I've always been a big reader, though the world of COVID has moved me more toward fiction than nonfiction because of the stress release it offers. I've also started listening to audiobooks while I sew, and that helped me polish off 67 books last year. I read in a variety of areas, but I especially enjoy fantasy, murder/mystery, and historical fiction. These are some of my favorite books from 2022. Trying to name my favorite of the year is impossible, but if you want the books I've recommended to the most people, they are Matrix, Hacienda, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, The Vanishing Half, The Gilded Ones, Honor, The Last Karankawas, and The Hero of This Book. So most of them. :) 

Murder/Mystery:
Before She Was Found by Heather Gudenkauf
Now Is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson
The Book of Cold Cases by Simone St. James (This also ventures into supernatural.)
​The Overnight Guest by Heather Gudenkauf
A Madness of Sunshine by Nalini Singh
The Maid by Nita Prose 
The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas (This is also supernatural and historical fiction.)

Fantasy:
The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean (feminist topics)
The Gilded Ones and its sequel The Merciless Ones by Namina Forna 
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
The primary four books of The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater

Historical Fiction:
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson (but not so much its sequel)
Matrix by Lauren Groff 
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab (This also is supernatural.)
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

Romance:
Instructions for Dancing by Nicola Yoon 

Memoir:
Somebody's Daughter by Ashley Ford 

Fiction:
The Last Karankawas by Kimberly Garza 
The Hero of This Book by Elizabeth McCracken 
Honor by by Thrity Umrigar 

©2023 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

I’ve been having neck pain in the past few weeks that I knew was of an emotional, metaphysical or spiritual origin. I’ve been trying to figure out what is causing it so that I can heal the problem and relieve the pain. When I began meditating on it a few weeks ago, the first word I heard was “Cecilia.” I assumed this meant Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of musicians, because there is no one named Cecilia currently in my life. I remember this tidbit of Catholic school information because there was a nun at my school who was Sister Cecilia. She had been given the name Cecilia when she entered the convent because she was a musician. (However, as an aside, everyone called her Sister Bonjour because she was French and greeted all the toddlers she was in charge of in the morning before school with a beautiful “bonjour.”)
 
I was initially very puzzled as to why I should call on St. Cecilia for help with my neck pain. I’m not a musician. I can’t sing. I can’t play an instrument. I am even terrible at remembering the names of songs or bands. St. Cecilia just isn’t someone I would think would be too relevant to me. I decided to break from my meditation and Google what else St. Cecilia was the patroness of. Some saints are patron saints of many people, places and things. St. Anne, the grandmother of Jesus, for example, is known as the patron saint of “Brittany, Canada, Detroit, carpenters, childless people, equestrians, grandparents, homemakers/housewives, lace makers, lost articles, Fasnia (Tenerife), Mainar, miners, mothers, moving house, old-clothes dealers, poverty, pregnancy, seamstresses, stablemen, sterility, and children.” But St. Cecilia? She’s just the patron saint of musicians and other music related things. That idea hit a rapid dead end, so I went back to meditating on my neck pain.
 
I continued seeing other symbols in my meditation that weren’t too helpful in understanding why I should call on St. Cecilia for help, but eventually it came to me. The neck is part of the fifth chakra. The fifth chakra is about communication and being heard. Music is often vocal and is a way of communicating. Hence, St. Cecilia suddenly made a lot more sense.

In order to help me understand this, my spirit guides relied on my combined knowledge of Catholicism and Hinduism. For my spirit guides, they don’t see any problem with mixing faiths together in a fusion spirituality. What matters to them is healing and serving the highest good. There is no one faith that has the market cornered on those things. The Other Side doesn’t care what religion claims what. In my visions, I see Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish, Hindu, Pagan, and Native American symbols. The healing work I do integrates all of them without judgment or prejudice. Some aspects of spirituality, such as holy water, mystics, pyramids, labyrinths, and animal guides, are found in different religious and spiritual traditions in very diverse cultures around the world.
 
When it all boils down, the phenomenon humans label as “God” is too intense, too immense, too pervasive, too all-powerful and too all-consuming to be contained by any one religious tradition. The Spirit of pure love, energy and light pervades all attempts to find it, and as humans, it is our job to access this Spirit however we can encounter it in our lives. Spirituality belongs to no one group, and we all have access to its gifts. We should actively use these gifts to help heal ourselves and our world.
 
As I was Googling for Creative Commons or public domain artworks of St. Cecilia for this blog post, I came upon the statue showing St. Cecilia’s three neck wounds. Further research found that, “The legend about Cecilia’s death says that after being struck three times on the neck with a sword, she lived for three days, and asked the pope to convert her home into a church.” Suddenly I had an additional understanding of why St. Cecilia might be able to help me with releasing the trauma in my neck that was causing me pain. The sword marks on the neck of this statue of St. Cecilia are fairly accurate for where my neck pain is. While many saints were beheaded over the centuries, I suspect that it is the combination of her fatal neck trauma and her work with the fifth chakra that led my spirit guides to instruct me to ask for St. Cecilia’s help with my healing. As I continue working on healing the emotional traumas and past-life traumas that created the metaphysically rooted pain in my neck, I ask for Saint Cecilia’s assistance in my efforts.
 
© 2017 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

When my now ex-husband and I were in marriage therapy, our couple’s therapist would recommend books from time to time. To his surprise, I usually would read the book by the next session. One of the authors he mentioned periodically was David Deida, though he always followed it with a remark along the lines of, “DON’T read his work. I don’t want to have to spend an entire session devoted to you ranting about his views of women.” So I never read Deida while we were in joint therapy.

However, more recently I picked up his Finding God through Sex: Awakening the One of Spirit Through the Two of Flesh. When I told my individual therapist that I was reading a work of Deida’s, she replied, “How can you stand his views of women?” Clearly there is a pattern here. They both are right. I found some of his views of women downright offensive. However, if one is able to see past Deida’s erroneous thoughts around women and some of his bizarre logic, there is quite a bit of wisdom in his work. It’s rare to find a book that has so many major problems as this one does yet which really stimulates thinking and brings new and helpful ideas into one’s worldview so that the total outcome from the book is positive.

Finding God through Sex is rooted in the premise that men are seeking freedom through sex and women are seeking love. Deida believes that men use sex to escape from their responsibilities in life and to basically wear themselves out to a point of falling asleep. Women, on the other hand, use sex to connect and create intimacy. Women are trying to tune in while men are trying to tune out. Deida is proposing that both sexes can work with their natural predilections to enhance the other’s sexual experience and to connect with the great cosmic love (also known as God) that we are all part of. To create this connection with “God” in the more spiritual and cosmic sense, all people must work past their involvement in the physical and sexual details of the moment to surrender to love on a much deeper level than we are used to doing.

Deida argues that for most people, sexual awakening in a spiritual sense is often the last part of an awakening to happen. He believes most people fail to apply what they’ve learned in the rest of their lives to sexual experiences. Thus, when most people have their so-called midlife crises, what they are actually experiencing is a dissatisfaction with the shallowness of how they live their current lives. Deida argues that people should not leave their marriages but instead should work on expanding their love outward rather than focusing inward, learning to surrender to the love that is the “God” within all of us which will in turn create deeper meaning in every aspect of our lives. This love will provide the happiness and fulfill the desire that is unquenchable by anything of this world yet it will happen while remaining fully in this world. While this is a beautiful notion, it will only work if both partners are willing to explore and work towards this change in sexuality and life beliefs. For many, a partner change becomes necessary at this point to find someone who, as Deida says, matches direction in life and depth in love.

This book is a series of essays that explore wisdom and exercises that one can do to develop one’s sexual awakening. While Deida argues that the book could be practiced by someone who is celibate, it really is meant for couples in monogamous, long-term relationships. Finding God through Sex is overwhelmingly heterosexual and rooted in stereotypical ideas about male and female desire; I would not recommend it to anyone who is not a Kinsey 0. While some of Deida’s ideas are true, others are nothing more than cultural creations that Deida has locked onto. In particular, his warped idea of female sexuality includes makeup and clothing as how women can find their divine sexual selves. He fails to see that clothing and makeup are actually socially constructed ideas about what women should be, not what their deeper feminine truths are. As Deida describes his ideas of how women should explore their sexuality, he creates a fantasy girls’ night in where the women dress each other in lingerie and S&M costumes. This event resembles no girls’ night I’ve ever attended and is really nothing more than a male masterbatory fantasy. That’s not to say that Deida isn’t a great erotic writer. The beginning of each chapter starts with a very vivid and explicit recollection of sexual experiences Deida has had which leaves the reader pondering whether Deida has slept with every woman in his community. Were Deida to write a work of spiritual erotic fiction which understood women’s sexual fantasies just a bit more than this book, I suspect he would have a best seller on his hands.

It is not until the end of the book that Deida begins to explore the idea that we all have masculine and feminine sides and that there is a bit of both in each of us. His image of a river bank and the river as two lovers who shape each other is incredibly beautiful. To him, though, the gender spectrum is not very fluid, and while we might contain some of the opposing sex’s characteristics, those are just minor things to be explored and then left to be. The small amount of gender fluidity he discusses is located with his discussions of BDSM, rape fantasies, and other kinkier sexual things thus leaving the reader pondering whether he thinks that gender fluidity may just be a phase that each of us needs to explore before we come into our true heterosexual gender binary selves.

I don’t know that any woman would want to take it on, but I feel that the book could have been a five star book if Deida had co-written it with a strong and powerful woman who could have whacked Deida upside the head every time he began supplementing wisdom with his personal fantasies. The book would have benefitted greatly from a true female perspective rather than the warped one that Deida presents from this heterosexual man cave. Despite its lack of perspective at times, Finding God through Sex is a really good work about how couples can transform their sex lives into something much more powerful than they have ever experienced before.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

A great deal of controversy arose on the internet in recent weeks about Pope Francis meeting with Kim Davis, the Casey County, Kentucky clerk who went to jail to defend her religiously based belief that she did not have to issue same sex marriage licences despite the recent judgment of the US Supreme Court stating otherwise. I am not a fan of Davis as I am a strong proponent of same sex marriage. I also recognize, as do most rational people, that if one’s religion interferes with one’s job, then one either needs to change one’s religion or one’s job. Defying the US Supreme Court is not a good solution.

It boggles my mind that nothing I've read so far on about Pope Francis and Kim Davis has come from a compassionate point of view. Almost all the articles have focused on whether or not Pope Francis was “tricked” into meeting with Davis. Many have screamed foul that a pope who has publicly supported non-judgment of homosexuals was actually a secret supporter of conservative reform movements.

I haven’t read anything that brings up the "love thy enemy" idea that Jesus himself seemed to be a fan of. In Matthew 5:44, Jesus is quoted as stating, “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (NIV). To me, if Pope Francis was doing the Biblically Christian thing, meeting with his enemy and praying for her was completely in line with the work set forth for him by Jesus. Kim Davis is a human being, albeit a misguided one at this point. By speaking to her and/or praying for her, the Pope could have been hoping to change her heart on a much deeper level than just this issue. It takes a brave soul to face one’s enemy in peace rather than just throwing insults from behind the safety of an internet wall.

Davis claims that the Pope told her to "stay strong" which may also be taken completely out of context. Any of us who were in such a harsh national spotlight as she is would be under tremendous stress. It's the kind of thing that leads many people to commit suicide, something the Catholic Church is very much against. Staying strong may simply be a reminder to her not to give in to the negativity that is surrounding her. I certainly don't deny that Davis is attracting negativity to her through her own thoughts and actions, but she is still a human being who could learn, change and grow from this experience.

There seems to be a lot of amnesia around the Biblical stories of Jesus meeting with outcasts of his society; Pope Francis and Davis meeting certainly could fit into that image as well. Jesus helped the blind, the deaf, the lepers, the lame, the dead and the poor (Luke 7: 21-23). Jesus commanded his disciples to love one another (John 13:34). Jesus sang the praises of the Samaritan traveler who reached out in mercy to the Jew who had been beaten and robbed even though Samaritans and Jews were not on friendly terms (Luke 10:29-37). Furthermore, rather than encouraging the stoning of an adulterous woman, Jesus encouraged those without sin to throw the first stone (John 8:5-11). He was not afraid of working with the outcasts of his society and showing them compassion and forgiveness. By meeting with someone who is an unpopular outcast in our modern society, Pope Francis has laid an example for bridging divides and helping find peaceful resolution with those like Kim Davis who are filled with anger, hatred, and bitterness but who erroneously pinpoint their very human actions on God.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC 

Last week I received a message through Meetup from a (now former) member of the group I lead there. It was titled, “too expensive.” She wrote in the body of the message, “I thought that this meet up was free. Asking for 10.00 every time healers, myself included come together to do work for the planet is a little much to as of people. Too bad money trumps light workers from coming together and doing there work together as a community.” (All errors are from the original author.)

This person was one who had been a member of the group for about four weeks but who had not attended any of the actual meetings. She’s an owner of a local retail store in a non-spiritual field but is not a professional lightworker from what I can find on the internet. I have never advertised the group as totally free, so that was her error for which she was holding me accountable. I have advertised meetings as costing between free and $25 with most being $10. Clearly she read what she wanted to in that sentence.

As I mentioned this to my kids, they asked, “Don’t you have to pay for the space you are meeting in?” Correct! My high school aged children were able to do the basic math of running a meetup group in a way that this business-owning woman could not. Meetup currently charges $180 per year for the first group one runs (and two “free” ones after that). One then has to find space to meet in. Many of the “free” spaces around town require a minimum member of attendees and/or a minimum purchase of food that is often unhealthy and/or filled with gluten. Since 75% of my group has issues around food (including me with gluten and egg sensitivities), that type of option doesn’t work well for us. Many public places also don’t allow for privacy which is necessary for the type of group I lead. Hence, we meet in private spaces to create an atmosphere that is appropriate to the healing work we do. Finally, I do a lot of reading and prep work for the group and give out handouts. All of that creates expenses as well. Even the federal government recognizes that business expenses exist and allows them to be deducted!

If this woman had actually attended my group, she would realize that it isn't actually a group of lightworkers coming together to heal the planet. It's a personal growth group as one might expect from the name, "Your Personal Healing Journey of Austin." People are getting my guidance in a group format for a hugely discounted rate. Instead of paying $100 per hour, they are paying $5 per hour to learn from all I can teach them. That’s a pretty hefty discount and makes my resources and guidance very affordable to those who can’t afford to work with me on a private basis. Most similar groups in Austin charge anywhere from $10 to $25 per session with the majority being in the $10 to $15 range. I am definitely not pricing outside of the market value. Furthermore, if one stops and thinks about it, $10 for two hours of guidance that leads to extensive personal growth is a bargain compared to spending $10+ for two hours to see a movie which one may or may not benefit from at all.

I have encountered others like this woman before on other healers’ sites and discussion groups, so I was prepared for this to happen to me. They subscribe to a false ideology that believes that energy workers don’t deserve to be paid for the work they do. If they do deserve to be paid, then it should be an absolute minimum, and the healers should be struggling to get by. Only unholy people should be comfortable in life. Those who are truly sent from God will live on miraculous multiplication of fish and loaves just like Jesus did. These judgmental people somehow think that energy workers’ electric bills and rents also can be paid with holiness (and not money) as well.

All of that is simply not true. Everyone deserves to be paid a living wage. I am a huge believer that the minimum wage needs to be $15 or greater in metropolitan areas where $15 an hour isn’t enough to support a family. That’s $600 per week or a little over $2400 per month. In Austin, finding a two to three bedroom apartment or home for a family is hard to do for less than $1200 per month in the suburbs; closer in it’s impossible. Clearly a single parent won’t be able to take care of a family on that amount without public assistance even if s/he/ze is working full-time.

The same is true of an energy worker who, when it all boils down, is a worker trying to pay bills just like the rest of society. We all work in different ways as we’ve been gifted. Some of us are teachers. Some of us are engineers. Some of us are salespeople. And some of us work with healing and energy. If the healer is a doctor, s/he/ze will bill starting at $300 per hour. Psychologists in Austin charge anywhere from $75 to $150 per hour. While people may grumble about these rates, no one doubts that these healers deserve to be paid for their work. So too, do energy workers deserve to be paid for their time, energy and skills.

As I have discussed this incident with other healers I know and respect, we’ve all come to the same conclusions. Those who truly need sliding scale and reduced fees approach us with very different attitudes and behaviors than those who are just not willing to pay for the healing work we do. Every one of us has stories of people who have pleaded for sliding scale or free work and then have shown up in a brand new car or had stories of exotic vacations taken weeks before or made exorbitant purchases that are clearly beyond the means of someone who actually can’t afford but desperately needs healing work. The bottom line is that they don’t want to budget their funds in such a way as to pay for what they need. Hence, they want their healers to earn less so that they can live a more luxurious life, not realizing that by not paying their healers the full price of their services, many of those same healers then have to make cuts to their own budgets to accommodate the person asking for financial help. It is completely different than people who are truly low income and in desperate need of help but who cannot possibly stretch their budget any further.

When healers don’t charge for their work, they create an energy imbalance in the universe. All of our transactions with others in life involve an energy exchange. You massage my back, and I rub your feet. You give me groceries, and I give you money. I help you solve problems with your health, and you give me money. In the olden days, you might have given me two chickens and a gallon of milk instead. In other societies, it was a handful of sea shells. However, in our society, we use money as a currency of exchange, and it has come to represent our energy exchange. Every healer I know and respect agrees that there must be an exchange of energy in every single transaction in order to keep things balanced. When interactions occur without an exchange, one part of the equation becomes imbalanced. Hence, as healers, we do charge for our work as we feel is appropriate to the situation in order to keep balance in our lives. In some cases, $5 is the appropriate amount. In other cases, it’s more. All of us do need to charge something for every exchange, though.

I hope one day this misguided woman will understand her value and will start charging for her services to others just as she does for the objects she sells in her storefront. I hope she will also come to understand what kind of imbalance she creates in her life by asking others to give to her for free when she offers nothing but a verbal barrage in return.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Recently the Universe has started throwing disability accommodation challenges at me again. When something like this happens, there is always a reason. However, like many people, I often have a hard time seeing what the Universe wants me to see, do or learn. Oftentimes challenges appear in our lives to get us to change our behavior and actions. In this case, I can’t stop being disabled, so that’s not exactly what the Universe is after. Sometimes the Universe wants us to confront the issue, but in this situation, I am well aware that I am disabled and the impact it has on my life. Sometimes the event is a bit of karma in action, teaching us that something we’re doing isn’t right. However, I strive to make my businesses as accessible to all people as possible, so I don’t feel like the way I treat others with disabilities is the problem.

At times being disabled feels like you’ve lost the Unpopular Discrimination Olympics. Right now in my social circles, gay rights are a hot issue. Transgender issues are as well. Discrimination on those fronts is loudly frowned upon. Discriminating against minorities is also a topic of frequent conversation and outrage. It’s not ok that young African-American men die at rates much higher than the rest of the population, and it’s also not ok that the schools and police treat Muslims of Middle Eastern origins differently than Caucasian Christians. I am totally in support of the outrage at injustice in our society. If you really want to get one of my social circles stirred up, talk about a breastfeeding mama being told to put her breasts away or cover up. The lactavist mamas come out in droves to support other mamas who were mistreated under Texas law.

And then there are the times when I post about disability discrimination, something I face at least monthly, often weekly, and yesterday, twice in one day from two different sources. That’s when the crickets chirp. The challenges of the disabled are not a popular cause at this moment in time. No one wants to acknowledge how widespread social prejudice is against the disabled. No one wants to believe that the disabled don’t get treated equally. 

Part of the "problem" with discussing disability discrimination is that it doesn't play into the cultural myth of the disabled in America. Our society doesn't want to know the reality behind life as a person with disabilities. Rather, what society wants to see is a person who has lost both their original legs yet has learned how to use prosthetics and wins marathons, defeating those who have their original two legs. They want a heart-warming hero story. The American public wants everything to be a pretty picture where good defeats evil. They don't want to acknowledge the reality of what that person with disabilities goes through before they learn to run marathons on prosthetic legs. Most of all, the public doesn't want to face the bitter truth that all it would take is one battle with cancer or one car accident, and they, too, could be that person with disabilities struggling to use prosthetics. 

People point to the ADA, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) believing that it has made society fully accessible for the disabled. Just two months ago, President Obama gave a speech lauding the changes that have happened under the ADA in the past 25 years. He acknowledges that those with disabilities still don’t have equal employment opportunities, but that’s barely the tip of the iceberg of the problems those with disabilities face. As a person with a disability, I have to say that the ADA often feels like a lip service law, one that sounds lovely and politically correct but is actually powerless when it comes to making significant change. The reality is that many companies and businesses do not follow ADA regulations. Many government organizations don’t either; my problems have included the Social Security DISABILITY Office refusing to accommodate my disabilities even when it is entirely possible for them to do so at no additional cost and very little hassle. More often than not, when I seek disability accommodations, I have to mention the word “lawyer” or “lawsuit” before people will even entertain the idea of meeting my disability needs. That’s not what a society should look like where the ADA was truly embraced.

Since the Chinese New Year (February 21st for the event in question) of 2015, I’ve repeatedly experienced disability discrimination or difficulties. I have written drafts and outlines of the incidents that have happened, but I have not posted them on my blog. I’ve wanted to keep my blog from being a complaint center. I have wanted to keep it realistic but hopeful. I want people to see the positive side of what changes can happen when one is dedicated and works hard on their personal issues. Yet one thing I can’t directly change is the way others act in response to my disabilities. I can file complaints with various government organizations. I can leave negative Yelp reviews. But for all I can do, I can’t actually make people understand that their actions are discriminatory against the disabled unless they want to see how their actions and words hurt other people.

As I’ve asked my spirit guides what it is that the Universe wants me to do as these disability issues are resurfacing again, the only answer I have gotten is “change the obstacle.” I am working on healing my illness as fast as I can, but I have no idea how disabled my body will remain once the infections are gone from my body. Likewise, there are millions of other people in the world who can never change their disabilities as they are permanent barring major science breakthroughs or impossible miracles. Disabilities are not obstacles that can leave this planet. So I’m contemplating that “change the obstacle” means using my blog to bring social awareness to what I and many others face in the world as people with disabilities. Maybe it will help in some way to bring about some social change in the way that the disabled are treated. 

My daughter was recently looking through my junior high and high school yearbooks. I was healthy and pain free back then. In my senior yearbook, I was voted “the most likely to raise hell.” My daughter thought that was hysterical because it’s still true now. I’m not ok with standing by and letting injustices occur. I believe in speaking out, and I believe in changing what needs to be changed. I really do not want to be the central Texas disability discrimination coordinator. I don’t want to spend so much of my energy and time trying to overcome disability barriers. But if I don’t speak out about what I am encountering, no one is going to do it for me. When I write about and file reports about what I experience, it also sometimes helps others to say, “Hey! Me, too! I didn’t like that it was happening to me, but now I know I’m not alone and that this is not an ok situation.” The process of discussing it and of filing those complaints doesn’t feel so positive for me in the short term, though.

As a result of all of this, I’m starting a blog series for as long as it takes for me to write the blog posts about the discrimination I’ve encountered in the past year as I've begun functioning in society more often. I’m also going to try to balance it out with some posts about people who’ve been amazing in going above and beyond in helping to meet my needs. I hope that these posts help bring about change in some way. Selfishly, I also hope that they get the Universe to stop putting so many disability obstacles in my path!

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

On Friday night, I had three different activities I wanted to go to. I asked my spirit guides which was the most important for me to go to, and they had a clear answer: kirtan. Hence, I attended a local kirtan group's monthly meeting even though it was starting rather late for me and was on the other side of town.

Kirtan is a singing and meditative tradition that comes to us from India. During the kirtan, musicians lead the group in chants which are sung in a "call and response" format. Even if you don't understand the language in which the words are being spoken, it's possible to participate and benefit immensely. The intent and energy are the most important part of the kirtan. The rhythm of the music ends up creating a meditative state for many, freeing them from wordly concerns and helping them to find divine insight.

The group I was at was a small gathering with five musicians and ten community members. However, despite the small size, the music got quite loud at several points; I was thinking how grateful I was that I didn't live in the apartments above the yoga studio where we were meeting. At times, the singing was horribly off-key, and yet simultaneously it was immensely beautiful because of the spiritual energy it contained. I stopped singing and instead just focused on what the energy of the music was doing to my body multiple times during the evening. The music moved through my fourth chakra, healing some deep wounds. It then moved into my fifth chakra working on literal pain there. Later in the evening, one of the songs was able to create interesting movement in my second chakra as well.

As I listened to and felt the music that evening, I was struck by how powerful the energy of the music was. I also noted that it was the same energy I've felt in other music at previous times in my life, specifically certain Christian rock songs and Taizé chant. It doesn't matter which language we sing in or which god(s) we are worshipping: The energy of sacred music is very similar. That spiritual energy that flows from the sacred music is powerful, and it has the ability to heal. 

Even if you are tone deaf (like me) or unable to play an instrument (also like me), it is still possible to benefit from the transcendental power of song. Attending worship services, kirtans, or concerts or even just listening to music in your own home will allow the sacred spiritual energy to flow through you. If you can find the courage to sing along, the benefit may increase as you bring your intent in line with the music to help it heal you however and wherever you need it.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

There’s no profit in jealousy. ~Quark, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

In Season 6, Episode 7 of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, one of the leading characters named Quark is dealing with jealousy. He is a Ferengi, a species known for believing that “earning profit was the sole meaningful goal in life, superseding all other endeavors.” When one of the other characters teasingly asks Quark if he is jealous, he replies, “There’s no profit in jealousy.”

Quark is right according to the theory of scarcity and abundance thinking. This theory promotes the idea that if you see the world as having a deficit of time, energy, or products to meet everyone’s needs, then your world will be defined by scarcity. You will struggle to have enough in your life because you believe that the world is that way. In contrast, those who believe in abundance will find that there is always enough of whatever they need. So a person who is jealous and operates under the motivation of jealousy who be viewing the world through a scarcity model of thinking, and as Quark warns, that person would find no profit.

As I have been working on preparing a meeting on jealousy for my meetup, I realized that one of the ways in which I have dealt with jealousy in my life is through a scarcity mentality I previously held. I was raised in a family that was raised by those who grew up in the Great Depression. My grandparents had to leave school after eighth grade graduation to get jobs in order to help keep the family fed. The whole nation was living in a time of scarcity. As anyone who has known people who lived through the Depression knows, many of them did not let go of their fear and scarcity mentality even in later years when finances were stable for them. Those who were in fear of losing their money again were often very conservative-- if not downright stingy-- with their money. They passed this scarcity mentality on to their children (the Baby Boomers) who passed it on to their children (Generation X, my age grouping). As the Millenial Generation comes of age, we  are finally seeing the legacy of the Great Depression no longer having the same influence on today’s young adults as in previous generations.

However, I never really had thought about the scarcity mentality as being a part of jealousy. To me, I always labeled it insecurity. Yet one of the major roots of jealousy is insecurity. People are envious of others for having things or talents that they might never have. Those who are feeling insecure become jealous when they don’t work through their true fears. For example, I see insecurity and jealousy manifest as a scarcity mentality among many of the alternative healers in Austin. I have watched one healer greedily scarf up any resources I am willing to share with her and others in our circle so that she can build up her files, yet she is unwilling to share any of her resources publicly. I have experienced an intuitive publicly demeaning me during a meetup so that she could look like the more gifted psychic. In another situation, I had a healer refuse to acknowledge my part in a joint healing we did because it was more than his ego would allow.

All of this is nastiness is insecurity rooted in the scarcity mentality: Individual healers are not able to accept that there is more than enough work in the world for those who are talented and willing to give their best to their clients and patients. The fears are rooted in ego, not grounded spirituality, for the fears show no trust in the Universe. If the healers are on their correct path, then they will receive all the work and financial support that they need to be happy in life.

Every once in a while I do feel the green-eyed monster rising up in me, especially when I see other people whom my ego has judged to be less talented than me achieving things that seem way beyond their abilities and reach. I have to pull back on my own reins and remind myself that different people are on different journeys in their lives. Each of us are meant to experience different things at different times. When I see people flocking to a healer whom I know is dangerously misguided, I have to remember that that healer is teaching his/her/hir clients an important lesson in life, one that I might have already learned but which other people still need to grasp. For me, the lesson at that time is to remember that there is abundance in the Universe, and that I am walking the path that I am meant to walk. 

I believe that if we put faith in the Universe and if we follow our intuition and stay on our correct path, then we will often find abundance. That doesn’t mean we will never experience times of drought or pain in our lives, but when we do, those times of drought are often meant to help us grow and change in ways that will eventually bring us greater abundance than we could have imagined. Keeping our egos in check and in the words of our teachers, “keeping our eyes on our own papers” will help us to grow and prosper rather than wallowing in jealousy, fear, and insecurity.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

For years I have seen quotes and excerpts by Marianne Williamson on the web. I've always been captivated by the fluent poetic nature of her prose and her beautiful thoughts so wonderfully explained. As my mentor and I were discussing the nature of love a few weeks ago, I decided it was time for me to read some of Williamson's work once I finished off the other book I was reading at that time. I pulled Enchanted Love: The Mystical Power of Relationships off of my bookcase and proceeded to read 2/3 of it in the first sitting because it is such a smooth and easy read. The concepts contained within are deep and powerful, but Williamson explains them so clearly that it feels like reading a work of fiction.

Enchanted Love is a series of short essays, prayers and poems around finding a sacred romantic love. Along the way, Williiamson describes judgemental relationships that fall far short of a sacred ideal. She talks about sex, divorce, God, and the reflections of love on the greater world. Beneath all of her ideas are the concepts that we partner with others to work on our deepest wounds and that the love we exchange with each other is actually the love of the Divine. While strongly disagree with some of her discussions about gender in relationships, the majority of the book was powerful to read and contemplate.

As I read through the earlier part of the book, the part that discussed relationships done wrong, I saw my former marriage with my ex-husband very clearly in her words. We were judgmental of each other, we did not and in some cases could not support each other in the ways that each wanted to be supported, and we didn't help each other grow as individuals. The relationship was not one that could have ever achieved enchanted love status. Yet as I read through Williamson's statements about midlife, divorce, and sacred love, I very clearly saw the relationship I want to have with my next husband. If he hasn't read this book by the time we've met, I'm going to hand him my copy and say, "This! This is what I am looking for in a relationship!" 

I've already recommended this book to one friend as she works to heal wounds from a previous partner because I thought it would be very useful to her to understand the "why" of her relationship's demise. I also thought that the book coould greatly help her and her current partner grow in their relationship. I definitely expect to be recommending Enchanted Love to many others in the future.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

(This post is based on an Advance Reader Copy of Upside won through Goodreads’ First Reads program.)

As I read through Upside: The New Science of Post-Traumatic Growth by Jim Rendon, I had plenty of thoughts that didn’t necessarily fit in my official review of the book. The book certainly prompted some thinking and questioning on my part; I always appreciate it when a book stimulates my brain cells. Some of these questions I’m asking probably haven’t been answered by studies yet, so I can’t fault the author for not including things that don’t yet exist! The following are some of those thoughts shared in a rather random order.

- It wasn’t until very late in Upside that a divorce was mentioned among the case studies of those who have undergone trauma. However, I suspect that this representation is not accurate. Chronic illness and PTSD were major contributions toward my divorce, and I know I’m not alone in that. I’d be curious as to what the actual divorce rate is among those who suffer from PTSD as well as what the divorce rate is among those who suffer from PTSD but have come to a place of positive growth. Further questioning would ask how many people saw their divorce as a part of their positive growth (as I definitely do).

- As I read the chapter on family support, I questioned, “What about those who didn’t have family support?” I would like to see a study of how support for patients with cancer compares to those with other illnesses. Because Rendon focused on cancer, he may not be aware that other diseases actually can cause families to abandon loved ones. This certainly was my situation with extended family, and again, it was a contribution to the end of my marriage. In my experience with late disseminated Lyme disease which is legally diagnosed as fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome, compassion and support was not overwhelming. In many cases, friends and extended family abandoned me and my family unit. One extended family member pointed out to me not so subtly that two other family members with type 1 diabetes and gallstones had REAL health problems (implying that mine were not significant, real and/or valid despite the fact that I was homebound and mostly bedbound at that point).

- While Rendon completely failed to discuss the problems surround childbirth and infant loss as they apply to women, he did devote a chapter to a group of dads who have lost children. This is a rare perspective that is often ignored in our culture, and I appreciate that he shared this reality with the world. Too often, men’s grief is poorly processed and disregarded contributing to the ongoing problem in our society of men who are out of touch with their emotions including grief.

- I felt like the chapter on religion and spirituality was one of the weakest. From what was written, I suspect that the author does not identify with religion or spirituality and may in fact be hostile towards them. I felt like he neglected the major differences between religion and spirituality, for they are two different things. It is very possible to be spiritual without being religious. I also wondered as I read the chapter how many people with PTSD experience a radical change in their beliefs or spirituality. In my life I went from being Catholic to being agnostic to experiencing PTSD and becoming highly spiritual without identifying with any religion (and in fact shunning most of them). I suspect I am not alone in this process of spiritual growth that is a part of personal growth with PTSD. This spiritual growth I experienced is a far different experience than someone becoming more vested in an established religion or turning to their pastor for counseling.

- Rendon argues that support groups are instrumental in the personal growth of individuals because they allow those with PTSD to be with those “who get it.” On one hand this is very true. However, I am curious about the reality of support groups for a wider population. I actually found that the pessimism and negativity of many support groups were pulling me down and were impeding my personal growth. They weren’t “better-informed optimists” as Rendon writes. Instead, they were people filled with unhealthy attitudes, bitterness, and often ignorance. I switched to digest for many online groups to avoid reading the posts of the worst offenders; some groups I left altogether. The two health related in-person groups I tried attending, one for those who had lost a baby and one for those who were chemically sensitive, I quickly left because the energy in them was awful. My better-informed optimism did not fit there. Thus, I would be curious about studies that showed that support groups actually have an ability to hamper personal growth rather than assist it. My experiences show that this is a potential reality.

- I cringed at the idea of 46 pills being a lot as Rendon dramatically presents when discussing a cancer patient. I currently take 14 Western medical pills per day plus 65 pill supplements, seven doses of liquid supplements, and a nebulizer treatment per day. At times my pill total has been well over 100 a day. This is what it has taken to get me functional and to continue to heal. I look forward to dropping back to “only” 46 pills and then the day when I need less than 20 per day to maintain my health. Again, if Rendon had talked to people with other health issues outside of cancer, his perspective would have been broadened and enlightened in many ways.

- Rendon has an implicit (and very valid in my opinion) judgment of how deficient psychological treatment is for soldiers and vets with PTSD. He also notes how others involved in other traumas also received very little or no psychotherapy as part of their recovery processes. It would be great to see what the studies show about why this happens other than the lack of funding for mental health care that is an endemic problem in our nation.

- I appreciated the way Rendon approached the topic of “gratitude as a way of life.” As I’ve noted in another blog post, gratitude is the only way I got through many days when my illness was at its worst. I think most people who have not undergone a major trauma understand what gratitude really is and what it can do for us.

- The chapter on activity and exercise as healing was very frustrating to me. I think this is a concept that is fairly well understood in our society as almost all less-than-informed healthcare practitioners I have worked with over the years have pushed exercise as one of the main solutions to healing. However, there is an important distinction between using exercise during a time of hellish illness and using it after one has regained significant health. Rendon discusses women who have survived breast cancer and now row together; he mentions but does not dwell on the fact that they could not have done this kind of activity when they were in the worst phases of their treatment. That distinction is very important for those undergoing health trauma because the overwhelming pressure to exercise when they are too sick to do so can be very emotionally defeating. As someone whose Lyme disease has caused chronic fatigue syndrome, I have had to deal with the conflict that exercise can actually cause more damage than good a great deal of the time, and our society does not seem to understand that because it is so pro-exercise as the cure to all that ails you.

- I really loved that Rendon stressed the importance of not pushing post-traumatic growth on those with PTSD. This book would have been devastating to read in the worst years of my illness; I was not ready to hear its message. I definitely would not give the book to someone who was at a point when they were at rock bottom. The lesson of “bitter blessings” is one that each person has to come to individually on their own time.

- When discussing one person who has survived brain cancer, Rendon reveals the very unhealthy brave face platitudes that are a very problematic part of emotional health in our society. However, Rendon doesn't expand on the problem that "the brave face" ideology creates in relation to PTSD. Rendon writes, “[The patient with brain cancer] maintained a brave face, but beneath it all he was terrified. ‘He never once said, “This really sucks,”’ said [his best friend]. ‘But you could see it in his eyes, you could see him thinking, Holy heck what am I going to do?’” Society expects those with chronic illness to hide behind those brave faces. They’re expected not to show the pain they’re in or the suffering they’re enduring. If they do show that illness, that fear, that pain, that loss, then they risk losing those around them who are unwilling or unable to deal with the realities of health challenges including the possibility of death. This only contributes to the issues surrounding PTSD when one is expected to put on a brave face but is actually falling apart inside.

- I would be curious to see studies about those who manage to achieve positive post-traumatic growth without most of the key items that Rendon cites as contributory factors. I am someone who is lacking in extended family support. I was isolated and alone because of my chemical sensitivities. I was the person whom others looked at and said, “It doesn’t get much worse than that.” Yet somehow I have grown in ways I never would have believed possible. I wonder how other characteristics such as personality and intelligence factor in for those whom growth seemed to be unlikely to happen even according to the standards Rendon establishes.

- Finally, in the last paragraphs of Upside, Rendon writes, “And given that they came so close to death, that they lost so many things they once took for granted, they understand on a much deeper level, in a much more informed way, what it means to be alive.” This association of PTSD with facing death is a flawed one, and it’s something that contributes to a large portion of people enduring PTSD not seeking appropriate help in my opinion. Our society erroneously interprets PTSD to mean former soldiers or those whose lives were endangered. Yet as Rendon demonstrates throughout the book, for many people, PTSD does not result from a life threatening event. I would have added a clause to this sentence about how “some have come so close to death.”

(I do have another upcoming blog post motivated by Upside that I will link to once it publishes.)

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

I often talk about my past lives in my blog posts and in real life, but I also say that I am willing to work with whatever spiritual beliefs that my clients may or may not hold. Most people in America don’t believe in past lives; one estimate places the number at around 25% (which I think might actually be a high estimate). In metaphysical communities, though, that belief rate is closer to 99% in favor of past lives. So how do I reconcile the two vastly different perspectives about the afterlife for the 75% of Americans who believe we only live one life?

I tell clients that I believe in past lives, but I understand that they may not. I am fine with that. We all have different belief systems that shape our views of our lives. I speak of my past lives because they have been very influential in my healing process. For me, those lives are as vivid and as real as the one I am living now.

Yet for those who are skeptics or are not believers, I am happy to present past life information as stories that our minds create in order to distance us from our traumas. With that space between us and our intense pain, it can be easier to chip away at the often repressed or inaccessible trauma rather than confronting it head on. Past lives become like metaphors in this situation: they are aids to help us understand something that is hard to grasp otherwise. Through the imagery of past lives, we can work on healing traumas that we otherwise might not be able to heal.

What I have actually found in receiving healing messages for clients, though, is that the clients who don’t believe in past lives don’t usually get information on them. Those who are open to the idea or who are believers are far more likely to receive information on healing from past lives that needs to be done. In this way, the spirit guides who provide the messages help give clients exactly what they need to hear when they need to hear it.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Over the past few years, my life has changed a great deal. I am no longer the same person I was when I got Lyme disease, nor am I the person who suffered miserably with it in the early years. I’ve always been a fighter (or a “warrior” to use the more spiritual term), and that is part of what has helped me to defeat this disease. The spiritual transformation I experienced along the way is not an unusual story, though mine is unique, just like everyone else’s. However, as I worked my way thoughLiving in the Light over the past few months, I saw the generalized path I had walked laid out very clearly by a powerful author. As I turned the pages through the first chapters of the book, I kept thinking, “Yes, been there, done that.”

Living in the Light is about a different way of looking at one’s life than philosophies most of us were raised in modern Christian-dominated America. Gone is the judgment and fear of burning in hell that serves as the motivation in many Christian traditions. Instead, Gawain presents a vision of “a new world” that she sees developing around us. For her, life is a series of lessons to be learned as a we use our intuition to tap into the higher powers around us. By using our intuition, we can become creative channels for the higher powers of the Universe while we work on growing and improving our souls.

Along our road to growth, we have to learn to be truly open to whom we are. We need to become balanced beings who are able to give and to receive. To understand ourselves fully, Gawain argues that we need to face our “shadow sides,” a Jungian term for the parts of ourselves we are afraid of. It is only in accepting every part of our beings that we can find balance. This includes learning to embrace our emotions and face our problems. It also means recognizing that we are both souls and humans in bodily form, and we must live as both. Despite what many schools of thought might teach, our bodies are perfect, just as our souls are. Even though they have limitations, our bodies are amazing, and we need to respect them and listen to them in order to live healthy lives.

Shakti Gawain also discusses the concept of the world as our mirror: whatever we are struggling with inside of ourselves will also manifest externally. By paying attention to these synchronicities around us, we will be able to accelerate our healing and growth. Even though things around us may seem to be negative, they aren’t actually. Instead, what manifests in our lives are gifts for us to learn from; problems are actually messages if we are willing to use our intuition to listen to them. Our careers, our financial situation and even our health will reflect what is going on within us. Then, through the same mirroring perspective, the beneficial changes we make within ourselves will then be reflected throughout the world, too.

The most powerful chapters in the book for me were those on the male and female within which demonstrate that we all have both masculine and feminine energies within  us. The masculine side is the action side of us, the part of us that wants to do things. The feminine side is the intuitive side, the part that helps us find the correct direction to move in. Most of us have embraced one side at the expense of the other, but we all need to have both the masculine and feminine within us to be balanced in our lives. Like Gawain, I embraced my masculine side for the first 35 years of my life; in the more recent years, I’ve had to learn to accept, embrace and love my feminine side as well. As I have done so, I’ve found greater peace than I’ve ever known previously.

Working from this place of balanced masculine and feminine energies, Gawain demonstrates that romantic relationships in our culture have been built on theidea of romantic partners completing the other. Because we are not allowing ourselves to be both masculine and feminine, we end up in dysfunctional relationships because we want someone else to fulfill the part of ourselves we don’t accept or want to embrace. When we learn to be what we want rather than asking others to do it for us, we are able to enter into healthier relationships built on being complete individuals rather than partial ones. This new energy of balanced relationships will also spill over into our relationships with our children as parenting takes on a new perspective. By developing honest relationships and respecting our children, we will no longer expect our children to complete us either.

Living in the Light is not without its minor flaws. At one point Gawain refers to the Native American and African cultures. While an error like this might have been possibly have passed muster in the original edition of the book, the 25th anniversary edition that I was reading should have been edited to correct the better cultural understanding of our times. There is no one Native American culture. There are common elements shared by many different Native American tribes, such as a unifying belief in the sanctity of the Earth, but to speak of one particular Native American culture is lacking in perspective. Likewise, Africa is a continent that is over two million square miles larger than North America; Africa’s current population is double that of North America. To generalize that there is one African culture is completely missing the reality of the multitude of diverse cultures on the African continent.

The one place where I felt that Gawain hasn’t fully worked through her theories yet is in her discussion of “Taking Care of Ourselves” (chapter 14). Often as we as a society develop ideas, we swing between extremes. Think of the conservative 1950s, the liberal 1960s, and the more balanced 1970s. Here, Gawain has responded to the societal tendency to repress our emotions rather than facing them; she swings too far in the other direction by stating that by being honest about our needs and emotions, we will get we want most of the time. To me, this section feels too much like a distorted law of attraction. Unfortunately, honesty will not always get us what we want because those around us are individuals with free will, too. Some will chose to respond to our honesty by removing themselves from our lives rather than engaging honestly with us. Living and speaking honestly will change our lives, but we won’t necessarily get what we want. We will, however, get what is best for us by being honest.

It is rare that I recommend a book to a half-dozen people after I finish it, but that happened to me in the days after I finally finished Living in the Light. As I have begun my spiritual singles meetup, I have shifted the original plans I had for the group in order to use this book, asking participants to read a few chapters each month as we work our way through the larger concepts of the book. The material is that powerful and that helpful. I’ve included a huge list of book group or discussion group questions below that can be adapted as needed for your group. For mine, I’ll be dividing the questions over 20 sessions over eight months or so.

Living in the Light is a book I suspect that I will return to many times over my life, and I suspect it will always be a book that will give me helpful reminders and insight no matter where I am in my journey at that point. Even as I read it the first time, I found that synchronicity prevailed, and whatever I read was exactly what I needed to hear at that particular moment.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

I'm pleased to announce that I have started the Spiritual, Single and Social Meetup. 

The Spiritual, Single and Social Meetup is an open-minded gathering in Austin, Texas, where we support each other without judgment in understanding our experiences in life. We view being single as a time in our lives when we can focus on growing and healing as individuals. For the purposes of this group we define these terms to mean the following: 

Spiritual: We all hold a belief in a higher power greater than ourselves. All traditions and belief systems are welcome as long as they are open to others having different beliefs. We work together to find common ground for our spiritual beliefs to help improve our individual lives and the world. 

Single: We are single (never married), separated, or divorced. We are not in committed relationships with anyone at this time. Those from all parts of the sexual, gender, and orientation spectrums are welcome. This group is aimed towards those who are in the 30-50 year age range. 

Social: While we might work hard on our personal growth, we’re not opposed to serious relaxation either! We meet for a variety of purposes and activities including but not limited to meals, book groups, discussion sessions, meditation sessions, hikes, and games nights. 

As a courtesy to those in the group who are sensitive to fragrances, please refrain from wearing synthetic perfumes, colognes, and aftershaves. Essential oil based scents are fine in moderation. 

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Despite LinkedIn’s warnings, I accept connections from almost everyone on there who asks me to. In my mind, the purpose of networking is to meet new people. Most of the time, this philosophy works well. Occasionally someone connects with me to spam me with their services; at that point I disconnect from them. Today’s example was an email from a business coach who claims to be an intuitive focusing on the divine feminine. I had initially thought we might have something in common. However, the beginning of the message read:

Are You Ready to Break Free from Exhausting Hourly Sessions?
Are You Ready to Make More Money Working Less Hours? 

I was aghast as I read those words. To me, a great translation of the rhetorical questions being asked is, “Do you think you’re too good to actually help people who are paying for and need your help?” Individual work is at the core of what I and many other coaches and therapists offer. It’s not exhausting to me; it’s very uplifting most of the time. It’s a sacred call that I’ve received to assist others. If someone doesn’t like working with clients individually, then being a coach is not the right job for them. If they’re feeling drained by it all the time, they may need to examine their energetic boundaries to make sure they’re working in a protected space that keeps them from absorbing their patients’ problems. (That is something I help clients with if they desire it since it’s an issue for many empaths and intuitives.)

Spiritual arrogance is all too common in this world. People who think they’ve found the divine (or God or whatever word you prefer) let their newfound spiritual prowess go immediately to their head. They are certain that their intimate knowledge of Spirit has made them better than anyone else; for some of them, this is so much so that they can’t be bothered to interact with others learning to grow. Some of them just want to stand on a podium, shine in their greatness, and accept the awe-filled laurels that they believe they deserve from the masses. Of course, working from a warped interpretation of the law of attraction, they’re certain their spiritual nature and connection to the divine will allow them to attract millions of dollars by doing nothing more than just being their wonderful selves.

Here’s a hint, though: The more arrogant that someone is about their spiritual abilities and the more they need to display their divine connection overtly, the less connection they are likely to have. Most of the time, those who list a long heritage of gurus or teachers, especially those who connect them linearly to a divine teacher such as Jesus or a saint, are really very insecure in their own knowledge and abilities, so they rest on the laurels of others. In contrast, some of the holiest people we’ll ever meet are the ones who are examples of modesty and humility. They’re confident in their connection with the divine and their purpose here on earth. They go about their business, helping others as they do. They don’t seek fame and easy fortune. They just want to live in peace and want the same for others, too.

There’s an old adage that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. This doesn’t apply to just miracle medical cures and get rich quick schemes. People who promise you amazing divine knowledge from one easy course are likely speaking from a place of greed and arrogance, not holiness. They are likely involved in a pyramid scheme of confused people, and following their way is not likely to bring you the amazing things you are hoping for. The same is true of healers who promise that all of your problems can be solved in one workshop or with one supplement. It’s very rarely (if ever) true. The slow and steady path is often the best one to take for personal growth. Even if it’s prompted by a sudden tragic event, the growth from that single event will not happen overnight in most cases. Instead, change has to happen through honest and diligent work.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

I thank God for my handicaps, for, through them, I have found myself, my work, and my God. ~Helen Keller 

One of the ironies of human life is that some of the most painful things we experience end up being incredible blessings in the long run if we can look at them through the right lens. For me, Lyme has been one of those bitter blessings. Enduring the struggles of late disseminated Lyme disease has been one of the hardest challenges of my life, far worse in ways than going through a divorce, earning a Ph.D. or even having a child die unexpectedly from natural causes. I have been through a very difficult twelve year war with Lyme that has involved being bedbound, homebound, misunderstood, and in hellish physical pain. Yet despite the misery that I have endured because of Lyme, I see it as having been a catalyst for many other incredible blessings in my life.

The stress that Lyme placed on my former less-than-healthy marriage was what dealt the final death blows to the relationship. However, without the influence of the Lyme, I probably would have stayed in a marriage that was less than satisfactory because I was blinded from the reality I was living in. Lyme helped clarify how dysfunctional and unsupportive of a relationship it was and how the relationship wasn't built to sustain those vows of “in sickness and in health.” While the end of the marriage was deeply painful, I am far happier since I separated from my ex-husband than I was in most of the relationship with him. I am very grateful to be able to say that I am happily divorced.

Because I was so sick with Lyme, I was bedbound for the better part of two years and homebound for six. The isolation resulting from the illness has been a huge part of my growth.  As Shakti Gawain writes in Living in the Light:

For me, the severity of the illness I endured forced me to have this time of isolation when I could grow without the overwhelming influence of the external world. While I still had access via the internet, I also spent a great deal of time in silence, and that was crucial to my healing. Now that I have been able to regain health, I am challenged to take my acquired knowledge into the world to help others.

Lyme has also forced me to me evolve spiritually. I would never have walked down the path I am now on if it hadn’t become a vital component for me to regain my health. I would have continued to spend my life, as I did in many previous lives, denying my metaphysical gifts out of fear of rejection and ridicule by those around me and in our society at large. Yet when accepting and using these gifts allowed me to heal when all else had failed, suddenly it no longer mattered what anyone else thought. I needed to be me, and I needed to help others to heal and be themselves, too.

Like any major illness, enduring Lyme for so long showed me what truly matters. I no longer take for granted things like going to the grocery store. I view it as a privilege, not a task. I no longer have an overwhelming need for material objects in my life; whenever I have a burst of health, I tend to use it to clean and purge as I’m still digging my way out from 12 years of accumulated clutter (partially due to living with a packrat and partially due to my inability to do anything besides the basics when I was so sick). I was never an incredibly materialistic person, but now, I’m even less so. Those things that used to bring me happiness no longer seem relevant.

I have also discovered who my true friends and family are. I believe strongly that family is the group of people you turn to both when you want to celebrate and when you want to cry. For many of us, those people aren’t our biological relatives. We create family where we can find it. We adopt families who accept us and love us exactly as we are. I definitely believe this is true for me. I have lost many friends along the way of my journey with Lyme, but I have also gained some new ones who are more amazing than I could have previously imagined.

So does this post mean that you should tell people who are going through some terrible trials that they are blessings in disguise? Absolutely not, unless you want to lose friends or risk life and limb with their reactions! Not everyone is in a space to be able to understand that their trials may eventually turn into blessings. Instead, the best response to people who are undergoing difficult times is simply to tell them that you’re happy to help them in whatever way would best serve them. Until they reach the point that time has helped heal their wounds and allows them to see what they have gained through their pain, the best thing to do is acknowledge their pain and offer loving compassion.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

If you want to know God, enjoy the company of lovers. ~Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

I have an account with many boards on Pinterest that I use for collecting work related articles and pictures.  Because I have boards about relationships and spirituality, Pinterest will often suggest pins to me that are about traditional Christian marriage values.  While I can see where the algorithm is getting the idea these articles might be of interest to me, it couldn't be further from the truth in pinpointing my beliefs.

Lately I’ve been seeing quite a few pins that are variations on the idea that “True Love Always Waits.”  Someone in the Universe must be encouraging me to do some deep healing because this is a very touchy (no pun intended) issue for me based on my personal history. I was raised Catholic and attended an all-girls' Catholic school from grades 6-12. As is required by Catholic teachings, we learned that sex before marriage was a sin. We also learned that boys who pushed us for sex rather than waiting didn't really love us. As young women, we were not expected to actually want to have sex except under pressure from our dates.  These ideas are wrong on so many levels, and in many cases, they are psychologically damaging.

To start with, I do not believe that sex before marriage is a sin.  In my view, sex is an intimate connection between two people. I believe it is sacred, and I believe that it can bring us closer to God.  However, I also believe it can be a lot of fun and can help bond a couple regardless of their marital status. For many people, marriage is no more than a legal piece of paper. It in no way reflects the commitment and love shared by the couple in most cases.  It’s merely a formality for the sake of society.

The idea that sex belongs in marriage began for two different reasons. The first was a male dominated culture that wanted to ensure that the bride was a virgin who would only bear the fruit of her husband’s loins. The second was an attempt to prevent the spread of STDs.  The first is obviously irrelevant in today’s age of genetic testing. The second is still a legitimate concern, though we now have condoms to help with it.

When I was in high school taking a required love and marriage class in my senior year, the concept of sexual compatibility was not even remotely discussed. Sex was presented as having a magic formula of one man and one woman. With a little foreplay thrown in to satisfy the woman, that’s all that a couple needed to have a successful sexual relationship.  The reality of that couldn't be further from the truth. Sex between two amazing people who love each other can still be truly awful if the chemistry is not there or if their sexual preferences are not in alignment with each other. Getting stuck in an unhappy marriage without sexual compatibility is a realistic situation when one believes that sex should not happen until after marriage.  No amount of love or therapy can fix a situation like this.

Another topic that was very much omitted in high school and in our society in general is the idea of women wanting sex: That’s completely healthy and normal. However, if you pay attention to magazine article titles while standing in the checkout line at the grocery store, you’ll quickly notice that our society functions on a misguided belief that all women have low sex drives and all men have high sex drives.  Women aren't supposed to want sex in the same way men do. That means that for women who do want to have sex but are partnered with a man who wants to wait, they can end up feeling like misfits, sexual freaks of nature or undesirable women.

Another common line is that men only want sex for pleasure's sake but that they don’t really love women if they have sex before marriage.  Men wanting sex absolutely doesn't mean they don’t love the women involved.  It means they are human.  When men are wanting sex alone with no emotional involvement or commitment, women may find that situation to be problematic. However, there are a lot of variations between the two extremes.  Finding that fine line of knowing he loves you and wants you for more than just your body is hard, especially when one is young.  However, it’s entirely possible that a man may want to have sex with a woman before marriage to show his love and develop intimacy.

Then there’s that horrible idiom, “Why buy a cow when you can get milk for free?” This line implies that if a woman gives a man sex before marriage, he’ll never marry her.  Aside from the terrible idea of comparing women to farm animals, this saying denigrates both men and women.  Women are not objects to be bought or sold.  Not all men are unable to control their sexual urges nor are they out to just use women for sex.  Many do have good intentions at heart.

In today’s modern world, marriage is not always a viable or practical option. When my ex and I were dating, we were in high school and college; marrying would have meant that we would have lost our health insurance policies through our parents' employers. I have heard of other situations where elderly widows and widowers can’t afford to remarry because they would lose their late spouse’s pension and therefore would not be able to support themselves even meagerly in retirement.  I know another couple who has chosen not to marry because it would cost them tax benefits on the two homes they own, one under each of their names.  Sadly, finances are an important part of survival in our world.

In my own relationship with my ex-husband, the “true love waits” idea was a huge problem for us.  We both grew up Catholic; my ex was far more strict in his moral beliefs than I was, though.  (Ironically, he’s now an atheist.)  He came from a family where sexuality wasn't ever a topic of discussion except to say how wrong sex was before marriage.  Like most young humans, my ex deeply absorbed those views that were being presented to him.  The problem arose when my ex and I had been dating for far too many years to remain celibate (5+ years before we married). There’s no magic number of how long any couple should or shouldn't wait. However, in our case, not having sex actually became very damaging to our relationship after several years even though all those Catholic tales swore that having sex before marriage was the damaging thing. My ex-husband eventually realized much later that his previous views were damaging to our relationship, and he regretted them. His apology during marriage therapy gave me an amazing amount of relief, though it didn't happen soon enough to prevent a great deal of pain in our relationship twenty years earlier.

So what do I teach my children? I have taught them that sex is intimate and powerful. It can be amazing in the right circumstances but it also can be emotionally painful and damaging if it happens in the wrong circumstances. My general belief is that if you’re not willing to deal with the logical consequences of sex (getting pregnant, a realistic risk since no birth control method aside from complete abstinence is 100% reliable), then you shouldn't be having sex. It’s just basic logic to me. Once you’re in a place in your life where you could support and raise a child, then you should wait to have sex with someone who truly cares about you and respects you. That person should see you as a whole person, not just a body to provide physical pleasure. Sex should be a part of an intimate relationship with your partner, an act that brings you closer together regardless of your marital status.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Lately I have been working on doing some groundwork for a singles' Meetup group that I will be starting in a few months; I will post widely when the group is announced.  As a result, I am perusing a bunch of books for the seminars.  In particular, I am looking for short prayers, meditations, and reflections on various topics that we’ll be discussing.  The following are reviews of a few of the books I have read.

The Little Book of Love by Kahlil Gibran and compiled by Suheil Bushrui is quite literally little measuring in at about 4” x 6” and having only 80 pages of content, many of which have abundant white space or dark illustrations.  This book must be aimed at young lovers because the font size is difficult for some of us who have crossed the 40 year age barrier.  Despite those issues, the book has a few beautiful quotes and would make a romantic gift or stocking stuffer for a loved one.  My heart would certainly melt to have a lover give it to me.  However, it seems to fall in the category of a “bathroom book” in my opinion: All of its short entries are easily read in brief sittings.

Quiet Mind: One Minute Mindfulness by David Kundtz offers approximately 180 short reflections for the reader.  This time the font is in a readable size!  Focused around the idea of finding quiet and peace in our crazy lives, the author approaches a wide range of topics from death to road rage to the arts to walking, all in two short pages a piece. The spirituality is non-denominational and refers to many different traditions throughout the book. I found most of the pieces (though not all) to be engaging and worth reading.  It’s an even better bathroom book than The Little Book of Love in my estimation!

Guided Meditation Scripts for Beginners by Amy Meyers and Sharon Whisler is a short e-book available in Kindle format for $2.99.  The book is great in some ways and disappointing in others.  The meditations are repetitive:  The four breathwork meditations are actually all the same foundation with a little more added on each time.  The chakra meditations don’t feel powerful enough to me to actually realign one’s chakras: They seem more suitable to simply bring attention to each chakra.  Many of the love meditations feel more like writing prompts than guided meditations, though one could argue that journaling can be a form of meditation.  However, several of the meditations will be perfect for me to use with my group.  For the small investment, I feel like I likely got my money’s worth.  It’s just not a book I would generally recommend to others looking to find guided meditation scripts.

The Celtic Spirit: Daily Meditations for the Turning Year by Caitlin Matthews is a compilation of 365 daily readings.  While the title asserts they are meditations, I think reflections or mini-history lessons are the more apt descriptions in many cases.  Some of the reflections are excellent; others are very weak, meandering through topics Matthews seems to have forced together in a way that doesn't feel natural.  Many of the readings were not engaging or thought provoking for me.  The topics also began to feel repetitious by the end of the year with multiple days focusing on topics such as trees and the grail.  The suggested “meditations” at the end of each reading are often actions, and some of those actions would take days or even months to complete.  While I appreciate those readings that were excellent, I felt overall the book was a weak effort.

Like many others, I am a fan of the poetry of Rumi.  There are many collections out there, so when I ordered The Book of Love: Poems of Ecstasy and Longing by Rumi and Coleman Banks, I had the expectation that this would be a book focused primarily on love.  In reality, only part of the book focuses on love.  Other sections focus on topics such as drunkenness and animals.  While I appreciated the academic tone of this book with helpful prefaces and footnotes, it simply wasn't what I was looking for. (The cover on the edition I received is also nowhere near as beautiful despite this being the promised edition.  It's a plain orange jacket.)

In contrast, Rumi: A Spiritual Treasury by Juliet Mabey was exactly on the mark.  A physically smaller book, the poetry contained in it is more accessible to the general population.  I loved the contents which actually focused on excerpts of spiritual poetry by Rumi.  The book is divided into various chapters on different aspects of the human relationship with God.  While the book is written in a traditional male perspective of God that doesn't fit with my personal beliefs, I was still able to enjoy its contents.

Finally, I thoroughly enjoyed Life Prayers from Around the World: 365 Prayers, Blessings, and Affirmations to Celebrate the Human Journey by Elizabeth Roberts.  The collection is grouped by topic rather than daily prayers as one might expect from the “365” in the title.  While it includes prayers and thoughts from many traditions, earth based spirituality is prevalent throughout.  The collection has many thought-provoking poems as part of these prayers.  Topics covered include all parts of the life cycle, moments of grace, justice, crisis and more.  I was captivated by most of the included works from start to finish.

I will be posting more meditation and prayer book reviews in April as I've got a stack of several more on my coffee table that I am working my way through!

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

(I was given a free advance copy of this book in return for an honest review by the publisher via NetGalley.  The opinions in this review are mine and mine alone.)

If I were a character in a novel, undoubtedly my fatal flaw would be anger.  For me, the struggle is in finding ways to healthily release my anger.  Thus, I take a great deal of interest in exploring new books on anger as I’m always happy to learn more about working with one of my greater challenges in life.

It’s an amusing paradox that a book about anger could create a level of frustration, almost anger, in its readers, yet that was my experience while reading Freedom from Anger: Understanding It, Overcoming It, and Finding Joy by Venerable Alubomulle Sumanasara.  While I read the first 15% of the work, I assumed this was a self-published book by a young twenty-something atheist Buddhist who was certain he foolishly knew all the answers to the world’s problems. His condescending and omniscient tone was a huge turn off for me.  Imagine my surprise upon Googling the author and finding his Japanese Wikipedia page.  He’s a 70 year old Buddhist monk whose works have sold over 100 million copies if the awkward translation is correct.  To say I was surprised is an understatement.

I had to quickly come to terms with the fact that Sumanasara and I have very different belief systems around anger.  He presents his system with a moral certitude of being right, yet certainty about being right is something he addresses within the work as an underlying cause of anger.  As I continued reading, I was able to think of countless examples where his belief system did not hold up to real world challenges.  For example, the author contends that anger and love are opposing emotions.  He strongly argues that anger is a choice and that we can refrain from it.  However, I have found that love is not a choice.  We can fall in love unintentionally (also known as unrequited love), sometimes even in situations where we don’t want to such as with an unavailable person.  If love and anger are opposites, then it would stand to reason that anger is not a choice.  Just as love is an emotion that we can choose to deal with in different ways, some appropriate and healthy and others far less so, anger is also an emotion that can be both used and misused.

The author seems as though he lives in a world of moral absolutes. He believes that everything is worth being happy about in life, and therefore there is no justification for anger.  However, I can very easily think of evidence to the contrary. For example, a young child killed in a drive by shooting while innocently walking down the street is not something to be happy about.  In Sumanasara’s system, the only other emotion is anger.  Is this not a situation when anger instead of happiness is justified?  In my belief system and those of many others, anger is not wrong, especially when it brings about positive change. Anger is a natural human emotion that we are meant to feel.  In this case, if the anger about the child’s death brings about gun control legislation or increased mental health support in the community, then the anger has served a purpose to motivate and bring positive change. However, if the anger served to fuel revenge and more violence, it would not have created that positive change and the anger would have been problematic.

Despite his graduate studies in Buddhism, Sumanasara seems to be lacking in knowledge of basic psychology regarding anger. Sumanasara gives an example about a person getting extremely angry after experiencing failure when making a new recipe.  Most American therapists would take that example and offer the suggestion that the anger about the recipe was actually misplaced.  When many of us get overly upset about something rather trivial such as a new recipe that is a failure, it’s usually a sign of other repressed emotional issues underneath which we are manifesting in anger when we can no longer repress our frustration.  Such an idea seems foreign to Sumanasara.  

The author also contends that we get angry because we believe we are right.  While there are times when this is true, I believe that overall, this concept oversimplifies anger far too much.  I believe many of us become angry because we've been raised in a society that models anger and angry behavior.  We simply don’t know how to work through our frustrations in other ways.  Not all examples of anger can be traced back to a desire to be right.
 
As I read the book, I began thinking of it as Vulcan Buddhism.  Perhaps I have been watching too much Star Trek with my kids lately, but Sumanasara seems to function under a belief system where emotions are illogical:  He believes that anger can be controlled by logic.  However, we are humans, and we are not fully logical.   We are also emotional.  Our emotions, both positive and negative, are an integral part of our being.  Sumanasara thinks that if one takes the position of not having emotions, then one won’t have anger.  Yet I read through this work, I kept wondering how many unresolved psychological traumas Sumanasara must be repressing in order to live what he is preaching.  Repressing anger only creates toxicity in the body. Even if we don’t want to, oftentimes we need to feel our feelings so that we can process them.

Sumanasara also harps on the idea that other people’s anger destroys our happiness.  Using his arguments, however, if we were strong individuals who had control of our emotions, then this wouldn't be an issue.  We would not let anyone else's anger create anger in us.  From my viewpoint, this is statement from someone making himself a victim because he states that he can't be happy when someone else around him is angry.  This is not a statement of someone who feels responsible for his own emotions or has them under control as he asserts is fully possible.  Once again, I believe the beliefs that Sumanasara is functioning under are contradictory and unhealthy.

While translation issues could be at work, I also felt much of the book contained demeaning insults against those whose behavior displeases Sumanasara.  He throws out covert attacks as well such as  when he proclaims that wise people have no desire to govern.  Sumanasara's views come across as blindly fundamentalist beliefs at times.

When Sumanasara began discussing using the silent treatment as punishment, he lost my respect completely.  First of all, most therapists and life coaches would argue that people need discipline, not punishment.  While we all make mistakes, we need to be taught how to change those behaviors or actions that cause ourselves or others harm.  Discipline conveys teaching whereas punishment conveys an attitude of humans being inherently evil.  Given the negative self-judgment that Samanasara encourages throughout the book with people labeling themselves stupid or failures, this attitude should not be a surprise to me.  However, I believe this is far from a healthy system for working with emotions.  Second, the silent treatment in itself is an awful way of trying to teach someone.  What that person will learn from being given the silent treatment is that the silencing person doesn't care enough about him/her/hir to work together to make a change.  The silent treatment is not a good way to make positive change in the world.  Once again, Sumanasara is taking a position of ignoring those things which cause him emotional discomfort rather than actually confronting the issues and working through them.

Some books that one does not agree with can still teach important lessons; they may contain small bits of useful wisdom. While I tried to view Freedom from Anger as an opportunity to learn from someone with a different viewpoint, I was less than successful.  The most positive thing I can say about this book is that it helped me to understand many of the young, arrogant, self-centered atheist Buddhists whom I have encountered on dating websites.  I have often questioned how they can hold the views they do while claiming to be Buddhists.  Sumanasara’s work gave me insight into the mental workings of these men.

After reading Sumanasara’s opinion on using the silent treatment as punishment 45% of the way through the text, I quit reading the book.  I was not learning anything useful from the book, and I was becoming more and more disheartened with each passing page.  If I hadn't been reviewing the book, I would have stopped long beforehand.  Freedom from Anger is definitely not a book that is in line with my healing philosophies nor would I recommend it to a client.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

I spent a significant portion of my childhood and the early part of my adulthood as a Catholic; at one point, my Catholic school classmates believed I was the mostly likely person in our class of 51 to become a nun if not Pope.  (I was actually the first to get married, having never entered the convent; two other classmates did enter the convent with one professing final vows.)  I also received my master’s degree from Boston College in theology with an emphasis on the history of Christianity.  Thus, when issues around Catholicism arise in society, they often intrigue me.  One such topic is the popular tradition of giving up something for Lent. 

In Catholicism and other Christian traditions, the idea behind giving something up for Lent is to make a sacrifice that is in some way a tribute to Jesus having made the ultimate sacrifice of his life to erase the original sin of humanity. In days of old, the Lenten sacrifices were meant to be a form of penance, a way of apologizing to God for one’s sinful nature. Even now, whatever one gives up is meant to be done as a gift to God.  Back in the dark ages when I was in high school (also known as the late 1980s), priests would encourage parishioners in their Sunday homilies not to give something up for Lent.  Rather, they would push for church members to do something positive instead.  They argued that in today’s world, for most middle and upper class church goers, giving up soda for six weeks was not a real sacrifice that in any way made a decent gift to God.  On the other hand, if one took the money one saved from not drinking soda and donated it to a homeless shelter or a food bank, that action made the sacrifice more valuable.  Many of us who attended Sunday school or Catholic schools were even sent home with paperboard Lenten offering boxes to collect those funds for a specific charity. Likewise, instead of giving up chocolate, the priests encouraged people to make a donation of their time to a non-profit in need or to a community member who could use an extra hand.

I am no longer Catholic by any stretch of the imagination, yet it bewilders me when I see non-Christians using Lent as a reason to give something up.  I even know atheists, who clearly do not believe in Jesus' sacrifice, who give up food items for Lent.  For them, Lent seems to be just a time period between two big parties (Mardi Gras and Easter) that can help them with self-control and dieting.  To me, it seems as though all the “cool kids” are doing it, so others jump on the bandwagon to use Lent as a means of moral support while they give up some high caloric item that isn't really good for them.  I actually find this disrespectful to Christian traditions and beliefs.  Almost no one in our American society would dream of using Ramadan as an excuse for a crash diet or a 30 day juice cleanse, yet co-opting a very holy Christian time period of preparation and spiritual cleansing to use as a time of dieting is seen as socially acceptable. 

If you are someone who gives up food items or diets in some way for Lent, I strongly encourage you to examine your motivations.  Why do you use this time period to give something up?  Who benefits from you giving up your favorite treat?  How do you use the money that you aren’t spending on those lattes or mochaccinos? Are you co-opting a devout religious time for something that has nothing to do with religion?  Does this serve a higher purpose or is it an act of selfishness you are partaking in?  Are you doing this act quietly or are you using it to get attention on Facebook or elsewhere?  Having grown up with a narcissist who shamelessly sought attention, I've always appreciated the following Bible verses:

If you choose to do something for Lent as a Christian or non-Christian, I suggest you adapt your “sacrifice” in some way to benefit others.  If you are running an extra mile each day in Lent, consider taking along your elderly neighbor’s dog with you, benefiting both the neighbor and the dog.  If you are abstaining from a delectable treat during this time period, donate the funds you saved to a charity you support.  If possible, also donate your time to a group or individual who could use your assistance.  These are ways in which we can give something up while simultaneously helping others and benefiting ourselves.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

On a recent evening when I was in a great deal of pain, I began watching various movies in my Netflix queue looking for a mindless distraction.  The first two movies I tried out were unsatisfactory; I rated them two stars after trying to watch each for 10 minutes. The third film, however, was anything but mindless, yet it sucked me in quickly and held my attention for 89 straight minutes.  Miss Representation (2011) is a documentary directed by Jennifer Siebel Newsom who began the project when she found she was pregnant with a daughter.  She took a deeper look at the world around her and realized that this was not the world she wanted her daughter raised in.  

Like Siebel Newsom, raising a daughter made me reexamine the world around me.  While I had lost my belief in the tenets of the Catholic faith years before, I was still attending a liberal Catholic Church until my daughter was three. At that time, Austin had an ultra-conservative bishop who was determined to root out all perceived liberalism in the diocese.  When the bishop visited parishes, the church leaders were advised to keep women off of the altar:  No altar girls, no female lectors, no women cantors or communion distributors.  While women are approved to serve in all of those roles by the Vatican, this bishop didn’t want to see women in front of the church. He’s not alone in his views.  The Vatican also still asserts that women cannot be priests. Suddenly, I realized that I didn’t want my daughter being raised in a church where she was told that she wasn’t as good as a boy.  Wanting a better world for her was what helped me find the courage to leave a church I no longer agreed with.

Miss Representation doesn't investigate issues around sex and religion, but it does examine the impact of the media and politics on women.  Since I isolate myself from the news quite a great bit because I find it too intense to watch as an empath, I was shocked at some of the practices still happening in our media today.  I knew that Hillary Rodham Clinton was disrespected by the media, but I wasn't aware of how many other female politicians faced similar unmerited criticisms based on their sex alone.  Likewise, because I tend to seek out movies with strong female leads and characters, I had no idea how many actresses and female directors in Hollywood are still struggling to be seen on the same level as their male peers.  Issues like these fill this fast-paced documentary that is packed with facts, video clips, and interviews with experts in many fields.

At the end of the film, someone suggests that we need media literacy courses in our high schools to help educate our students about the reality of what our media does.  Given how saturated our world is by media and commercialism, I think that's a great idea.  I really would love to see Miss Representation as a part of a mandatory high school curriculum, though I am sure many others who look at the world through different lenses would disagree with me.

(I've attached a very long list of questions that I generated from Miss Representation that could be used to start discussions in a group or for personal journaling.  There are far too many questions to use in one meeting, so please feel free to edit and change as necessary to fit your group’s needs.)

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

I am a believer in life beyond what most of us know about on earth, so I entered this book wanting to know more about those who share our Universe.  Star Ancestors: Exterrestrial Contact in the Native American Tradition, edited by Nancy Red Star, is a compilation of interviews with various Native American individuals regarding extraterrestrial life.  Because they are oral interviews, the prose can be a bit wandering and difficult to follow at times, though the text has been well-edited.  There is a great diversity in those who have contributed to the book.  Many of the chapters sound as though they are ramblings of delusional people.  Only two of the contributors really jumped out as individuals whom I would consider reading more from, Paul Werner Duarte and Sequoyah Trueblood.

The only common theme in these interviews is that they all touch on the interactions of other life forms with those on earth.  Beyond that, the opinions vary widely about whether the earth is about to face apocalypse or enter into a heavenly state.  Some authors believe the next generation will destroy the earth; others feel it will save the planet.

The structure of the book seems a bit odd at times with unrelated poetry interspersed in blocks at the beginning and end of each chapter.  There are mini biographies and author comments at the beginning of each chapter, too, making the layout a bit clunky.  While there are lots of illustrations and photos, many of the photos are of poor quality.  Quite a few of the illustrations seem completely out of place and unrelated to the author or topic at hand.

It took me almost 18 months to get through this book because I found it so meandering.  Aside from those two particular chapters by Duarte and Trueblood, I wouldn’t recommend the book to friends. It just didn’t provide the information I was hoping to find, nor did I get a great deal of pleasure out of reading what was there.

(For those who are chemically sensitive, please note that the brand new edition of the book I purchased used incredibly toxic ink.  I can handle most books in print now after a bit of off-gassing, but this one still emanates toxins after owning it for 18 months.  This also greatly impeded my progress in reading this book.)

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

(I received a complimentary copy of this work from Hay House via NetGalley.  The opinions here are my own and are not influenced by anyone.)

I’m a fan of many of the Hay House authors, so seeing that publishing house associated with a new book induces me to try an author I might not have read otherwise.  In most cases, I’m pleased with the selections I read from Hay House.  This was not one of those cases.

In Love Never Dies: How to Reconnect and Make Peace with the Deceased, Jamie Turndorf, Ph.D., explores her newfound connection to the spirit world after the death of her husband, former Jesuit priest Emile Jean Pin.  As a former atheist, this new world of spirituality is an adventure for Turndorf, one she approaches with the blind enthusiasm of a young child after she conquers her initial misgivings.  After her husband’s unexpected death from a reaction to a bee string, Turndorf is surprised to discover her connection to her beloved Jean continues through their deep spiritual love for each other.  She writes that together they have a ministry to help others in processing death and connecting to those in the afterlife so that all involved may continue to grow and heal.

Love Never Dies does have a few good qualities.  It is simply written making it accessible to the popular masses.  The book also has the potential to comfort many in the first and last sections where Turndorf describes her experiences and the experiences of her clients as they reconnect with their deceased love ones.  The book brings up an incredibly large number of questions for a book group to discuss around life, love, healing and death.

From there, however, the book simply falls apart.  It’s repetitive and poorly edited starting with the weak rhyming poetry at the beginning of each chapter.  Turndorf proudly declares that she hadn’t checked out the “competition” before writing her book making it an all original work.  While there are merits to an untainted narrative, those merits are outweighed by the negatives in this book.  Turndorf’s lack of vocabulary to discuss concepts such as synchronicity weakens her arguments and presentation immensely.  The result is a book that feels like an amateur falsely pretending to be a professional.

Turndorf also is blinded by her own narrow experiences regarding the metaphysical world.  She only sees what she wants to see and doesn’t consider that there are possibilities beyond the definitive answers she purports to reach.  For example, Turndorf declares that demons or negative spirit entities might exist though she’s doubtful about it.  She thinks that if negative spiritual beings do exist, Jean protects her from them always.  Any experienced psychic, intuitive or medium who has worked extensively with the metaphysical will cringe at this naïve view:  In his Hay House publication Infinite Quest: Develop Your Psychic Intuition to Take Charge of Your Life, John Edward speaks extensively on the importance of spiritual protection when one is working with the other side.  Turndorf’s inexperience becomes dangerous as she guides readers into murky waters without life jackets.

Furthermore, Turndorf blindly believes that all the departed are willing to work on their faults and help their living loved ones heal.  This, too, is a declaration of an inexperienced practitioner who is, in my words, blinded by the white light.  Other gifted mediums such as me are able to encounter spirits in all their essence, seeing their soul level faults which do not miraculously heal upon entry to the afterlife.  Many souls choose not to work on their own healing in the afterlife, no differently than their course here on earth.  In those cases, Turndorf’s advice risks connecting hurting individuals with souls who will continue to emotionally and spiritual abuse them from the other side.  This is not only ignorant, but it’s dangerous and is the last thing a psychologist should want for clients.

Even on a much simpler and less dangerous level, Turndoff offers bad advice to those wanting to begin meditation as a means to connecting with departed souls.  Setting up beginners with the task of meditating for many hours is going to defeat many people before they even get out of the starting gate.  It’s far better for beginners to slowly introduce themselves to meditation to reduce the risk of perceived failure and to encourage successful future experiences which may eventually be longer.

Turndorf’s faulty logic is so convoluted at times that it is difficult to follow.  Throughout Love Never Dies, she contradicts herself on larger philosophical issues.  Turndorf presents the concept that things that happen more than three times are a scientifically valid result. Unfortunately, she fails to recognize that even if something occurs three times, it’s still possible to misinterpret information about those results.  Throughout the book, I feel she often misinterprets her experiences because of her lack of experience and narrow-minded views.  For example, Turndorf declares many times that we avoid loving fully because losing a loved one is so painful.  However, there are other possibilities for why we might restrain our love that she never even considers.  It’s possible that we don’t love fully because we don’t know how to.  It’s also possible that we don’t love fully because we don’t believe we deserve love.

This narrow perspective continues as Turndorf obsesses over her theories that she is metaphysically gifted because of her premature birth and three month NICU stay away from her mother.  She writes about high fevers and illness predisposing people to being able to being open to spiritual contact, yet she fails to examine the role of her own experiences with Lyme Disease in regards to her metaphysical experiences.  As a practitioner who has had Lyme and who works with many others who have Lyme, I would argue that the vast majority of people who deal with chronic or late disseminated Lyme Disease are those who are metaphysically gifted.  A little research outside of her own bubble would help Turndorf to see these other possibilities. 

As the book progresses, I found Turndorf’s words to her clients and to her readers to be cruel and potentially damaging.  I cringed as Turndorf relates how she said to a newly bereaved parent that “she could view this recent loss as a gift from the spirit.”  While this lesson is true on some levels, the way she phrased this to a parent who has recently lost a baby is heartless at best. 

Furthermore, comparing our pain to others’ is not beneficial.  Telling ourselves “it could be worse” demeans the pain we are experiencing.  Turndorf writes, “When we see someone in pain, we’re being invited to stop feeling sorry for ourselves and give thanks for the problems we have that pale in comparison.  Another person’s difficulty reminds us that we could have it so much worse.”  What she fails to contemplate is that some of her readers (including me in my not so distant past) will fall into that category of having things “so much worse.”  Having been told many times by others that they could look at my life and realize how good they actually have it, I can speak from experience that such an attitude does not help the person undergoing the trials.  The heartless response simply makes their pain increase.

If all of these issues aren’t enough, I found Turndorf’s basic psychological advice to be weak at best.  After 30 years’ experience in practice, she is not a novice.  She earned her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from California Coast University in 1994.  She is a nationally known psychologist using the pseudonym “Dr. Love.”  However, her personal relationship with Jean raised many flags for me as a reader and life coach, beginning with the fact that she was 21 and he was 58 when it began.  Turndorf claims that she and Jean had a perfect spiritual love, yet the aspects of their relationship she shares demonstrate a couple that struggled to love each other in their earthly forms.  She asserts that Jean was “one of the world’s true mystics” but he didn’t know he could be so close to her in spirit form.  This doesn’t build his credibility or hers.  Even Googling her late husband (who died in 2006, after the advent of the internet) does not turn up the abundance of hits one would expect from a man whom she claims was a one of the 50 most holy people to have lived in the eyes of the Dalai Lama.  As she describes their relationship after he “left his body,” Turndorf sees her late husband’s love as fulfilling her and becoming her own love.  Almost all psychologists would argue that seeking to use another’s love as a replacement for self-love is not a healthy approach in the long term.

Finally, in one of the experiences at the end of the book, she details of a client named “Mo.”  Turndorf uses guilt to trick Mo into working with her deceased husband.  This woman clearly has spent a lifetime being manipulated by others who prey on her overactive sense of guilt.  A healthier treatment option might have been to work with Mo to recognize her issues around guilt until she regained the self-esteem necessary to work on herself out of self-love.  The ends did not justify the means in this treatment.

Turndorf seems to think grieving is the only reason people need to connect to Spirit and those on the other side.  As she presents the issues in Love Never Dies, she fails to see how other tragedies can be more devastating and more impactful that grief.  Her narrow-minded and uneducated views result in a book that will help facilitate discussion about important topics but which ultimately may give some very bad advice to vulnerable readers.

(Attached below is a PDF of questions that could be used for book group discussions.  Feel free to alter or edit these questions for your own personal use in a group discussion or journaling.)

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

(I received a complimentary copy of this work from Hay House via NetGalley.  The opinions here are my own and are not influenced by anyone.)

When I read metaphysically oriented books, it is usually with two goals in mind.  The first and foremost is my own personal growth and development.  I’m reading to learn and expand my horizons.  The second is to help others.  As I read, I am often thinking about how the concepts and examples can help my clients.  Adventures of the Soul: Journeys Through the Physical and Spiritual Dimensions is a book that both expanded my horizons with a few new concepts and provided some great information for me to use in teaching my clients.

Adventures of the Soul is the first book by James Van Praagh that I’ve read, but it won’t be the last.  I’ve heard Van Praagh speak on various online seminars produced by Hay House, so I knew that I was on the same page as him, so to speak, when it comes to metaphysical beliefs.  However, some great speakers aren’t great authors.  That’s not the case here.  Van Praagh’s relaxed writing style feels like a friendly conversation.  His own material on our souls’ journeys both here and in the afterlife are interspersed with personal anecdotes, popular culture references including relevant movies, and information from other books.  I ended up with a reading list of quite a few other books I wanted to read as a result of reading Adventures of the Soul!

The premise of Van Praagh’s book is that our journey on earth is to learn to vibrate with the pure love of the Spirit.  Our human incarnations provide us with the opportunities to face challenges which help us grow.  Van Praagh expands upon ways in which we can raise our energetic vibrations, thus improving our soul and our quality of life.  He concludes the book with several guided meditations for one to use in this quest.  While these are actually the types of meditations that initially turned me off the concept of meditation when I was a teenager, they are likely very helpful for many others who need guidance in beginning their meditation practice.

Van Praagh also spends a good deal of the book discussing the afterlife, reincarnation and what he has learned through his years as a medium.  As someone who has only spent a few years working professionally as an intuitive and a medium, this was the section of the book where I found the most new (to me) information.  Van Praagh’s concepts of the various layers of the place where we go after our mortal deaths expanded on details which I’ve not yet encountered in my work with the other side.  I was aware that different layers exist, but I’ve not had reason or desire to probe further into information about them.  Because so much of the other detail Van Praagh gives resonates with what I experience in my work, I’m inclined to trust his descriptions of details of those things I’ve not yet encountered.  This book gave me a foothold for doing more exploration in that area should I ever choose to do so. 

One of the things that I appreciated most about Adventures of the Soul is that Van Praagh emphasized the concept of taking what works for you and leaving the rest behind.  He quotes Buddha as having said, “`Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.’”  It’s refreshing to read a book from an author who doesn’t see himself as the absolute authority on the topic he’s writing about, a sign that Van Praagh wasn’t letting his ego interfere with his mission as he wrote the book. 

(Attached below is a PDF of questions that could be used for book group discussions.  Feel free to alter or edit these questions for your own personal use in a group discussion or personal journaling.)

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

When I’m dealing with high pain levels that are enough to keep me from being fully functional but not enough to wipe out my cognitive abilities, I often turn to fiction for distraction from my pain.  As with my movie selections, I prefer works that include a great deal of character development.  The following are some of the best novels I’ve read lately.

Twin Souls by DelSheree Gladden is primarily a fantasy, but Gladden also draws on shamanic traditions including herbal medicine, Native American mythology, and animal guides to create a wonderful novel about love and mystical power. While the book initially seems to be just another teen romance, it eventually blossoms into a powerful story that sent me straight to purchase the next in the series. I found this book after having read the first book in Gladden’s enjoyable Aerling series; unlike that series, Twin Souls is well-edited making it easy and addictive to read.

A month after finishing The Good Daughters by Joyce Maynard, I'm still periodically thinking about the characters and the conflicts in the novel. That's always a good sign when you can't get the book out of your mind because it has captivated you so much! The primary issues in the book stem from the age old debate around nature versus nurture in families of origin.  While the "secret" of the book was obvious to me from the beginning, its slow revelation was enjoyable for the most part. The narrative switches between two different women, one of whom is being raised on a farm for a large portion of the novel and the other who purchases and runs a farm as an adult. Because the chapters are so short, it sometimes left me feeling like I was watching a ping pong game. Overall, though, it was a great novel that I enjoyed.

Russian Winter is a long work that also uses a split narrative that shifts between time periods making it feel like two separate novels integrated into one.  The book is an addictive page turner, and while it’s already quite long, I didn’t want it to end.  Author Daphne Kalotay's vivid descriptions of communist Russia and the life of professional ballerinas were entrancing for me even though I’m not a huge fan of ballet or tales of communist oppression.  I also loved the research about historical jewels which one of the female characters undertakes as part of the novel's primary plot; this is the kind of project that historian in me also loves to do.  Kalotay did a fabulous job of wrapping up the story of the characters and their interactions by the end of the work and completed it in a way that felt satisfying.  

I was completely captivated from start to finish with Wildflower Hill by Kimberley Freeman and think it is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. Written in yet another split narrative primarily between the present time and the 1930s, both storylines of a grandmother and her granddaughter kept me enthralled. One of the narratives of this story also deals with the tales of a professional ballerina, but it is after the dancer’s career has ended.  Like so many of the other books I’ve read recently, the story deals with the definition and perception of family.  Freeman has a magically fluid prose that I thoroughly enjoyed, and while she wrapped up the story well by the end, I still wanted more.  She is an author whose other works I will definitely read in the future.  

© 2015 Green Heart Guidance