Each moment you cling to trauma or anger after it occurs, you cause the past to generate an entirely new sequence of thoughts, emotions, and actions. Until you can give up your attachment to the past incident, you are cursed to maintain and magnify the pain.

Many adults have a history of childhood abuse. As harmful as these early experiences can be to our psyche, an accompanying form of abuse frequently compounds them. This is the abuse we give ourselves. This form is even more widespread and affects most of us in one way or another.

Resistance not only creates physical stress but is also the determining factor in whether a person feels negative emotions. Experiencing anger, sadness, fear, guilt or grief is only possible if you resist something in your past, present or future.

In a piece on the television show 60 Minutes, Oprah Winfrey discussed childhood trauma — shining a public spotlight on the lasting effects of abuse and adversity in childhood. Oprah herself is a survivor of childhood abuse.

Years ago, I knew someone who used to say "Love is all there is". This was his "mantra" and he repeated it often to whoever was willing to listen. At the time, I was in my twenties and his statement would aggravate me to no end. After all, how could he say that "love s all there is" when there were wars, famine, murders, crimes of all kinds, etc. etc.

Our spiritual evolution depends heavily upon our recovery from our worst addiction -- our addiction to the victim archetype, which traps us in the past and saps our life energy.

"I like you, do you like me?" Isn't that how children approach one another, with total openness and acceptance? They have this pure, inno­cent way of expressing themselves, and have a completely disarming attitude like, "Hey, I want you to be my friend."

There are at least 2.6 million stillbirths a year across the world. More than 2,000 families each year suffer the loss of a stillborn baby in Australia, equating to six stillborn babies every day.

Rejection can hurt. Perhaps a person can be rejected by a friend, partner, boss, sibling, parent, co-worker, someone you work out with at the gym, or even your grown child. Scientists are discovering that the hurt of rejection can be actually recorded within your body.

Most of us think of blame as the melodramatic pointing of a long, crooked finger towards one who has done scandalous wrong. Yet we're actually into blame just about every waking moment of our days. From weather, to rude drivers, to toothpaste caps, we blame from sunup 'til sundown and never think a thing about it.

After many years of “helpfully” trying to change other people in order to create a better world that will work for everyone, it at last became clear to me that the only behaviors, thoughts, and feelings I truly have any power to change are my own.

We don't always see what we're doing as complaining; in fact, we often think we're simply telling the truth about the world. What constitutes complaining? One dictionary defines it as, 'An expression of pain, dissatisfaction, or resentment.' I would add that it's a statement of...

This process takes only a few moments but it is one that literally could save you from getting totally caught up in the drama of what is happening and going to 'Victimland' for an extended stay! Our tendency is to default to victim consciousness whenever our upset...

Probably since I was an older child, I prided myself in all the things I could do, in my illusion of independence. But it didn’t stop with physical things. In my pseudo-independence, I ventured into emotional regions, and declared my lack of need for love.

Cynicism seems to have a lot going for it in the modern world. I know that I didn’t give up cynicism until it utterly failed me as a means of self-protection. As I began to understand the psychological roots of my physical collapse, it became clear that my cynical, stressful attitudes toward life had delivered me into this catastrophic con­dition.

It being the holiday season, it seems appropriate to review the emotion of love, since that is what the season is supposed to be about.

In a variety of teachings, unconditional love is the heart and soul of the spiritual life and the ultimate aim of the spiritual path – and by love is meant love in action of course (be it meditation or feeding the hungry), not discourses about love.

I have been “cleaning out my karma” for a few decades now. When I first started paying attention to the feelings of the moment, there was a collage of easy to detect feelings.

Usually the events for which we hold grudges are long-time past, yet, deep in our heart is this little hard cold spot where the memory of that event, accompanied with anger and resentment, lives on as if it happened yesterday. That dark negative energy comes up at the strangest moments...

As I felt the benefits of forgiving my ex-husband Werner, I began to look at other grievances and judgments I was holding. Mom was at the top of my list. Could I find my way to forgive her, too? That would require me to mourn the losses of my childhood and let them go. Holding onto my resentment to Mom kept them in place.

One morning, all of us in the group revisited our childhoods to more closely examine those things that still have power over us. We did this in small groups of four persons and, when it was my turn, I revisited some physical violence from my parents. Ever eager to delve deeper, I discovered something I had never seen before.

The heart of Eastern wisdom teaches you to be naturally in the world without rejecting it. Many spiritual paths condemn and judge the world, as if they were enabling one to move beyond desires. But many fail to realize that they are desiring not to desire (a point that the Buddha understood).

Healing the emotional body in the fourth chakra is by far one of the most important things you can do for your health. With years of experience in Ayurvedic lifestyle counseling, I am convinced that heart health is directly linked to our emotional state.