Gratitude is an amazing healer.  Every expression of thanks causes a little shift.  Your attention moves away from the darkness in your life to the light shining in it.  You may feel grateful for something that seems trivial.  The feeling may last no longer than an eye blink.  It doesn’t matter.  Little shifts are cumulative. 

Gratitude is one of the soul’s basic nutrients.  Expressions of gratitude are expressions of love, and love is the soul’s food.  Each time you shift to the light of love your soul will know that it is being nourished and it will want to stay there.

We are human and can easily get pulled back into the dark when our energy and inner resources are running low.  But each time we make a conscious choice to find something to give thanks for, it gets easier to turn to the light and the time spent there gradually gets longer.  Inevitably, the soul’s voice nudging you to go there and urging you to stay there grows louder than the voices that call you back to the dark.

In time and with practice, you will one day realize that while once there were only flickers of light in the dark, there are now only occasional moments of darkness in the light.  Instead of shining at you, now the light shines out of you!

Expectations are tricky.  They can provide a sense of structure in the chaotic aftermath of adversity but becoming too attached to them can cause additional distress.

You can be rigid or fluid with expectations.  If you are rigid with them you have given them a lot of importance and you’re strongly invested in meeting them.  This may compel you to keep your attention and energy focused on making your healing journey go where your mind thinks it should.  But your mind is only one aspect of the whole you.

When control gets too heavy handed, it suffocates the mysterious voice of your deepest wisdom.  Innate in the heart of your consciousness, this is the force that guides you to health and wholeness.  This is the home of mystery, which when revealed to you, teaches you like no other teacher can.

It’s hard to proceed with anything without a plan so make one if that is helpful to you, but embrace it lightly.  Learn to be fluid and loosen your hold on plans and expectations.  Then when the journey goes a different way, you can let them go and open to the mystery.  In time you will learn to trust it and rest safely in it and allow it to take you where you need to go.

As you do your healing work, you may discover that your relationship with your body is in need of healing.  This makes sense considering that mind body and soul are interconnected.  What affects one part affects the whole.

Healing brings into being a stronger, clearer understanding of your identity.  It strengthens your belief in yourself.  As this evolution happens, you gradually get to know yourself as you truly are – a unique, multifaceted person of value, filled with love and light.

Your body is the one and only vehicle you have that can transport the contents of your mind and soul out into the world.  When you appreciate the value of what you bring to life, caring for the vehicle that allows you to make your contribution naturally becomes more important.

If healing has sparked a new interest in your health, welcome it with joy!  Regardless of whatever challenges you may have, open up to learning about the incredible organic machine that is your body.  Find out what it needs to run well and give it those things!

Beauty is often obscured by the shadow of our troubles during hard times.  As much as it may seem so, it has not vanished from the world.  Its presence has simply become unnoticed.

Beauty does sometimes come to us and jolt our eyes open in a breathtaking display, but most of the time it is subtly tucked in the corners and crannies of our day-to-day lives, and we have to go to it.

To see beauty you have to clear an open channel that goes from your heart to your eyes.  When the weight of your troubles is lifted, even if you can only hold it off for a short while, then the beauty in you has a chance to connect to the beauty in the world.  Every time it does a little healing happens.

Beauty is a powerful healer.  It feeds your spirit and soothes your soul.  It’s available in abundant supply and you can never have too much.  Our capacity to absorb beauty is limitless as is our capacity to heal.

Make the choice to see beauty every day.  Clear the channel and look for the sunbeams.  They are out there in myriad form, shining on you from everywhere.

Sometimes having fun is the biggest gift of healing you can give yourself.  It fills you with positive energy.  It rejuvenates you – mind, body and soul!  It makes your heart feel full and content, and in that feeling, you carry a reminder that the life you are meant to have is a happy one! The idea of having fun can seem completely out of place when you’re in the midst of healing.  During a difficult time, fun is far from your mind.  Your troubles have squeezed it out of your life.  Healing brings it back.

Discovering and learning about the joyful, carefree part of you that delights in having fun can be an important aspect of your healing.  Opportunities to do this will pop up all along the way.  What you do with them will depend on how you feel and where you are in your process.

At times when your focus is fixed on what is distressing, fun probably isn’t on the menu.  There may be other times when you have a chance to do something you enjoy, but you hesitate.  Those are the times you have to decide whether or not to give yourself a push.

There is a right time for every step you take on your journey.  There are times to let fun do its healing magic.  When the time is not right, don’t dismiss the opportunities.  Remember that they are friendly invitations to healing.  Acknowledge them as such even if you don’t act on them.