space Holding... 8 Facebook Group + Questions... 8 Things To Get/Do To Prepare:... 9 Day One: March Sacred Love Vortex Four Directions Working with the Sacred Love Vortex Body Love Meditation Journaling Prompts Day Two: March Admit the Wound Gathering Power - Building Your Sacred Love Vortex Creating Self Love Meditation Journaling Prompts Day Three: March Laying Down the Stories Spring Equinox Offerings to your Sacred Love Vortex Meditation to Eliminate Negative Thoughts Journaling Prompts Day Four: March Allow Healing Crystal Invocation Ra Ma Da Sa Journaling Prompts Day Five: March Remember Your Power of Self Blessing... 25

3 Altar Offering: Picture of You Meditation to Bless Yourself Journaling Prompts Day Six: March Stay With Yourself Am I Loving Myself in this Moment? Meditation to Not Feel Abandoned Journaling Prompts Day Seven: March Resting Into Love Mirror Exercise Mera Man Loche Meditation Journaling Prompts Day Eight: March Integration Day, Catch up, Spring Equinox Prep Body Love Meditation Journaling Prompts In Closing Sacred Love Vortex Final Words... 38

4 Welcome! Dear hearts! It is with great gratitude that I welcome you to this journey to self love, for real. This has been a long time coming, the creation of this course. I have felt the wounds that a lack of self-love causes. They are deep, they are lasting. I ve experienced the incredible darkness of self-loathing, self-sabotage, and self-inflicted pain. I know the wound. I know the wound well. You are not bad for having this wound. In fact, you are brighter for it. This allows you a greater capacity to feel and to allow love in. Your vessel is bigger. Because I have scaled the depths myself, know that you are held in that space. Nothing you feel is wrong. And you must trust that you can, you absolutely can, heal. Self Love IS actually possible for you. You don t need to believe it fully yet. That s why you ve signed up for this, right? But I believe it for you. I am holding that space for you, holding that prayer for you. If I can pull myself out of the depths of darkness, into the light, you can too. And you do not need to do it alone. The Root of Love At the root of this course is one thing. And it can be summed up here: Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. ~Rumi We are swimming in a sea of love. We come from love, the cosmic soup, and we are returning there. Everything we do is an attempt to rejoin this river. This desire and drive to rejoin with love is often buried deeply in us. We ve felt so separate and unsafe, that even the desire for love is broken. Even this is not beyond repair. Even if you have no idea what I m talking about when I speak about this deep pull in our Souls to unite with Love once again, it is ok. Love is still possible for you. This is the root of this course. This has been the one thing I have seen again and again in the many students, clients, and friends I ve witnessed. We are all craving a reconnection to love. And since we are not interested in the fluff of self-love, not interested in the quick fixes, we MUST, absolutely MUST go to the root. And this is the root. The Universe is Love. Your Soul longs to reconnect to that Source. Let me break it down. Love is the most high vibration energy out there. It s super elevated consciousness. This is the energy of enlightenment, awakened kundalini, full embodied Spirit in the body. So all disease (physical, mental, emotional, energetic, soul) is essentially

5 low vibration. Now it is not helpful to consider low vibration bad. Let s not be so two dimensional. The way I see it, Love wants to be grounded on earth. This high vibration wants to be part of the cells of our body. It wants to be planted on the earth. The earth is dense. It isn t terribly high vibration, but it wants to meet love, this high vibration energy. But we do not get there by calling our less-favorable emotions, thoughts, etc bad. Instead, we let the dark and the light meet. We bring Love TO the lower vibration aspects of ourselves and the world. We let love decide what to do. This energy of love craves to be grounded into the earth. The infinite meets the finite. Heaven meets earth. This is magic. Love wants to ground into reality through YOU. So, your work is to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that have been created to keep you from being a conduit of this love. That s our work together. So why can t we just open to love and everything will be fine? Well, because we have human bodies, human minds, and karma that keeps us from doing so. These are the barriers. This is why things like sweet self love affirmations rarely get down to the root. We must change on a cellular level. Sometimes opening to love can feel like drinking from a firehose. It s just too much. It s because our nervous system and energy systems have not shifted to take on such a heightened capacity of love, such a high vibration. We get burnt out and simply can t take it in. Too much of a good thing! Kundalini Yoga We do this little by little. Kundalini Yoga is the most powerful tool I ve come across BY FAR for increasing your nervous system s capacity to hold a higher vibration. It is so deeply balancing to the nerves and glands. This course centers around the Kundalini Yoga practices. That is where the gold is. That s where the most change will happen. This course has been created to give you more EXPERIENCE than information. I d recommend thinking about loving yourself less as something to become, and more as something to rest into. So there is less here to digest intellectually, and more to internalize, soak in, and experience. Less do, more be. We are so used to achieving, fixing, finding cures, the right thing. That s not the true way to self love. The way to self love is in experiencing life fully, here and now. So the practices and outline provided here is designed to do just that - let you REALIZE that you are love. There s nothing to get out there.

6 There is also a heavy psychoanalytic culture here in the West. We want to think our way into self love. We want to lay back on the couch and analyze our childhood wounding. And I absolutely believe in the power of good therapy. I believe anyone on a path of growth and self-healing absolutely must have a good therapist in their toolkit to work these things out - I know I do. However, that s not what this course is about. This course is about healing from those stories and about clearing them from the nervous system and from our energy field. The Spring Equinox The Spring Equinox falls on March 20th this year. This is one of the four most powerful days of the year: the summer solstice, winter solstice, fall equinox, and spring equinox. These holidays mark the turning of the year, the four sacred directions. When we can align with the energies of these powerful days, our lives take on a new energy. We are synced up. We feel in the flow. We are no longer creating on our own. We have the creative energy of the Universe behind us! The Spring Equinox is the halfway point between the winter and summer solstices. It is a time of equal dark and light. Equinox means equal night. It is a balance point. A portal opens on this day for us to come into greater and greater balance with ourselves and the world. Since it is spring time in the northern hemisphere, it is also a time of growing light. It is the day when the light officially wins! There is now more daylight than darkness. So this is a powerful moment to align with what you want to bring more light to. What do you want illuminated by this Spring Equinox, this portal of light? This is a powerful time to be releasing the old in order to make room for the new. We must clear out old clutter so that the new life is not choked out by what is already dead. This is a beautiful time to be setting intentions for the new year ahead. The spring equinox is always the day that the sun moves from the sign of Pisces, into Aries. Aries is the first sign of the zodiac. And so, March 20th is the astrological new year! If you missed your chance to set intentions at the beginning of the year, now is your chance! We will be using this powerful energy of the sun in Pisces to do our deep self-love work. Pisces is the sign of self-undoing. We totally shed all those identities, beliefs, people, systems that do not support our loving. We release, we dissolve, we remember our wholeness and connection to all. Pisces represents a returning to the void in order to be reborn. And as the sun enters Aries on March 20th, we are reborn! Aries is the initiator. It marks a new beginning, a rebirth, a surging forward to creation! This is an incredibly powerful time of year to shed old identities, and reclaim parts of ourselves that have gone unloved.

7 I recommend setting an intention as you begin this course. Your intention does not need to be done in a fancy way or with fanfare. It can be right now. It can be you, closing your eyes, placing your hand over your chest. Enter the place in your heart that doesn t need a lot of words. Gracefully, humbly, lovingly, make your request to this Spring Equinox. How This Works Every day I ll be sending you an . (Be sure I am added to your contacts so that I land in your inbox. You may need to check your promotions tab). The theme of each day is outlined here in this e-book. You may choose to read ahead, or dive into each topic as it comes each day. To make the most of your experience, you ll want to make time for a minimum of an hour a day on this material. That will include: reading through the material of that day (e-book portion associated with that day) (10 mins) meditation practice video (20-30 mins) body love meditation (20 mins) journaling/soaking in your love vortex (15 mins) Some days might be a little more, some a little less. Of course, life isn t always predictable. We have resistance. So going at your own pace is perfect, too. Do not worry about falling behind or that you aren t doing it right. That is not possible for you. Wherever you land with these practices is just where you need to be. It s just the right medicine. And remember, you have access to these practices long after the course ends. So there is no rush. You have time. 40 Day Practice It is a common practice in Kundalini Yoga to commit to one meditation for 40 days. That is, you do the same meditation for 40 days in a row. If you miss a day, you begin again at Day One. This breaks old habits, and rebuilds new ones that are life-affirming for what you are wanting to create. It rebuilds the personality based on the Soul life. Powerful stuff. All but one of these meditations can be practiced for 40 days (the Meditation to Eliminate Negative Thoughts should only be practiced as needed). If one topic in particular speaks to you, go with it. Sometimes these practices can speak to us with staunch resistance. If you find

8 yourself really strongly reacting to any of the meditations, it could be the one for you. We often resist what we most need. The resistance can often be one of our greatest blocks to love. That said, your meditation should NEVER be a form of self-punishment. No yoga shaming. It should, in some way, bring you back home to your sweet, loving center. Space Holding This e-course is designed to support you on all levels: physical, mental, emotional, energetic, spiritual. The ceremony and altars we ll be building and the meditations are anchored in the physical realm. Real change can happen when we have the added boost of support from the energetic and spiritual realms. This is my specialty. Because of my lifetimes of work in this realm, I am able to offer you added support from my team in the unseen world. This may not be tangibly felt by you, and it may be. Either way, felt or unfelt, it is there and doing deep work. In the interest of complete transparency, this is the anchor of this entire course. When we plug into Spirit deeply and with reverence, together, incredible things happen. We can know the unknown. All the other practices are important, of course. They help to anchor this Divine Force into your life NOW. This kind of space holding does not know time or space. So even if you cannot complete the course material in the allotted time, not to worry. You haven t messed anything up. You re fine. Relax. The way this energetic space has been set up is so that you can have just the energetic and spiritual support you need, when you need it. This will last long after the course ends This space is infinite and free of boundary. Yours. The space is here for you to become who you came here to be. Simple. Wildly transformational. Ready or not, here YOU come. Facebook Group + Questions The Facebook group is your place to ask questions. If you have questions about course material, your experience of the material, or anything else, please ask them there. In order to keep my personal energy up to hold space for all of you, I won t be answering personal s about the course material. If you re needing extra support on your journey, have questions that are bigger than what is offered on the Facebook forum, you may set up a private one-toone session with me to get those answered.

9 Things To Get/Do To Prepare: Here are a few things you'll want on hand in preparation for this ecourse: ROSES You'll need these right away for our very first day on Sunday! One rose will do just fine. Even dried rose petals are ok. But if you can, go indulge, buy yourself some roses (any color). A CRYSTAL You'll need this for healing and for our group call. It can be any kind of natural crystal, any shape, any size. Could even be a piece of jewelry with some kind of crystal in it - quartz, amethyst, etc. (If you are in the Minneapolis area, check out The Enchanted Rock Garden). And a few things you'll want to do before you begin to prepare your home: CREATE A MEDITATION NOOK You'll want a comfortable place in your home where you can do these practices undisturbed. Start mapping that out. This could be on the floor of your bedroom, a spare room, or meditation room. Gather what you need to get comfortable - mat, blankets, chair, pillows, etc. FIND A COMFORTABLE WAY TO PLAY THE VIDEOS You'll want a way to play these videos in your meditation area. So you'll need an internet connection so you can play them on YouTube. A computer, laptop, phone, or other device will do just fine.

10 Day One: March 12 Sacred Love Vortex Let s get to it. Our first order of business is creating sacred space. This is simple, powerful magic. We ll be creating a special vortex of energy that is all yours. It is going to be your waterfall of love, right in your own home. Energetically, it will look like a column of light, showering down on you from the heavens, down into the earth. Whenever you are in the middle of it, you are being completely saturated with love. You are filled with every cell. And this vortex will give you the amount of love you need. As you do the practices outlined in this course, your nervous system s capacity will increase so you will be able to hold more space for love. Love will be allowed to rush in and heal what is feeling broken, destroyed, sad, mad, or separate. This is your personal link to love. All yours. HERE S HOW: You ll need your roses! You ll make the shape of a circle/oval with rose petals on the ground. Make it big enough that you can lie down in it, ideally. Yes, that s a lot of petals and you re worth it. Roses are extremely high vibration flowers. The energy of roses has long been the energy of love. I m not just talking Hallmark Valentine s Day. In many, many ancient traditions, roses hold the highest vibration. It is the pure energy of love. Yellow roses have to do with right use of power (think 3rd chakra), pink roses are more heart energy, and red roses are traditionally the pure energy of love, divine love. Any color rose will do. You can trust that the right color came to you. This is magic we re working with after all. Be sure you choose a spot that is not going to be disturbed for a week or longer. Make sure you can keep this space as protected as possible. You may need to get creative here. If you already have a meditation area set up in your home, you may use that. Near you altar (if you already have one) is good, too. It should be a comfortable spot that you want to be in. You ll be doing your meditations here (ideally, although not necessary), journalling here, and soaking here. The soaking: yes, soaking. We re going to be activating this vortex of love in this first video. Once you do this, there is a never-ending current of love washing through this space. Anytime you want, you can lay down in it and let it wash over you. I have spent hours basking in my love vortex. I ll hang out in there forever journaling, reading, listening, laying, napping, whatever. There is a powerful energy here that I STRONGLY suggest you spend as much time in it as possible, consciously.

11 The energy that is created here shifts you on a deep level. So much of the shifts you experience will be happening subconsciously. Most of our barriers to self love are unconscious. We keep them hidden below the surface. We aren t aware that deep down we doubt that we are lovable, are afraid of abandonment, etc etc So A LOT of what you ll be clearing in this course is subconscious. As a result, it might seem like nothing is happening while you sit here in your Sacred Love Vortex. But I assure you, things are moving. It is always the conscious mind that is the last to catch up. We aren t as smart as we think. Building self love is a great act of faith and trust. Remember: Love is what you are. This entire journey is about resting into what you ALREADY ARE. This is simple. But it is certainly not easy. If it were, we would have mastered it by now! Unlearning patterns of holding back, pushing away, and not seeing - this takes time, patience, and massive amounts of trust. Trust the love that is coming to you. Four Directions In the first video where we set our Sacred Love Vortex, I ll be invoking the four directions. This is enough. However, if you have taken my other ecourses and worked with the energy of the four directions in the past, you may want to set up your altars for this, too. It will only increase the energy. Again, not necessary. I will be energetically invoking the energy of the four directions for all of us in the intro video and holding that space for you during this course. Working with the Sacred Love Vortex Spend as much time as possible here. It can be idle time. I cannot stress enough how important it is to give yourself time to digest this work. These Kundalini practices are POWERFUL. Don t let them be another thing on your to do list. For self love to truly root into each of our cells, we must ALLOW. We must drop into the energy of receiving. This is a complete shift of gears for many of us. This is what an ideal time in your Sacred Love Vortex would look like: 1. Read through the ebook portion for the day. 2. Do that day s Kundalini practice (video). 3. Do the Body Love Meditation (video).

12 4. Bask, Be, Journal, etc. This is nice to do at the other end of your practice. Reflect on how you feel afterwards. This allows the experience of the meditation to deeply root in your body and mind. If we simply get up and walk away, the effects may not be rooted as deeply. So take some time to truly drink up the practice. Body Love Meditation On this first day, you ll also want to dive in to the Body Love Meditation video! This is a practice you may want to do every day or simply when you have time. This practice incorporates movement, breath, and affirmations to allow all the other practices we are doing to take root in your body. This is the yin to the yang. Many of the Kundalini practices are deeply cleansing. This Body Love Meditation allows you to drink in the changes you are making on the deepest levels. It s also very good if you re just feeling tired and need a recharge. Journaling Prompts What I felt before, during, and after opening the Sacred Love Vortex: How it feels to set up a Sacred Love space like this for myself, in my own home. What were the hurdles in getting there? How did it feel once I did it? How does it feel to sit in this energy?

13 Day Two: March 13 Admit the Wound Before we can attempt to heal the split between our hearts and love, we must first admit that there IS a split. We must first allow the feeling of lack. We have to acknowledge our pain. This is the first step, the most important step, and most often skipped step. And that is for one reason - IT HURTS. It hurts to not feel love. It hurts to admit we are far from where we want to be. It caves the chest and makes us heave for breath. It shallows our inhales and makes our exhales gasp for relief. Admitting this wound is one of the hardest, most sacred things we can do. We all come into this life with a tiny bit of a broken heart. Ok, maybe not a tiny bit. I ve felt this wound as deep and wide. I ve felt this illusion of separation as the greatest, most painful thing I can experience. It s big. And I ve also found that allowing this wound to BE, as it is, has been the most freeing acceptance of my life. It s said that the heart of a warrior MUST be broken. If your heart is not broken, you are not to be trusted. You have not felt the true pain of being human and so you have not been softened. This is what the broken-heartedness does, it softens us. Don't surrender your loneliness So quickly. Let it cut more deep. Let it ferment and season you As few human Or even divine ingredients can. Something missing in my heart tonight Has made my eyes so soft, My voice So tender, My need of God Absolutely Clear. ~Hafiz

14 This original split is the way into the Soul, Love. This split is the opening. It is the place in us that is the softest, most vulnerable. And so, it is very, very valuable. The more we run from the wound, the less opportunity we have to sink deeply into love. We miss an incredible chance for deep, deep loving. Self Love does not come by loving the parts of ourselves that are pretty and tied together. Love is messiness. Love is found amidst the chaos of our inner demons. It is found in allowing our dark parts to be. Self Love is shadow work. By shadow work, I mean embracing your darkness, the parts of you that are deemed unacceptable. The shadow is all those things that you have been taught to disown. Building self-love on anything but the ground of the shadow, is building on swamp land. It will inevitably sink. I know it hurts. This is the part of the process where we are diving into what hurts. It helps not to take anything we are thinking or feeling TOO seriously. Usually, as things arise to be cleared out of our systems, there is first great pain. We have to feel it before we can let it go. Our meditation today is for just that. This Creating Self Love practice shifts your system from fear, to love. It allows you to feel everything you re feeling, and keep on with love. It is especially helpful for clearing out anger. Anger is one of THE biggest blocks to self-love. There are things we have not forgiven ourselves for, things we think are maybe unforgivable. We feel shame, regret. We are holding ourselves hostage. You do not need to reason your way into forgiveness here. It is hard to do and frankly, doesn t work. Instead, you must teach your nervous system forgiveness. Forgiveness for your pain, forgiveness for your wounding, forgiveness for your darkness. Your nervous system must learn that it is ok to be human. You came down here to this planet to learn about messy love, not angelic love. You are doing the best you can. This meditation today helps you come to terms with forgiveness. It allows you to recognize the pain your anger and lack of forgiveness have caused, and be lifted out of that. Freedom is on the other side. Gathering Power - Building Your Sacred Love Vortex You may want to begin gathering objects to place inside your love vortex with you. These objects can represent different blessings and blockages you can perceive when it comes to self-love. I d recommend using stones. For example, you could pick one stone that represents your inwardly-focused anger. Hold the stone in your hand, meditate on the blockage, then just set it somewhere in the circle. Leave it there for the energy present in this circle to work things out. You could also have stones (or other objects) that represent your blessings when it comes to self-love. For example, you could place a candle in the circle to represent your willingness to transform (fire). These blessings could also be things that bring you comfort,

15 like the photo of a teacher or loved one who has shown you great compassion. Setting these blessings in the circle will amplify their potency. We ll be working more with these later on. Creating Self Love Meditation (The Teachings of Yogi Bhajan 2008) Love doesn t rule you. What rules you is fear, phenomenal fear. Through this kriya, love can be invoked and fear can be reduced. -Yogi Bhajan Part 1 This exercise is called Reverse Adi Shakti Kriya. Here you are mentally and hypnotically blessing yourself. This self-blessing is to affect and correct the magnetic field. It is said that doing this exercise will hurt if you have a lot of anger. Self-help is very difficult for those who are angry. After doing this exercise for 5 minutes your muscles may start hurting if your diet is improper. The taste in your mouth will change if you are breathing correctly. Posture: Sit in Easy Pose with a straight spine and hold your right palm six to nine inches above the top center of your head. The right palm faces down, blessing you. This self-blessing corrects the aura. The left elbow is bent with the upper arm near the rib cage. The forearm and hand point upward. The left palm faces forward and blesses the world. Eyes: The eyes are closed and focus at the lunar center in the middle of the chin. Breath: Breathe long, slow, and deep with a feeling of self-affection. Try to bring the breath to one breath per minute: Inhale for 20 seconds, hold for 20 seconds, exhale for 20 seconds. Time: Continue for 11 minutes. Then inhale deeply and move slowly and directly into position for Exercise 2. Part 2 This exercise will benefit everything between the neck and navel.

16 It will give strength to the heart and will open up the heart center. Posture: Extend your arms straight out in front, parallel to the ground, palms facing down. Stretch out to your maximum. Eyes: The eyes are closed and focused at the lunar center in the center of the chin. Breath: The breath is long, slow, and deep. Time: Continue for 3 minutes. Then inhale deeply and move slowly and directly into position for Exercise 3. Part 3 Posture: Stretch your arms straight up with the palms facing forward. There is no bend in the elbows. Eyes: The eyes are closed and focused at the lunar center. Breath: The breath continues to be long, slow, and deep. Time: Continue for 3 minutes. To finish: Inhale, hold your breath for 10 seconds while you stretch your arms upward (try to stretch so much that your buttocks are lifted) and tighten all the muscles of your body. Exhale. Repeat this sequence two more times. Journaling Prompts Are there parts of me that believe I am worthy of love? What do those parts know? What do they wish to share with the whole?

17 Are there parts of me that believe I am not worthy of love? How can I hold these parts gently, within the whole? What anger can I forgive myself for? What anger still needs to be expressed through me? What do I know about the innocence of the human heart? What does it feel like in my body to forgive myself?

18 Day Three: March 14 Laying Down the Stories As we practice these kriyas and meditations, clear ideas about self love may be rising. You may recognize patterns in yourself around what stories you tell yourself about your life. There is absolutely powering telling your story. This is very healing and absolutely MUST be done. It is important to reflect on what our basic, most primal wounding is. AND it is also absolutely essential to lay that wounding down. Or rather, lay the story down. Time and space as we know it are far less impactful than we think. Our stories can keep us tied to an overworked world that we have long grown out of. So again, YES, absolutely, tell your story. Tell it until you re blue in the face. Tell it to your therapist, your friends, your lover, your dog, strangers. But if you are truly interested in healing, at some point, you must release your grip on it. It must become dust. We all have stories we have made up about what our relationship to ourself is. We tell ourselves we have perhaps never loved ourselves. Or maybe our mother didn t love herself, so what hope is there for us? We say we don t know how to do it. Maybe it s too hard. Why bother? Oh, there are so many stories we tell ourselves about self love. And all of them are very interesting. But we cannot keep them all. As we move towards the Spring Equinox this week, it is important to think about what stories you have absolutely worn out. What are you sick of hearing yourself say? What patterns and habits have you completely outgrown? What are the stories that do not love you any more? This Spring Equinox wants us to enter into a new world of love. It is supporting a complete and utter undoing of the self. The self that we have created based on falsities. Yes, our assumptions about the world may at one point have been true and helpful. But the world has shifted, and so your story must, too. And if your story has been causing you pain and separation from Love, then it s time to trade it in. The sign of Pisces (which the sun is currently in) offers a complete undoing. It is a death. It is shamanic. It is giving up all worlds except the one to which you belong. There has never been a more powerful time than now to undo the world that you have found yourself in, the stories that you have wound yourself around. If you have had trouble before releasing what was to the wind, try again. The stars and all of us are with you now. It is time.

19 Spring Equinox Offerings to your Sacred Love Vortex Gather all your stones that have represented blockages in your life into one pile in your Sacred Love Vortex. Add more, if it seems right. Add as many as you like. Create a pile that represents the world to which you have belonged. It is time to create a new world. Meditate on each stone and what it represents. You may want to exhale into the stones to let whatever that blockage is enter the stone. Your breath is sacred and breathing out into the stone will imbue that stone with the quality you are releasing. Make a pile. This represents your undoing self. This is your offering to the winter season - all the old baggage. In preparation for the Spring Equinox balance point, you could begin throwing these stones away. You could make a bundle of the stones and throw it in a lake, river, ocean, snowbank, etc. Or you could just do them one by one. (Just be sure what you throw into nature is biodegradable!) You could bury your stones in the earth, place them under a favorite tree, or set them on the bank of a favorite body of water. You are releasing your stories to the elements. You do not get to keep these stones. They must be surrendered to the earth. Repeat as often as necessary, as often as feels good, until the Spring Equinox. Meditation to Eliminate Negative Thoughts (The Teachings of Yogi Bhajan 2008) Posture: Sit in easy pose or in a chair with a straight spine with a light neck lock (Jalandhar Bandh). Eye Focus: The eyes are looking into the cup that you ve made with your hands. Breath: Inhale deeply through the nose. Exhale completely in a long, dry, spitting motion through puckered lips. Spit that awful thought out! Mantra: Think of a persistent negative thought that prevents you from prospering or that is disrupting your life in some way. Mudra: Make a cup of the hands with the right hand on top of the left and the fingers crossing each other. Relax the upper arms by the sides and place this mudra at the level of your heart. Time: Continue for 11 minutes. End: Inhale, hold briefly, exhale and maintain the mudra. Close the eyes, breathe through the nose and focus on the spine. Slowly draw the energy down the spine from the top to the bottom. Feel all 26 vertebrae. The more you feel the entire spine, the more relief you will feel.

20 Comments: This particular meditation is best practiced only when you have thoughts that bother you; it isn t recommended to do long term. Journaling Prompts What are you ready to give away? What stories are you tired of telling? What stories must be retired? What are the stories that aren t yours anymore? What are the new stories to take their place? What is the new world you are being birthed into? What world are you creating from your love?

21 Day Four: March 15 Allow Healing Deep healing requires a massive amount of trust. We must trust the energy that is coming to us. We must trust our guidance. We must trust that we have done all we can to move us forward. And then there is a trustfall. It must be a deep, unwavering backwards, blind freefall into space. We must KNOW, without a doubt, that we will be caught. Healing on this deep level of self love requires you to invite in all the benevolent forces of the Universe to come to your aid. You must open the channels in all directions. This is big work, you re going to need big help. We all have learned patterns about what amount of healing we can let in, what our limits are, what we are worth of, etc. It is time to break those down. It is time to open to all the healing energy that is available to you, that has always been available to you. We often brace against healing. We do this for many different reasons - particular beliefs around God, the Universe, our worthiness, our abilities, etc. It doesn t so much matter what the reason is. What is important is to open this flow again. The flow of healing is very simple. It is similar to love. It is what we are made of. Love is what we are made of. Love is the most healing vibration we can access. Love is an opening to what is. It is opening to the sky above, the earth below, and the sun, and the moon. Love and healing are essentially an activation of these forces within you. We have all gone to sleep at some point. We ve all forgotten that we are love, that we contain the ability to heal ourselves. As a result, this memory must be awakened. This is not new learning for you, dear one. You know these things in your bones. You know in your cells that you contain all the healing that ever was or will be. You are free, you have just forgotten. Let s remind you. Allow in what is coming to you. Allow in your true nature. Allow love. Crystal Invocation You ll need your crystal for this. In order to activate your healing potential, we ll use the help of crystals. These living beings can powerfully hold intentions. Because of the sensitive and complex nature of crystals, they re receptive enough to hold a specific intention for thousands of years. Once they are cleared and infused with new energy, they will hold that intention for you.

22 You are going to invoke the natural healing capacity of your crystal. This is simple: 1) Cleanse your crystal of any past intentions or energies. You can do this by one of these ways (or another way that you are familiar with): A. by burning sage (or a similar herb) and letting the smoke completely cleanse the crystal by hitting every surface, asking that the crystal be cleansed of any energies not in line with your highest good and the good of all B. by bathing the crystal in water while you ask that the crystal be cleansed of any energies not in line with your highest good and the good of all C. by simply holding the crystal and taking three breaths (in nose out mouth) while you ask that the crystal be cleansed of any energies not in line with your highest good and the good of all 2) Set a new intention for the crystal. Hold it in your hands. Close your eyes. Fill your body with white healing light. Fill your body with an intention (if you have one) for your healing, for your life, for loving. Feel the crystal take on that vibration. You are attuning this living creature to a new vibration. In order to do this, you must inhabit the vibration yourself. Attune yourself to the energy you want to bring in, the energy you want to embody. Feel it merge and blend and infuse the crystal. 3) Give it a kiss! Leave your newly charged crystal in your love vortex to charge up your space. Hold it, bless it, let it nourish you whenever you need it. Ra Ma Da Sa (The Teachings of Yogi Bhajan 2008) Posture: Sit in Easy Pose (sitting on the floor, with legs crossed) or in a chair with feet planted firmly on the ground, with the spine straight, and a light Neck Lock applied (chin pulled back slightly). Mudra: The mudra (hand position) is most important. The elbows are bent down by the sides, and are tucked comfortably but firmly against the ribs. The forearms are almost perpendicular to the floor, with the hands extended out at a 45 degree angle from the center of the body. Most importantly, the palms are perfectly flat, facing up, hands bent back at the wrists. You should feel a pull in the lowest part of your forearm as you almost hyper-extend your wrist to make the palms flat. (This tends to be the most challenging part of the meditation so it is important not to let the hands relax out of the position.) The fingers are kept side by side, except that the thumb is spread from the other four fingers.

23 Eyes: Eyes are closed. Mantra: This mantra consists of 8 basic sounds: Ra Ma Da Sa, Sa Say So Hung Translation: Ra - Sun Ma - Moon Daa - Earth Saa - Impersonal Infinity Saa Say - Totality of Infinity So - Personal sense of merger and identity Hung - The infinite, vibrating and real. This mantra taps into the energies of the sun, moon, earth, and the Infinite Spirit to bring deep healing. It is important to pull the navel point powerfully on the word Hung. Note that the word Hung is not long and drawn out. Rather, it is clipped off forcefully as you pull in the navel. Chant one complete cycle of the entire mantra with each breath. Then deeply inhale and repeat. Remember to move the mouth precisely with each sound. Try to feel the resonance in the mouth and in the sinus area. Mental Focus: You can choose to mentally visualize the person or persons that you are wanting to heal, as you send this energy to them for their well-being. Time: Continue chanting for 11 to 31 minutes. To End: To end the meditation, inhale deeply and hold the breath, as you offer a healing prayer. Visualize the person you wish to heal as being totally healthy, radiant, and strong. See the person completely engulfed in a healing white light and completely healed. Then exhale and inhale deeply again, hold the breath, and offer the same prayer again. Exhale, inhale, and hold, repeat the prayer, and exhale. To complete, inhale deeply, stretch your arms up high, and vigorously shake out your hands and fingers for several seconds. Keep the arms up and hands shaking as you exhale. Repeat two more times and relax.

24 Journaling Prompts What does trust feel like in my body? How can I get curious about trust? What do I know about the Universe s willingness to help me heal? What do I know about the human potential for healing in general? What would a healing miracle look like in my life? What would that feel like in my body?

25 Day Five: March 16 Remember Your Power of Self Blessing There is nothing more powerful than a self-blessing. When you can bless yourself, when you can open yourself to the blessings of the Universe, the entire cosmos comes to you. The idea here is that you are the Universe. You are a microcosm of all of existence. When you bless yourself, you are choosing to SEE all of what you are. I mean really see. You are choosing to lift the veils and shed light on every minute detail of you, of the Universe. You are the Universe witnessing the Universe. And when consciousness becomes aware of itself, this is beauty. When you bless yourself, you are acknowledging that you are the Universe, and you are honoring this fact. It is the most powerful thing you can do. Assuming this feeling is one of the most healing things you can do. It opens your life to miracles. Self blessing is deep. It is not simply blessing those parts of you that are light and pretty. Self blessing is truly honoring all that you contain. This Universe contains incredible darkness. Murder, rape, war, extreme darkness. If we are considering the entire Universe as a microcosm, we must also accept that some fraction of this darkness also exists in us. Of course this does not make us necessarily capable of such acts. Milarepa, one of the most masterful yogis in history, before becoming a saint, committed murder. We all contain darkness, to one degree or another. It serves us very well to bless the darkness. In doing so, we keep it in check, we don t let it creep around in the dark casting bigger shadows than it s actual body mass. It is very important to bless all the parts of you. When we can truly wrap our arms around the entirety of who we are, then healing begins. This is what the Universe desires - to see itself - through your eyes and heart. The Universe wants to be blessed through you. You are the conduit. By choosing to love yourself unconditionally, warts an all, you honor the Universe. You honor the Divine in the most profound way possible. This is love. When we bless all of our parts, the parts that are life-giving and want love for the world will grow. The darkness will meet with the light, and all of it will be uplifted. But we must, we absolutely must bless our entirety. The meditation we are doing today helps open these intuitive channels of self-blessing. It trains the body, mind, psyche, and energy field to allow your own blessing in.

26 Altar Offering: Picture of You Place a photo of yourself within your Sacred Love Vortex. Any photo will do. This is your self blessing offering. You may want to look at the picture while you imagine yourself showering you with blessings. Even if you are not physically in the circle, you will still be receiving your own self-blessing while this picture is inside. Meditation to Bless Yourself (The Teachings of Yogi Bhajan 2008) Posture: Sit in Easy Pose with a straight spine, and a light Neck Lock. Mudra: Raise both arms out to the sides, bend the elbows so that the forearms come to a 90 degree angle, fingers pointing to the sky. Hands face forward. Eye Focus: Eyes are focused at the tip of the nose. Mantra & Movement: Chant along with Nirinjan Kaur s recording of Humee Hum Brahm Hum, and move in rhythm with the mantra: Humee Hum - Touch the top of your head with the left hand, blessing yourself. Brahm Hum - Return to the starting position. Time: Continue for 11 minutes. To End: Inhale, hold the breath, tighten the spine, and stiffen the left hand. Pull the energy of the spine into the left hand. Exhale. Repeat 2 more times. Relax. Comments: When you get up in the morning, stretch yourself with cat stretch. Then lie down straight with your right arm alongside you, and bless yourself as you did in the meditation. One blessing is enough to start your day. Start living consciously. Become a human being. Be humble, serviceful, kind, compassionate. Your power to heal is in how much anger you have forgiven yourself for.

27 Journaling Prompts What is easy for me to bless? In myself? In others? What do I condemn in myself? What parts have been held hostage from love? How does it feel when I bless the condemned parts too? What does it feel like in my body to bless myself?

28 Day Six: March 17 Stay With Yourself Once we begin the journey of self love, it is absolutely important to stay with it. There is certainly a honeymoon phase of self love. In the beginning, it feels very nice. It s good. All of feels light and like honey. But after a while, after we start peeling away the real layers where we have stored ancient patterns, we bump up against the real sh*t. We see things about ourselves that we do not like. We are worried if we keep going we will find more. Sometimes we begin a meditation practice with the best intentions to continue. We are eager in the beginning, but then the meditation practice stops being fun. It doesn't leave us feeling warm and fuzzy anymore. We dread it. This is a sign the real work has begun. The subconscious puts up guards around our most deeply held blockages to love. We guard these defenses like treasure. This is the ego s way of asserting control over a wildly unpredictable and limitless world. Aligning with Love is aligning with something that the ego has no control over. That makes the ego panic. Hence the excuses, the distractions, the reasoning away. It is absolutely essential that you stay with whatever arises on your journey to self love. This can look many different ways. You ll need to decide what is right for you. It may be honestly checking in every day to see if you are being loving towards yourself. It might be committing to a practice each day - a specific meditation (see info on 40 day practice earlier in this book). Staying with yourself, in some big or small way, each day, builds trust. This consistency is what is needed to break through some of these very deep patterns embedded in our systems. When trust is built, old fears allow their guard to drop. We begin to learn a new way. Fear of abandonment is a very common one in many people. The medicine for this pattern is to show up for yourself. The meditation we are practicing today allows you to find consistent peace within the Infinite. The finite is every changing. So it is difficult to find a sense of true security in that. But by reconnecting to the Infinite, leaning on that Source on a regular basis, touching and feeling that presence in your life daily - this is what breaks patterns of feeling abandoned. This is a gift you get to give yourself.

29 Am I Loving Myself in this Moment? One way to build a sense of security in the self is to check in with yourself multiple times per day. You must ask yourself, am I being loving towards myself?. It may be helpful to set a timer on your phone. When it goes off, go find a quiet place. Close your eyes. Put your hand on your heart and ask how are you, my dear? Listen to what comes. Ask what is needed to feel more love in this moment. It could be as simple as a few deep breaths, a hot bath, or a piece of chocolate. Listen. And respond with love. Meditation to Not Feel Abandoned (The Teachings of Yogi Bhajan 2008) Mudra: Index, pinky and thumbs all pointing out. Interlace middle and ring. Right hand over the left. Hands are over the heart about 4 inches away from the chest, thumbs pointing up. Create a bit of tension and pull the hands apart. Forearms are parallel to the ground. Eye Focus: Closed and focus on the tip of nose. Mantra: Gobinda Gobinda Hari Hari for 3-6 minutes Then chant: Ra Ma Da Sa Sa Say So Hung for 11 minutes Journaling Prompts Where have I abandoned myself? In what ways have I stuck by myself unrelentingly? How does it feel to acknowledge this? What helps me build trust? How can I help build trust with the Love that lives within me?

30 Day Seven: March 18 Resting Into Love Surely, after all the work we do on self-love, it eventually comes down to a complete and total surrender. We must be willing to put it all down. We must be willing to let love in. We have to rest at some point. So many of us have learned to live on scraps of love - from others, from ourselves. And if we are to break this pattern, we first have to learn how to bear the love that is coming to us. Yes, the waterfall if streaming down around us. We feel like we might drown. But at some point, we must open our mouths. We must let the water in. We must learn to bear the love that is coming to us. This takes surrender. All of this sometimes sounds like perhaps it is easy. Like it s just relaxation. I can tell you from experience, learning to RECEIVE love is no easy task. Learning to receive the love that is rushing around you takes patience, kindness, and tenacity. Like the relentless pounding of ocean waves, at some point, we have to let love wreck us. We have to let love crash over our bodies and make us into the shore. We have to choose love over our precious holding onto anger, sadness, or lack. The power of love must, eventually, be greater than the power of our own ego. The meditation and mantra I m leaving you with on this last day is the most powerful for opening to love. It channels the healing power of love. It heals heartbreak, profound heartbreak. It heals karmic wounding from past lives that center around your ability to give, receive, and be love. If you are to take only one thing away from this course, let it be this mantra. Listen, chant, play this mantra whenever you can. It is the most deeply healing love mantra I ve met. These sounds act as a waterfall of love. It is a sound current to open you to the Sacred Love Vortex. It vibrates all things through. Everything that is blocking you from love, gets cleared with this mantra. All wounding from past lovers can be cleared. Your current relationships will benefit. All because you open to love. Mirror Exercise Make a list of all the things you love about yourself. Your eyes shine like a still lake. You are infinitely kind. You give without expecting anything in return. And so on Read them to yourself aloud, while staring in the mirror. Stare long and hard. You will cry. This is good.