Celebrate Life

Cynthia Sue Larson celebrating life in a treehouse in Oregon. See Cynthia summarize this RealityShifters on YouTube!

Celebrate Life

"The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate." - Oprah Winfrey
Happy New Year! I love the feeling of getting a fresh start in life every time I move to a new place, start a new project, and start a new year. I love the sense of fresh energy and hopefulness and the feeling that anything is possible! When we celebrate these turning points in life, we get a terrific energetic boost.

New year's resolutions don't have to be entirely focused on restrictions and constraints... it is possible to take our positive intentions and transform them into ongoing celebrations that continually inspire us to be and do those things we desire when we focus on what most excites, tantalizes and enthuses us. Thinking about and taking steps forward according to such positive ideas is invites us on a celebratory journey through life,. One of the ways I celebrated life this past month was by spending a night in a beautiful treehouse, comfortably situated some thirty feet high in the air, surrounded by beautiful trees. I had longed to stay in a treehouse since I was a little girl, so this experience was tremendously meaningful to me. There is a special kind of joyful feeling from such an experience, which stays with me long after my time in that enchanted treehouse is gone.

This time of a brand new year is a perfect time to think about celebrating life in ways that truly make you happiest, based on what you've come to know about yourself. At the start of this new year, this is a great time to imagine it will be in your life within the next year... and write it down in a special journal of what you are thankful for, what you are dreaming of, and what you desire. There is something marvelous about combining a gratitude journal with your favorite hopes and dreams, and I have found that things I write down in such a book come true amazingly fast and easily. If you are grateful that you have a really good friend, give some thought to that special friendship, and write a sentence or two about what you love most about your friend. If your health is good in some ways, take some time to feel gratitude for all the things you are able to do. If you'd love to travel somewhere, or spend time in a special place, imagine yourself in those places, and write down a description of being there.

I invite you to celebrate life this year in two fabulous ways... by having fun with more money and better health! I hope you will read and enjoy my new brand new book, RealityShifters Guide to High Energy Money, as it inspires you to thoroughly enjoy finding, keeping, and growing your finances with inspirational stories of real life monetary reality shifts. I am also thrilled to invite you to join me in the I Am Healthy Project by declaring the powerful affirmation, "I am healthy." The target for this project is to start off by generating a critical mass of one million people who are all aligned with the same powerful and transformational idea... an idea that has the power to transform the world.

Let’s Connect

Would you like to view the video summary of this RealityShifters on YouTube? Feel free to check it out, as well as video shorts summarizing other recent RealityShifters newsletters. And remember to keep asking, "How good it can get?" every time you'd like to find out.
Love always,
Cynthia Sue Larson
email Cynthia at cynthia@realityshifters.com

Enjoy Divine Balance

Cynthia Sue Larson in Sonoma, California. See Cynthia summarize this RealityShifters on YouTube video!

Enjoy Divine Balance

"So divinely is the world organized that every one of us, in our place and time, is in balance with everything else." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I was on my way to an event in San Francisco the other evening, when I ended up getting a bit turned around, not sure which way to go. I walked over to the nearest building, and asked a gentleman in the lobby directions at the very same moment that I noticed there was a wedding in progress. A feeling of amazement washed over me as I realized I had arrived at precisely the right time to see the bride and groom holding hands on the steps, and taking their vows. In this equisite enchanted moment, I knew I was in exactly the right place at the right time, and not really lost at all. In fact, this little detour added a richer emotional depth to my evening, as I marveled at the beauty of the moment being so deliciously sublime.

The more I practice meditation and mindfulness in my daily life, the easier it is for me to feel in balance with what is going on, even when it is not going according to the plans I had in mind. A mindful attitude gives me a unique opportunity every time things seem to be going slightly (or very) wrong, helping me keep an open mind to considering the possibility that everything is fine. Such a relaxed, positive mindset has been credited with contributing to creative breakthroughs and inventions, and also has been rather closely associated with happiness, and reduction in stress... so there are many reasons to remind ourselves this holiday season to stay relaxed even when we start to feel stressed out due to things not being the way we expected.

We can all benefit from adopting positive self talk about ourselves and our health, such as is recommended at this month's award winning web site, I Am Healthy Radio. I am honored to be part of a very special I Am Healthy Radio teleseminar on How to Eat Well, Look Good, and Feel Great today, December 6th, from 3pm to 6pm PST. You can also listen to me talk about my journey and reality shifts as part of the I Am Healthy University i-Heal Education Series
any time.

Let’s Connect

Would you like to view the video summary of this RealityShifters on YouTube? Feel free to check it out, as well as video shorts summarizing other recent RealityShifters newsletters. And remember to keep asking, "How good it can get?" every time you’d like to find out.
Love always,
Cynthia Sue Larson
email Cynthia at cynthia@realityshifters.com

Experience Good Timing & Flow

Cynthia Sue Larson in Sonoma, California. See Cynthia summarize this RealityShifters on YouTube video!

Experience Good Timing & Flow

"Don't rely on someone else for your happiness and self worth. Only you can be responsible for that. If you can't love and respect yourself - no one else will be able to make that happen. Accept who you are - completely; the good and the bad - and make changes as YOU see fit - not because you think someone else wants you to be different."
- Stacey Charter
I enjoyed watching the World Series baseball games this past month -- especially the players who managed to consistently stay calm despite the pressures of performing at their opponents' home stadium in front of thousands of people in a nationally televised game. Clearly, being on top of one's game requires not just skill, but also an inner quality of character that helps ensure a relaxed attitude, complete focus, good timing, and seemingly effortless flow.

What kind of mindset brings us most readily to that optimal state of experiencing relaxation in the face of tremendous opposition, so we can maintain good timing and flow? When I reflect on this question, I get the answer: acceptance. Accepting ourselves as we are, and the world as it is, from a place of loving oneself even if other people might think of us as atypical, a misfit, or even a "freak."

Attaining this kind of self acceptance that ensures an optimal blend of being relaxed, focused and poised is something each one of us can cultivate for ourselves, and it starts in a state of unconditionally loving oneself. We can take daily check-points of how we are feeling, in order to pay closer attention to how relaxed versus tense we are, how loving versus fearful we are, and how joyful versus sad we feel. Whatever we are feeling thus becomes a kind of set point, which we can observe and accept, noting things we would like to change in our lives that we have the ability to improve, and making a commitment to ourselves to make those improvements, always unconditionally loving and accepting ourselves just as we are, every step of the way.

It turns out that this kind of openness and mindfulness is also the optimal approach to parenting, as Dr. Shefali Tsabary points out in her wonderful book, The Conscious Parent. When we embrace the totality of who we are, including our imperfections, we empower ourselves and those around us to be the best we can be at who we are.

Let’s Connect

Would you like to view the video summary of this RealityShifters on YouTube? Feel free to check it out, as well as video shorts summarizing other recent RealityShifters newsletters. And remember to keep asking, "How good it can get?" every time you’d like to find out.
Love always,
Cynthia Sue Larson
email Cynthia at cynthia@realityshifters.com

Seeing Loved Ones Before They Arrive

Cynthia Sue
Larson at Asilomar, California. See Cynthia summarize this RealityShifters on
YouTube video!

"Love is like magic
And it always will be

For love still remains
Life's sweet mystery

Love works in ways
That are wondrous and strange

And there's nothing in life
That love cannot change"

- Helen Steiner Rice


Thanks to RealityShifters reader, Kate, of Handwriting That Works, I recently heard of the Vardøgr (vard-deh-AY-grr), which is a Norwegian word meaning "premonitory sound or sight of a person before he arrives." A similar concept is known in Finland as Etiäinen, meaning a precognitive vision or dream. These words are used to describe experiences when one sees or hears a family member or guest before the person in question actually arrives. The July 2010 and August 2010 issues of RealityShifters featured several accounts of this particular type of reality shift including one in which I saw my front door open and heard my daughters voice about thirty or forty minutes before she actually appeared. I now wonder how many of the reality shift experiences I have had over the years might fall under this general heading as well, such as these two examples shared in my book, RealityShifts: When
Consciousness Changes the Physical World:

* My daughters saw me enter their bedroom and turn on their light, waking them up (Reality Shifts: pp. 114-115) * A woman requested a business card twice (Reality Shifts: pp. 138-139, 142)

The Vardøgr or Etiäinen concept also gets me thinking about a
couple of experiences involving bilocation and time loops that I have
mentioned previoiusly in RealityShifters:

* A woman entered an Albuquerque hotel twice * A woman saw me on Solano Avenue on a day I was actually at a holistic expo in another city

I am especially intrigued by situations where people reported having seen me bilocating, since the people reporting having seen me were people who knew me well, and in both bilocation instances I was in a meditative, relaxed state of mind as I was thinking about being elsewhere. My daughters were awakened by my double’s entrance to their room as I said "Good mroning," and turned on their light switch, filling their room with light. They were surprised to run to my room and find me "still in bed," when in my own experience that morning, I had never out of bed... only contemplated it. The woman who told me that she had seen me walking down Solano Avenue was excited to tell me about this, because she knew I was scheduled to be attending a full-day holistic expo in a different city that day, so she was therefore quite surprised to see me enjoying a stroll down the street. Strolling down that street is exactly what I was daydreaming about at that point in time, as I was sitting indoors many miles away!

Another experience I once had while on a bike ride with my daughter comes to mind as being similar to the Vardøgr, even though it involved trees instead of people. My oldest daughter had asked me to join her on an expedition to ride our bicycles out along a mountain road to visit a couple of trees she had seen and loved from a distance of several miles, viewed from one mountain ridge to another. I noticed as we arrived at a place that seemed close to our goal that this idea would be challenging, as a forest of trees lay between the road we traveled on and my daughters favorite trees. Surprisingly, as I rode my bicycle while turning my head to see if I could catch even a glimpse of my daughter's favorite trees, I suddenly saw a completely unobscured view of those two trees appear before me just as
clearly as everything else I was looking at. This vision of the two trees appeared in a particular place on the horizon, replacing the forest that was actually there... and lasting for almost a full minute. As the vision faded from view, I was so stunned by this vision that I excitedly told my daughter, "I know which way to go to find your trees!" We followed the direction of my vision, and found this guidance to be completely accurate. The two trees were indeed located exactly where I had just "seen" them to be.

In all these experiences I feel inspired by the idea that we are capable of traveling to where we wish to be in such a way that others observe us there... and sometimes when we daydream, we might just get home (or somewhere else wonderful) a little bit ahead of ourselves!

Let’s Connect

Would you like to view the video summary of this RealityShifters on
YouTube? Feel free to check it out, as well as video shorts summarizing other recent RealityShifters newsletters. And remember to keep asking, "How good it can get?" every time you’d like to find out.

Love always,
Cynthia Sue Larson
email Cynthia at cynthia@realityshifters.com

Communicate With Past & Future Selves

RealityShifters subscriber Terry with Cynthia at the SEED Language of Spirit Conference in Albuquerque. See Cynthia Sue Larson summarize this RealityShifters on YouTube video!

Communicate With Past & Future Selves


"Suppose we were able to share meanings freely without a compulsive urge to impose our view or conform to those of others and without distortion and self-deception. Would this not constitute a real revolution in culture."
- David Bohm

Can you imagine what your life might be like today if you could talk to yourself in the past? Can you further imagine the possibility that your future self might be giving you some guidance at this very moment? What would a world feel like in which such communication through time was commonplace? These were some of the questions I explored in my pre-conference talk this past month at the SEED Language of Spirit conference, Listening to Future Selves, Reviewing Our Pasts. As I mentioned in my conference presentation, one key to accessing all aspects of ourselves is by returning to a state of experiencing a timeless sense of Nowhen... which is a transcendent meditative state of mind in which most of our preconceived labels and habitual ways of thinking do not apply. This way of being in the world without being overly obsessed with Ego and its attendant fears, and free from the usual eagerness to reject what we presume to be too different from ourselves provides us with an optimal perspective from which we can most fully realize an interconnected awareness of self and all that is.

RealityShifters subscriber Gracie Gail of Starry Heart Earth with Cynthia at the SEED Language of Spirit Conference in Albuquerque.

The Language of Spirit dialogue was exceptional for being a deep conversation, initiated and moderated by original dialogue participant, Leroy Little Bear. Conference organizer Shawn Secatero helped bring together dialogue participants to delve into the topic of time travel this year, creating an opportunity for a sharing of ideas between indigenous scholars and elders, linguists and scientists from radically different walks of life and places in the world. The dialogue moderator, Leroy Little Bear, selected which person would have the next opportunity to speak, at which point that person would talk uninterrupted as long as that person felt inspired. A special rapport developed in this dialogue, which became evident as various ideas wove their way in and out of the dialogue, creating a deeply transformative conversation.

Physicist David Bohm's concept of dialogue as a way of communicating with no predefined purpose or agenda, other than exploring where a group of twenty or more people's conversation may go, is different than discussion or debate. There is careful attention paid to the process of thought in such dialogues, which are conducted along the lines of the David Bohm's quote at the top of this page. The main idea is that we stop defending our own ideas and start more fully listening to people saying things that we might previously have been blocked or felt insensitive to.

Deep listening is the key to good dialogue, and this is something we can do with ourselves and in every relationship in our lives. Finding a state of deep listening... of deep conversation... without imposing old preexisting views or conforming to others' views is a transformative state of consciousness. From such a place, it is possible to more fully appreciate and become aware of all aspects of oneself, including our past and future selves. It is also possible to move past a sense that it is always the other person who is wrong or prejudiced and not listening... so we can become alert and attentive to the way our minds sometimes move away from what we think may disturb us.

Let’s Connect

Would you like to view the video summary
of this RealityShifters on
YouTube? This short video and other RealityShifters videos summarize monthly RealityShifters newsletters starting in May 2009. Thanks so very much for being you, and for remembering to ask in every situation, "How good it can get?"

Love always,
Cynthia Sue Larson
email Cynthia at cynthia@realityshifters.com

Loving the Life You Live

See Cynthia Sue Larson summarize this RealityShifters on YouTube video!

Loving the Life You Live

"It turns out that in the great celestial card game,
there's no such thing as a bad hand."
- Julie Bond Genovese
When my phone service went "on the fritz" during the second half of July, I was grateful for my many years of meditative practice. Rather than descending into a state of agitation, despair, frustration, or blame as I could not even hear a dial tone for days on end, I savored the unexpected gift of a stay-at-home sabbatical. Without the usual interruptions from phone calls or emails, I appreciated how I could better turn my attention to some projects I had long been meaning to work on, and others that required I make and take time away from phone and internet dialogue... and I had a wonderful time!

There's a lot to be said in favor of recognizing our opportunities to appreciate whatever comes our way. Like a good potluck dinner party, much of what we get out of life depends on what we bring to it. In terms of emotional satisfaction with our lives, our attitude has a good deal more to do with our ultimate success than any other factor. While a person with a negative attitude might give up or get caught up in endless cycles of trauma and drama, someone with a positive attitude can shrug off hardships and difficulties and consistently feel successful in life.

So what is the key to learning to love the lives we are living, even (perhaps especially) when so many things seem far from satisfactory? Recent research studies show that those who practcie the art of focusing their minds to find something to appreciate in whatever experiences and situations come their way are known as "resilient," and enjoy the benefits of reduced cortisol (the so-called "stress hormone"). A reduction in stress tends to ensure these people live happier, more prosperous lives than those who dwell on injustices. As a wise quote from A Course in Miracles states, "I am not the victim of the world I see." I love the gentle way this concept of releasing and letting go of a tendency to fall into the seemingly endless cycle of egocentrism in which a person feels victimized, and then either seeks someone to play the role of rescuer, or becomes aggressively self-protective. As author Melody Brooke points out, it is possible to transition from such unhealthy patterns to a Cycle of Compassion.

I read a wonderful book this month called, Nothing Short of Joy, from which I got the quote at the top of this month's ezine. The author of this book, Julie Bond Genovese, was born a genetic dwarf, which meant she faced a number of challenges in life in addition to all the usual ones. While Julie could at many points in her life become righteously angry, accusatory toward those who treated her unfairly, or escaped into any number of psychologically protective defenses, she instead found a way to find friends and family she could communicate her true feelings to in a way that helped everyone involved transform and grow from the experience.

I would truly love to see you at the 12th Annual International Language of Spirit Conference happening in Albuquerque, New Mexico August 15th through the 17th. I hope you can join the most interesting group of linguists, physicists and indigenous scholars I know at a conference devoted to the fascinating subject of time travel. I am looking forward to giving a talk on Listening to Future Selves, Reviewing Our Pasts, and hope to see you there!

Let’s Connect

Would you like to view the video summary of this RealityShifters on YouTube? Feel free to check it out, as well as other video shorts summarizing other recent RealityShifters newsletters. Thanks so very much for being you, and for remembering to ask in every situation, "How good it can get?"
 
Cynthia Sue Larson
email Cynthia at cynthia@realityshifters.com

Look Back on Your Past with Love

See Cynthia Sue Larson summarize this ezine on YouTube video!

Look Back on Your
Past with Love


"Nothing changes more consistently than
the past;
... the past that influences our lives is not what actually happened
but what we believe happened."
- Gerald W. Johnson


The provocative statement, "History is written by the victors," draws attention to natural human bias that reframes events according to current views and pesrpectives. We can feel strengthened by the way we mentally review our past, and as simple an idea as reflecting upon how much better things are now than they might have turned out can tremendously improve our ability to prosper through a heightened sense of confidence and commitment, as one study reports this month how looking back is key to moving forward. A book I read this month, The Imposter, is written from precisesly this kind of counterfactual reflection, telling the story of how a young man who ran away from home as a youth mastered some important life lessons that helped him overcame drug addictions and a variety of other negative life situations.

Sometimes we can look back at reality shifts we have experienced in our lives and see how things turned out better because of the shift. While I was writing this July 2010 newsletter, I took a break to make dinner while alone in the house. I had just put a macaroni and cheese casserole in the oven, when I noticed the front door was wide open, inviting sunshine and a fresh breeze but I had left it closed and locked. I could hear voices of my daughter and her friend outside. I said, "Hello!" to them, and turned away from the front door to wash my hands. When I turned back around, I saw the front door was closed and locked... so I opened it and looked outside, but
saw no sign of anyone. I wondered to myself, "Where did they go?" as my telephone rang, and I received a call from a friend wondering if I had time to talk. I replied "Yes," marveling quietly that I had just finished making dinner, and was still alone in the house. My friend and I talked for about twenty minutes, until my daughter arrived, which turned out to be just long enough for me to hear all about the wonderful book on angels my friend has just written. I asked my daughter and her friend if they had arrived home about twenty minutes earlier and opened the front door, and they said they had not been anywhere near the house at that time. The thought occurred to me that I had experienced a reality shift in which I caught a glimpse of another possible reality that showed itself to me like a truncated branch on a tree of possibilities. I had heard my daughter arrive home twenty minutes earlier... but then it was clear she had not arrived yet, and I had a chance to talk with my friend on the phone before my daughter actually appeared.

Observation of reality shifts is necessarily an exercise in noting changes in the past. If we didn't remember things being very different, we would not notice reality shifts at all. We would not be surprised, for example, if suddenly our keys were in a place they had not been before, because we wouldn't remember them being in any other place. There is a possibility in some reality shift experiences that our ability to reframe our memory of what or where something was can greatly influence physical reality. The important question thus becomes: Do we literally change our past, simply by changing our memories? When I encounter this kind of reality shift, I find myself wondering, What if all possibilities exist together simultaneously in many parallel worlds, all being tried at once by our consciousness which selects the one path which is agreed to have the most value? I sense at such times that there seems to be an organizing force afoot!

Psychiatrist Sigmund Freud noted how suggestible people can be to envisioning entirely different pasts in psychotherapy sessions, and now, many decades later, psychologists observe that on average, about 25% of a randomly selected group of adults will readily change their view of the past without consciously being aware they are doing so after having been provided with prompts suggesting possible early childhood memories. The field of advertising benefits from fond imagined memories when it attempts to remind us of happy moments in our past that we previously had never remembered, and such ads can occasionally be seen in TV and print ads.

There is a striking similarity between imagining something and remembering something, since similar parts of our brains operate in both cases. Studies have shown that people who practice something only using mental visualization and imagination can improve as much as those who physically practice, as the connection between our imaginations and our physical bodies is very strong. Asking yourself what part of your past could benefit from beomg reviewed more positively, with a view to recognizing ways you grew into being a better person, can greatly enhance your prosperity and well-being. There is healing possible to you now, in the form of simply asking this question.

Looking back on your past with love can be a form of time travel... a way to reinforce your own personal story in ways that strengthen those attributes you most care to develop. Simply imagining that you are being guided by your best possible future self, or high self, can immediately inspire you to imagine possibilities that otherwise might never have occurred to you, and help you to see your life from a position of more strength, courage, compassion and appreciation than you have ever felt before. You can learn a whole lot more about time travel at a conference dedicated to exploring it this year: the 12th Annual
International Language of Spirit Conference happening in Albuquerque, New Mexico August 15th through the 17th. Discover what linguists, physicists and indigenous scholars have to say about time travel. I am honored to be part of this year's dialogue, and will be giving a talk there on Listening to Future Selves, Reviewing Our Pasts. I look forward to seeing you there!

Let’s Connect

Would you like to view the video summary
of this ezine on YouTube? Feel free to check it out, as well as other video shorts summarizing other recent RealityShifters newsletters. Thanks so very much for being you, and for remembering to ask in every situation, "How good it can get?"



Love always,

Cynthia Sue Larson

email Cynthia at cynthia@realityshifters.com