The Earth-Heart Institute of Vision and Healing
Vision Quests, Spiritual Retreats, Women's Retreats, Kundalini Yoga & Meditation, Personal Intensives

April 2005

Welcome to the quarterly newsletter of the Earth-Heart Institute of Vision and Healing. We offer Vision Quests, Retreats, Kundalini Yoga and Meditation, Personal Intensives, Healing, and Spiritual Counseling. This newsletter will offer thoughts on a chosen topic with simple awareness exercises, meditations, or yogic tips that relate to the topic. We will also update you on our class schedule, recommend books or products that relate to living a healthy and conscious life, and offer some web links to check out that support a greater and more unified Vision of the world, the expansion of the human spirit, and the protection of the environment. If you are not interested in receiving these newsletters once each season, you can click on the “unsubscribe” button at the bottom. Click on our name (above) to visit our web site.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. -Martin Luther King, Jr.

PERSPECTIVES

The power of prayer is rapidly emerging into the mainstream of our culture. It is seen as the pathway to love, good health, communication with God, happiness, wealth, the healing of illness, and, more broadly, all the good that can be imagined in life. It is where individual consciousness touches the purity of Infinite Consciousness and is forever changed by that touch. There is now a growing body of scientific research that has begun to validate the power of prayer.

However, in this article, I would like to suggest that prayer is a double-edged sword and that if we don’t pray skillfully, we will create effects that are both unintended and unwanted. The tongue-in-cheek expression, “be careful what you ask for because you might get it!” expresses this other side of prayer. This article is about skillful prayer.

First of all, what is prayer? And how is it different from mere thought? Structurally, prayer and thought are very closely related. Both contain energy and intelligence (information), and both create effects in your life. The crucial, empowering element of all prayer is the intensity, the fervor, or the emotion that we bring to the prayer. Thought can be quite passionless even while being purposeful and productive, while prayer is typically passionate and poignant. It is this element of intensity that actually empowers thought to become a prayer and causes a more dramatic impact in both the realms of spirit and in our daily lives. In other words, you get more of what you pray for!

Thomas Hora, in Beyond the Dream, said that most humans pray to three things in their lives: the things they love, the things they fear, and the things they hate. The emotions around all three are strong and therefore, empowering. Of these three types of prayer, two-thirds of them are to negative qualities and events in life. When we understand prayer this way, the condition of our world is hardly surprising! These conditions are merely a reflection of the empowered thoughts (prayer) that we are sending out into the world.

The obvious objection to the above is that we don’t pray for the things we hate and fear, but against them. We seek to banish them from our life, not attract them to us! Unfortunately, the unconscious mind thinks simply and in pictures rather than words, and while there is a word, a concept, for “not” there is no picture for it. If I ask you not to think of a pink elephant, what image pops into your head? A pink elephant! So when we rail against the things we hate and fear, our subconscious mind innocently pictures those things and sends them into our mental atmosphere where they will attract like vibrations from the world around us. Thus we will continue to draw the reflection of those things into our experience.

When we pray, we create our lives and our world. So it is important to be conscious of praying skillfully, and to curtail excessive indulgence in negative and destructive thoughts and emotions. This does not mean ignoring negative situations in our lives or the real difficulties we face, it means holding to the Light in our world, our emotions, and our thoughts. Only when we focus on the Light of our consciousness can that Light enlighten our world and create the perfect reflection of the Creator’s divine vision for each of us. As Martin Luther King said, only Light can drive out darkness.

HELPFUL PRACTICES

EXERCISE -- AN ANCIENT FORM OF PRAYER IN PRACTICE

1) Close your eyes, relax, and think about something you are praying FOR (if it’s a change in a negative situation, focus not on the problem, but on the resolution).
2) Once you have the image clearly in mind, focus on how you will FEEL, once the result occurs. Imagine with every cell in you body that the prayer has already been answered.
3) With every breath you take, empower the feelings of joy, relief, happiness, excitement, etc -- whatever it is that you feel when the prayer is answered. Make them real within you. Don’t forget gratitude!
4) Sit for a while, knowing that the prayer has already been answered, feeling in your body as strongly as possible these positive emotions at this result, and send THAT energy out into the world. (You’ll be surprised at what you can create with this).

NEWS

If you are interested in doing a Vision Quest this year, the 100-person Vision Quest is the one to sign up for! If you would like to find out more about the ancient rite of the Vision Quest you can check our web site. Our next Quest of this size will not be run until 2008. Through experience we know that the energy increases exponentially as more people Quest for Vision in the same area at the same time. The results were far-reaching, affecting family, friends and co-workers thousands of miles away. The goal, as we build these larger Quests, is to positively affect global consciousness. Please help us get the word out!

Anyone interested in attending next year’s 28-Day Sacred Silence Retreat has only 2 chances to complete the prerequisite before then. You must attend Lighten Up this June in Joshua Tree, or next year (run either in Joshua Tree, or in Mexico at a slightly higher fee, and slightly altered class structure http://www.mayatulum.com/).

COURSE UPDATES

Click on the links below to read about a particular class, or go to Earth-Heart Programs to read about other classes not listed here, and Student Comments to read unsolicited comments from past participants.

There are still a few spaces left in Lighten Up: A Healing Retreat held in Joshua Tree, CA in June 2005-- a fantastic program where we will help you create vibrant energy and health. This beautiful desert retreat center, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, is a great setting for relaxing and renewal. You will leave feeling fantastic!

The Sedona Women’s Retreat in April now has one spot open, that the waiting list participants were unable to fill. If you were interested in attending, but it was filled when you applied, you now have a chance! You can guarantee the spot by calling us with credit card information for the payment in full. Otherwise, we will take the earliest postmarked mail (send in all application materials and payment in full) when we return home on April 7th -- we are out-of-town until then.

We have added 3 weeks in October for Personal Intensives (only 2 individuals per week). All other available dates in 2005 have been booked at this time. These added weeks will go quickly, and will be the last ones for the year.

Announcing our new Kundalini Yoga Intensive in Sedona, AZ. A certified kundalini yoga instructor through KRI and 3HO, Allyson will be leading this course, and it will run Oct 5th-9th at the Angel Valley Retreat Center. Beginners welcome! If you’re one of the many people who’s been introduced to kundalini yoga at Lighten Up or the 2-Week Retreat, and loved the power of the practice, this is a great chance to come and deepen your knowledge of the science behind it. Especially if you’ve been having a hard time finding a local teacher in your area, and have had only videos to work with!

Please note that the date for Malcolm’s Compass of the Heart class in the 2005 brochure is not correct. The course will run May 5th-8th (not the 9th) in Malibu, CA. This course will not be held again until at least 2007. It is a very powerful program that will dramatically increase your ability to let your heart be the driving force in your daily life choices.

CONFERENCE CALL SCHEDULE

To participate, send in your $20 check and we will contact you with the number to call, and the code to punch in. Calls will range from 60-90 minutes depending on the number of participants.

Sedona Women’s Retreat graduates: Thursday, June 30th at 5:30pm (PST) / 8:30pm (EST)
Women’s Retreat participants will be able to check in with questions, concerns, or just to touch base 2 months after our retreat.

WORLDWIDE “WEB OF LIFE”

We want to support organizations out there who are working for the uplifting of humanity. If you know of websites that are doing really good work in the world, email them to us for possible inclusion in a future newsletter. We’d like to help get the word out. Consider monthly sponsorship of a needy child through Plan USA www.planusa.org, or a one-time donation can help support their mission of child-centered development and the well-being, rights and interests of the world's children, uniting people across cultures. Also consider Heifer International www.heifer.org who’s mission is to end hunger and poverty, to care for the earth by helping individuals create sustainable work that benefits families and communities, to promote “passing on the gift” to others in their community, and to improve the health of the environment.

Many blessings to you all,
Allyson and Malcolm