My mom sent me this in an email. And if you know my mom’s emails, you expect something funny, but this is quite beautiful and I could not agree more!  This is worth a watch to remind you to release judgements and blaming if you have any lingering and instead be an ambassador of loving silence.

A Reminder to Listen to Yourself

Thank you for sharing your questions, comments and requests with me. I love hearing from you! Over the weekend, I was in DC for an event at Quantico and we had no wifi where we were staying (cue very long scream) so I did not post every day like I have been doing.  But today is Tuesday and I’ve committed to answering questions on Tues and thank goodness I have access to the wonderful world wide web!

Today I’m answering more of a spiritual question that has been asked more than once.  Thanks for asking it!  I love these questions.

Meditation Room

Question:

So, I just had a conversation with a Christian friend of mine who claims that sexual abuse doesn’t define who you are…prayer changes everything! What is your take on this concept?  I do not believe spirituality can change a person’s definition after having been assaulted!  What do you think?  I am way too uptight for meditation to work and who do I pray to if I am not a spiritual person?

Answer:

Well, I actually totally agree with your friend in a spiritual sense.  Abuse does not define you, you get to do that.

But you say you are the person you are due to the abuse in your life.  It defined you as a young person and has carried you this far. Right?  The question I have for you is – What do you want to define you?   If you define yourself as a victim (which is your prerogative) you are still abusing yourself after the trauma and/or your abuser is done and gone.

This is why I like the analogy of trauma being like a sword – because a sword is outside of yourself.  You can remove it and use it to do good.   I wrote a 118 page workbook about it too!  It goes through the 5 Steps of the Sword.

1. Acknowledging the Sword
2. Removing the Sword
3. Healing the Wound
4. Using Your Sword
5. Practicing Sword Play

The reason for the sword analogy is to show how the trauma is not you, it is something that happened to you.

Going back to your friend’s comment about prayer defining you, so does the inner dialog about yourself.  What you think and say about yourself defines you.  Your abuse defines you only if you allow it.  I believe that spirituality can in fact change a person’s definition after being assaulted. I also 100% understand the distain for that term too.

I know how you can get uptight and freaked out by the old Christian ways, rules, dogma and guilt that has been passed down from your trauma and/or your not-so-nice family.   I’ve been there. So many wonderful things about faith, prayer and meditation have been hijacked, contorted and deformed that it can send you running at full speed away from anything using such language.  I get it. I’ve hightailed it too.

But there are many ways to practice prayer and meditation that will greatly affect your life for the better while not having to take the prescribed pill of ignorance, control and fear.

Here some ways I practice that may work for you too –

Many Ways to Pray

Gandhi

• Change the thought patterns in your head.  Prayer does not have to be the typical on your knees, hands together.  Prayer has many forms and one of those is a forumla of words.  By saying to yourself in your head that you are lovely, a divine spark of spirit, loved, wonderful, a Goddess, a Queen and a love spark of God - you are practicing a form of prayer.  Replacing the old negative record in your head of being ugly, worthless, unloved, pathetic, etc with words and phrases that are the complete opposite is practicing a form of prayer.
• Be thankful for what is to come. Many pray by asking for what they don’t have, but by expressing gratitude for what is yet to come, you are practicing a form of prayer.  It’s like making a commitment and wording it as if you already have what you’re asking for.  For example if you say aloud or in your head how you are grateful for the blessings being bestowed onto you, or for how the pain has left you or how the old story no longer affects you – you are speaking as if it already happened.  You are “letting go and letting God”.  You are trusting that it will be taken care of by giving thanks for it instead of asking for something you don’t have. Words are powerful things, even if they are not said aloud and only repeated in your mind.  Just like in the commitment page, the practice of wording it as if you already have it helps form the pathway in your mind for it to exist instead of pleading for something that seems out of reach.
• Be in the presence of greatness.  Put whoever you think is amazing in the room with you or in your car as you drive.  Have Jesus in the passenger seat, or Buddha or Owl Goddess in the hallway.  Use whoever invokes a code of morals for you and inspires you to be a better person in their presence.  This is also a great way to stop negative patterns and habits too.  For example, are you really going to have that cigarette if you’re blowing it in Jesus’s face?  Or making the Buddha cough up a lung?  Probably not.
• Create your own observance.  Is there something that reminds you of a happy time? Something that inspires calm within you?  I have a small smooth rock from a special trip I made.  I have a coin given to me by someone that reminds me of a very inspirational experience.  I also have a pin that means a lot to me.  When you find items that mean a great deal or remind you or a powerful time in your life and keep them either in your pocket or on your desk or any other place where you’ll see them – it reminds you of that time.  A form of prayer happens when you stop for a moment and feel the feeling the item brings up for you.  For example when I reach into my pocket and feel the smooth stone that a special woman gave to me, it sends me back to a meditative place by the lake.
• Create a Sacred Space.  Do you have your own room?  Do you have a special place to sit and pause the play button on life for a bit?  It can be as big as your own room or treehouse or as small as a table with only things that invoke peace and calm within you.  You can also take a room back like I wrote about in Finding Angela Shelton and how I took my bathroom back.  Just like you can rewrite your old story and the definition of yourself, you can reclaim places and make them sacred.  In my book I talked about being uncomfortable in the bathroom due to past abuse.  I reclaimed that room and now I love bathrooms and am having a great time remodeling one now as a matter of fact!

What does prayer and meditation mean to you and how to do practice?

Please share in the comments below on Disqus or on Facebook.
 

Mission statements are incredibly valuable in your life no matter what you do. My mission for years has been to inspire and empower people to lead joyful lives no matter what they’ve been through.

What Does a Mission Statement Do?

What's Your Mission Statement?

Having a mission statement not only provides direction, it is a fantastic reminder to live up to your full potential.

I moved on from the sad story of poverty, child sexual abuse and domestic violence by changing the dialog in my head. I rewired the negative angry thoughts to playful and joyful ones and rewrote my story. My mission statement was born after I applied it to myself first. I could not get up on stage to inspire people to lead joyful lives if I was still caught up in self-hatred and abuse. Once I changed my story, my life transformed forever and I began to live my mission statement.

I make sure everything on my life’s to-do list falls under the umbrella of my mission statement. But like many others, I wear many hats and have many different projects, goals and aspirations. Even though I can fit pretty much everything I do under one mission statement, I wanted to know what my personal focus was. In other words, I wanted to know what my name-tag should say.

So I asked the Bible.

Yes, it’s true. I know some of you just fell over in your chair while some of you are singing hallelujah. I asked the Bible and I received the most brilliant and fitting answer that I never expected.

Ever since I was little my mother taught me to get answers to questions by randomly opening books and reading the first thing your eyes fall upon. (Now a really funny exercise is to open her emails anywhere for a laugh!) I have practiced this exercise my whole life and it has always brought very interesting answers. But I had never used the Bible. It made me nervous.

One morning, years ago, on my way to work I scanned my bookshelf and there was the white Bible with the gold zipper that my grandmother had given me when I was about five-years-old. I figured why not ask the Bible. I hadn’t asked it anything before. So I unzipped it and held it in my hands, thinking.

“Who am I in this world?” I asked. “What is my mission?”

I’ll be honest; I was nervous my eyes were going to fall upon some kind of hell and damnation passage. My experience with the Bible as a child had been going to church on Sunday and being beaten on Monday. So I had no idea what to expect when I asked the question and opened the Bible.

My eyes fell upon one word. “Instructor”. That was fitting since I did teach people how to lead happier lives.

Then I read the whole passage.

“An instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes.”

I got chills all over my body. Then I read the line underneath it.

Thou therefore which teachest another teachest thou not thyself?” Romans 2:20, 21

Then I got chills again.

That was the same day I became a teacher of babes. I was on my way to play the role of Safe Side Superchick in the video series teaching kids how to be safe. My jaw was on the floor in shock. God has a sense of humor! I was a teacher of babes!

I also completely understood how teaching is the best way to teach yourself.

But I did not understand instructor of the foolish for a long time.

How in the world was I an instructor of the foolish? Wasn’t that kind of rude to tell people they were foolish anyway? I would only ever say that to someone who littered and foolish would not be the word of choice!

It finally hit me when I was speaking to a group of people who were beating themselves up, literally. They were caught in the cycle of abuse and trauma, had addictions, self-hatred and were self-abusing because of the harm someone else did to them. I knew the feeling; I had done the same thing. I also knew that not living up to your highest self and keeping your light dim because of someone else was – foolish!

An Instructor of the Foolish. Ah, the Bible, you are so clever! I had to try again. What can I say, I’m a rebel and tend to be a skeptic until angels show up and balls of light fill the room. I had to ask another question just to be sure. At the time there was a perp who was making my life hell and trying to keep my documentary from coming out. I won’t go into the list of annoyingly evil things he did but let’s just say I’m still paying off the legal bills seven years later. Big Blech.

So I asked the Bible another question just to see if I’d just gotten lucky with that perfect answer of what my mission was. I asked what would happen to the one who was trying to halt and destroy the work of the instructor of the foolish and teacher of babes. Then I opened the Bible. There it was – the hell and damnation passage I’d been expecting! Only this one was all about how the wrath will come down upon those who try and stop the work of God or something. I forget the address in the Bible where it was, but I remember the message clearly. Don’t mess with people doing good work. Guess what? I just found out a few days ago that that guy is going to jail.

I was not expecting the Bible to put the laser beam on my mission statement, but it did. And it’s true, I am an instructor of the foolish and a teacher of babes, inspiring people to lead joyful lives no matter what they’ve been through. Those who teach teach themselves and I happily practice what I preach as I apply my mission to everything from I work on from my children’s books to my dating advice book for co-dependent women who foolishly go broke supporting everyone but themselves.

If my grandmother were alive, she’d be proud and would probably tell me to keep reading and in her words “skip to the end, it gets better.”

What is your mission and who are you within your mission statement?

Please share in the comments. I’d love to hear!

Although I do not believe in tossing your TV out the window because I am very anti-littering, I do believe thoughts are things and powerful things at that, it’s important to be sure what thoughts you’re thinking and allowing to be programmed at you and within you.  Clearing your mind helps and vibrating with love instead of fear can create thoughts can cure, create and care for yourself and the world much better.

After all of the depressing footage on the disaster in Japan, wars, violence, insane representatives in GA and general ignorance flamed by fear – this is a nice video to watch.  Thank you to my adopted sissy for sharing this on your FB!

I can attest to the power of meditation, it has certainly worked well in my life. I wrote about it here too.

It’s much easier, and a lot more fun, to feel love instead of fear.  It does take practice though if you’re not used to it.  Giggles help.

Do you meditate?

My mom taught me how to meditate when I was very young. She called it contemplating. I have had some pretty profound experiences meditating that still blow my mind – literally. (see the picture below) I’ve practiced my whole life, although I do get totally lazy and either forget or do it or do my version of quick fix meditating with my eyes open when I’m in the car or standing in line somewhere.  I’ll share more about that if you’d like – let’s get wackadoodle – one of my favorite made-up words to cover all that is well, wackadoodle.

While I was brainstorming a theater piece where I wanted to use my brain waves as an element in it, I discovered Brain Paint!

I had a meditation experience in the desert of New Mexico on the last day of shooting Searching for Angela Shelton that so blew my mind, literally, that I wanted to see what it would look like if my brain had had a paint brush.

So I had my brain hooked up and recorded by Brain Paint to see what kind of art my brain could create.   This technique is usually used as a healing tool for people to think about their issues and then literally see how their brain draws it.  It helps people heal.  But I wanted to use it from the artistic stand point.  I wanted to see what the best meditation experience I’d ever had looked like as an art piece.   So I got hooked up and I tried my best to get back to that place where I had felt a sense of total connection, peace, love and enlightenment.  I wasn’t able to completely get to where I had gotten in the desert of New Mexico, but I got pretty close.

This is my brain on meditation:

I love my beautiful mind!  This is just one still frame of a moving image too.  It looks exactly like how it felt – a dance party with Spirit.  Seeing that picture makes me want to meditate more.   Using my brain waves in an art project just proved to me that I’m damn clever (pat myself on my back) because the person there to meet with Brain Paint after me about an art project was only the head of Cirque de Soleil!  That made my day knowing I was on the same wave length with Cirque de Soleil!   Of course they have a hell of a lot more funding than I do, gosh darn it.  But alas, it showed me that I was ahead of my time, and ahead in line too!

I’m still working on how I can get what’s in my brain onto the stage, and it may take me ten more years but it’s a pretty cool I idea if I do say so myself.   I’m still brainstorming – literally.  In the meantime, I’m finishing the first draft of a science fiction book and my brain is buzzing about it.  The entire story came to me during a meditation.

Do you meditate?  If so, how?  What’s your favorite mediation?  What’s your most wackadoodle experience?

By contributor Joann Shelton

It is springtime in the park.  The new leaves on the trees are vibrant green.  Daffodils and narcissi dot the banks of the small lake where ducks have gathered to swim.  The flowers’ exhilarating fragrances beckon memories.  Sounds of quacking ducks, songbirds, and laughing children are carried through the air; and my heart expands as I breathe deeply of the love of life.

Children feed the ducks while proud parents watch from nearby benches in the warm spring glow.  Angela, my four-year old daughter; takes bread from my hand and runs off to join in while I sit with the other parents.

Angela enthusiastically flings pieces of bread into the swarm of quacking ducks.  Soon her little arm loses its rapid rhythm.  The bread is gone.  She begins chasing the baby ducks, attracting the annoyed attention of many parents, who turn to glare at me.

I know Angela will probably start to wail if I physically intervene.  Instead, I start to silently sing HU, an ancient name for God.  I often do this in times of stress to help me remain clam.  I ask what I should do, and open myself to guidance.  Divine Spirit whispers, “Be patient.”

I smile apologetically at the concerned parents as though everything is all right.  Soon Angela stops chasing the ducks and wanders toward me with a pouted lip.

I put my arms around her and ask, “Why are you chasing the ducks?”

“I want to take one home,” she says angrily.

“Well, Angela, if someone was chasing you and trying to take you away from your mother, would you want to go?”

“No,” she admits, looking down at the ground.

In a moment of inspiration, I ask, “Does the little duck know how much you love it?” as I stroke her hair.

She gives no response, so I continue, “If you tell the duck you love it and you will leave it with its mommy, maybe it will let you pet it.”

She looks up at me with her beautiful hazel-green eyes:  pools of familiarity and knowingness.  Suddenly she blurts, “OK,” and quickly runs to the ducks.

Angela squats down and puts her hand on the ground.  Then, to the surprise of everyone, including me, a baby duck walks right into her palm!

The parents and I gape as she pets this tiny, fluffy baby duck.  Time stands still for the exchange of love.

Then the little duck hops off her hand and goes back to its mother.  Angela, beaming with joy, runs to me with outstretched arms.  She hugs me tightly for a long, long time, while parents and children applaud and cheer.

Love touches everyone and everything, as my heart soars on this glorious spring day.  I silently thank the Holy Spirit and sing another HU.

Joann Shelton lives downtown Asheville, NC where she walks everywhere, tweets four letter words @fourletterwords and is finishing Back Road Girl, her autobiography.

For those who have followed my talks at the 140 conferences and at various crisis centers, or read the last chapter of my re-covered book, you know the story of “the two.”

Here is the most recent announcement I made about it for those who haven’t seen it:

Well, this past week “the two” were reunited.  I’ve heard many things about reunification with perpeperpetrators and victims, so called “reuniting the family.” I personally do not support those kinds of family values when you put the offender back into the home.

When my two friends were reunited, I thought, wow, here’s a whole new definition of reunification to take back that word.  My two friends were trafficked together in child slavery so when they met, they went on a road trip to take back road trips.  They have been taking back their lives for years so I wanted to introduce them.  I thought that they could have a much more in depth dialog about the abuse they had gone through than I could, having not been through child slavery myself.  I had no idea they would recognize each other.  I had no idea they would know each other as children. I had no idea they would have been in the same truck. Now, they are taking back much more than road trips, they are taking back their Light and wow do they shine!

Words cannot express the beauty of what me and a group of women got to witness this past week when we saw the two of them together.  Coming from the wicked horrible past of child slavery and being reunited after years of separation was not sad, it was powerful, lovely and delicate all at the same time. It made me utterly speechless – which is hard to do!

They requested that their identity be kept anonymous but here is a picture of their meeting.  I am eternally moved by the fact that the simple task of starting a conversation with strangers led to meeting life long friends that led to introducing two amazing bright lights that now shine even brighter.  I love you, squish.

Wow is all I can say.  I’m in awe.

My sister and I got lost in the forest. My stepmother had taken us to visit a friend of hers and Lisa and I had gone off in the woods while they talked in the kitchen.  We went so far out into the forest behind that lady’s house as we could. As the colors of dusk began to appear in the sky we realized we’d go so far into the trees that the way back was no longer clear to us. Trees surrounded every inch around us. There was something exciting about it and something frightening at the same time. What if no one found us? What if we were able to disappear and start a new life somewhere else?  Our ages dawned on us because we were suddenly very scared. We knew we were lost.

“What’re we going to do?” my sister asked, her eyes darting everywhere.
“We’re protected,” I told her, remembering the contemplations my mom taught me. There was always the Light and it would. “We’ll get out,” I told her.
“What was that sound your mom taught us?” my sister asked.
I made the one syllable meditation sound, “Huuu.” We began singing it there in the woods. She was nine and I was seven.

We sang and asked to be lead out of the forest. That’s when a ball of blue light appeared. It bounced in front of us. I’m not kidding, it’s true. A perfect orb of beautiful blue light bobbed in front of us. We both looked at each other like we were out of our little minds. We looked back at the ball and it was still there so we weren’t crazy. We followed it. It led us to a place in the forest where we were safe again and could find our way. Then it disappeared.

We never told anyone, but we were pretty good at keeping secrets.

Years later when I was interviewing my sister for my documentary, I pulled her aside as my cameraman was packing up the gear. I asked her, “Hey can I ask you something else? Do you remember when we were kids and were lost in the forest – “
“And that blue light appeared??” She finished my sentence for me.

I had a witness.

The Light still appears. I follow it where it leads me.

Ever wondered why things seem to disrupt in your life when things are all the sudden going wonderfully? When you decide to move forward and into a new paradigm, sometimes all hell breaks loose.

Rev. Beckwith speaks so well about that disruption.  Watch the whole thing or fast forward to his speech.   So inspiring!  There is lovely moment between a couple about to get married too.  I love this service.

This new edition of my book has an additional chapter that explains what happened up to today and how I’m keeping my promise to Anonymous and few very special angels.  I started the journey of “Searching for Angela Shelton” originally to inspire women to unite and when you read the end, you’ll see that I succeeded.  Although, I do not believe it was me, I was simply a vehicle for Spirit to work through. It has been an honor.

A Little Slice of Heaven

Opportunities to meditate are all around us at every moment of every day.  The above photo is certainly a moment of reflection.  I just had to share it.  There is also something very meditative about walking barefoot.  I’ve been accused of always having dirty feet and it is still true to this day. I walk barefoot every chance I get.  Turns out, it is actually very good for your health to walk barefoot.

Adam Sternbergh from New York Magazine online writes:  Look, it’s not your fault. It’s your shoes. Shoes are bad. I don’t just mean stiletto heels, or cowboy boots, or tottering espadrilles, or any of the other fairly obvious foot-torture devices into which we wincingly jam our feet. I mean all shoes. Shoes hurt your feet. They change how you walk.

I love to practice walking meditation and it’s certainly better barefoot.  No matter where you are, whether in the city or the country, a good moment of walking meditation is so amazing and helpful to your well-being.  Although it gets tough taking your shoes off in the city.   I do it at some parks (and avoid doggie doo) and on certain dirt paths, I’ll flip off my shoes.

David Wolfe writes:  Most of us is not aware that the earth is mobilized with free anti-oxidant electrons.  Those electrons pour into our body at the speed of light, the minute we touch the earth barefoot.

The more that you can be connected, directly via the skin, to the earth, the longer you will live and the less inflammation you will suffer from.  One minute is better than zero minutes.  15 minutes is better than nothing, an hour is better than 15 minutes, 5 hours is better than 1 hour, 10 hours is better than 5 hours etc.  You get the idea, the more you can be grounded, the better.

I was in a relationship when I was much younger with someone who had one major complaint about me – that my feet were always dirty.  Well, they still are!  Thank God.   It is a wonderful how having your feet against the Earth opens up your heart and your health!  Take your shoes off and meditate on your life sometime.

I am fascinated by the small pieces that make up the patterns and processes of our lives.  For me, there is a very thin line between science and spirituality.  What if the only difference between our lives was perception?  You could dramatically transform your life to any life you choose by altering your perceptions.  Ah, ha!  If you keep repeating a reality to yourself, you make that reality appear.  Believe it and then see it.

According to Bruce Lipton, we are controlled by our perceptions!  We are actually simple creatures with very complicated perceptions.  What if the world is not what you thought it was?  Bruce Lipton talks about how the belief that our health and fate were pre-programmed in our genes may very well be an illusion. This is a long video but it makes my brain all giddy and titillated like it’s being flirted with!   I love this stuff!!

This video is a very detailed explanation of why I talk about the power of Squish! You can change your mind and your life.