Today’s world is changing at the most accelerated rates ever, and our bodies, minds, emotions and spirits are all being affected by these larger changes. Have you noticed recently that you’re experiencing more intense emotions? Many people are feeling a heightened sense of emotional intensity, so we are seeing more incidents of disruptive outbursts and behaviors, and also more positive emotions related to expanding love, that are inspiring people to take more risks within their interpersonal relationships, and in relation to important life choices.

The human heart is growing larger on a spiritual level, expanding beyond its perceived small boundaries of focus on the self. The growth of technology and the process of spiritual evolution on the Earth have created unprecedented levels of communication between people, and also between humanity and the planet Earth that we live upon. It has become clear that our previously self oriented behaviors have created multiple planetary crises that must be addressed. Each of us is being called by the time we live in, to step forward into greater self responsibility and a greater willingness to join with others to find solutions to our common problems.

As the spiritual evolutionary impulse continues to transform us and to open the hearts of humanity, we are also seeing increased incidences of the worse of humanity as well. We see shocking examples of negativity expressing itself in large and small ways, which seem even more abominable as we become more spiritually aware and more sensitized to the world around us.

This process which seems so harsh and difficult is known as the process of purification. As greater levels of spiritual light manifest on the Earth, the light acts both to open the heart and open spiritual awareness, and it also acts to illuminate what has been hidden and separated from the light of spiritual oneness. When the negativity is released, it floods our awareness and feels like it will never end. This is the most difficult part of the process, which we are in the midst of right now on planet Earth.

Once the flood of negativity has subsided, we can begin to be able to feel the greater love, light and freedom that results from being cleansed at a deep level. The end result of the process of purification is a life that exists in harmony with oneself, with God, and with all of life. This process is happening both individually and on a global level, so that humanity can live at peace, in harmony with God and with all of life.

Most of us carry within ourselves pain which we endured in our younger lives, or that we are aware of from within our hearts. As the spiritual atmosphere of the Earth becomes more illuminated, we may feel these emotions in a more heightened way. It could be a constant sense of anger, or despair or grief, that seems to pervade our consciousness no matter what is happening in our daily lives. It may be that little has changed in our outer lives, but suddenly we are beset by all these feelings which seem to emerge from an endless well. Or, we may have endured unexpected life crises which trigger deep and painful wounds that feel like they will never be healed.

These intense emotions that are surfacing right now are a part of this larger movement happening on the Earth. Your inner being is a pure and divine child of light which carries within itself the inner knowing of what needs to be healed within you. If you can hold the awareness that the emotions you are feeling are a part of a natural healing process, then it becomes easier to breathe, and to remember that you are feeling the emotions but you are not your emotions.

You are a precious and beautiful soul, created in God’s image with infinite care, to share something special with the world that only you can offer. Allow your emotions to pass through you like water, with trust that they will pass. On the other side of the storm is a new tomorrow with infinite possibilities that exist within God’s loving embrace of spirit. You are deeply blessed with the gift of God’s life, for a divine purpose. Trust this and follow your innermost hearts calling. Your body, mind, emotions and spirit will find a new harmony and alignment, and a new level of peace and inner fulfillment.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines intuition as “the immediate apprehension of an object by the mind without the intervention of any reasoning process”.

Isaac Asimov said of it, “Intuition is the art, peculiar to the human mind, of working out the correct answer from data that is, in itself, incomplete or even, perhaps, misleading.”

How is your relationship with this aspect of yourself? Can you find your own way through a situation with incomplete data? Are you able to balance the left and right sides of your nature–instinct and logic–in order to create maximum persuasion?

We all have the experience of gut feelings, most likely in the form of danger. . . Being in the wrong place at the wrong time is an unpleasant reminder of our intuitive natures. Or maybe you’ve experienced it in a romantic situation. We’ve all heard stories of a man or woman meeting their mate for the first time and thinking to themselves, ‘This is the person I’m going to marry. I can feel it.’

Intuition is a muscle that can be strengthened. It is an aspect of emotional intelligence and with study, attention and patience, can be grown and used to further aid your persuasion skills.

Hunches, gut feelings and intuitions are entirely acceptable to apply in business matters as well as life in general. Following these are signs that our other than conscious Gentle Giant is flawlessly guiding our lives as we’ve requested.

When I experience a moment of intuitive clarity, I feel it in the back of my stomach, radiating sharply. Other people experience it as a jump in their chest. Others still, feel a hardness in the backs of their throats. By paying attention to these physical shifts, the world of self-calibration opens up to us. These shifts can sometimes me huge differences in the things we do and measures we take to close a deal or get out of a dangerous or difficult situation.

As a small disclaimer: Following hunches shouldn’t negate logic and reason, but act in concert with them. The ability to pay attention to hunches and intuition is sometimes relegated to new age followers and is often neglected or mocked in business situations. Think about military personnel or police officers (especially ones in the line of danger) who rely on these abilities to keep themselves safe. Or think about business mogul Lee Iacoca who once said, “The only mistake I ever made was not listening to my gut.”

Think back to times when you had these feelings and didn’t heed the warning. What unpleasantness could you have avoided if you had (a broken heart, a stolen purse. . .)?

By checking in, centering, and gaining clarity, our persuasion is enhanced immeasurably in all aspects of life. A really great resource on intuition is Laura Day’s book, ‘Practical Intuition,’ which contains some amazing exercises to strengthen and stretch the “sixth sense” or really, what I like to think of as our relationship to and messages from our gentle giant.

While we often worry about stress, not all stress is bad. We need a certain amount of stress to make our lives interesting. And since there is no way to eliminate every commitment or deadline in our lives, we should try to control our stress levels in the best ways we can.

It would be nice if someone created a mathematical formula for stress that would measure how much stress an individual could take without become overwhelmed. Optimal stress levels vary from individual to individual, however, as well as from situation to situation. Some situations that would make you feel very stressful are considered fun and invigorating to someone else. People who love constant change in their lives would feel too much stress in a tedious, mundane job. You can see how different people’s definitions of stress may be. Scientists believe that many illnesses are directly related to stress. If you find that you are sick a lot of the time, or that you feel nervous often, you must develop effective strategies to cope with your stress level. Otherwise, you could be open to serious physical deterioration. Stress management is a practiced art, however. You will not relieve your stress in one day; you must keep at it and eventually, you will discover methods that work for you.

A first step is to learn what things make you stress out. While you may not be able to eliminate these things, you can work to make them more manageable. If cooking dinner causes stress, for instance, you may consider getting take-out food once a week to give yourself a break. If giving a presentation at work worries you, maybe you can learn to focus on just one section at a time and reduce your stress in that way. If commuting to work makes you stressful, leave a little earlier. It will become easier to address your overall stress if you discover the things that cause it and then try to limit their impact.

The next step is to try to reduce your emotional reactions to the things that stress you. You may find that these stressors make you think in a negative fashion, focusing only a situation’s worst aspects. Try, instead, to think of a stressor as a chance to improve your life. Try to see if you are overreacting to a situation. It may be that every stressor you encounter does not require an urgent response. Maybe you can take some time to study a situation before it bothers you. Think of yourself as in control while you may not be able to do anything about the stressor itself, you can control how you feel about it.

Be sure to be aware of any physical reactions you have to stress. Deep-breathing techniques can help you decrease your heart rate, for example. If you have severe reactions, consult your doctor to determine if medication can help you. You can also reduce your stress levels by making your body stronger. Do aerobic activities three times per week, and make sure you eat nutritious foods. Avoid stimulants like sugar and coffee. And recognize that stress is a part of life. While it can’t be eliminated, you can develop coping strategies that will help when you feel overwhelmed.

Hypnosis is a therapy that can be used to improve the concentration levels and thereby achieving your goals and ambitions in life. Hypnosis helps to increase the self confidence and self esteem.

If you have got more good traits but you are shy to express anything then you certainly need hypnosis therapy. You need not be arrogant or selfish, but you should possess self confidence to achieve your goals. For improving self confidence you should first get ready mentally to remove your negative thoughts and believe in yourself and in your capabilities.

Consider these points about hypnosis:

1) You should learn to eliminate the unnecessary fears you have that are burdens in your career. For example, if anybody praises you and you do not feel that you are not fit for that, you need to learn to accept and enjoy admiration. This will help to improve your self confidence. In short, you should not think too much about what others will say but rather you should instead focus on removing your doubts. You can thus learn to make positive decisions and this will help you to attain self confidence and self esteem.

2) You can use hypnosis to get relief from worry, pain, stress and fear. Some people will have many fear and phobias. And such things can act as hurdles for self improvement. In these case, you can use hypnosis to get rid of fears and phobias. You can start either self hypnosis or get the help of a hypnotist.

3) You can also learn to be happy with the help of hypnosis. Life will be harder if you are indulge in sadness and worries all the time. You must learn to be cheerful. Be happy hypnosis will help you to eliminate your sadness quickly. You can remove your negative thoughts with the help of hypnosis.

‘Be happy’ hypnosis motivates to produce a world carefree and happy. The happiness starts from your inner mind. You should stay relaxed and set your mind to be happy. Always wake up with the smile. Tell your subconscious mind that you are self content with everything you have.

4) Many people think that hypnosis is a strange subject. But you can use even self hypnosis to change your behavior and thoughts. Many experts believe that our thoughts rule our body. So the more you think positively the more you can attain positive results. You must also learn not to focus your mind in negative thinking. This is because negative thoughts can have the same impact like positive thoughts.

5) Hypnosis helps the inner mind to relax. In this relaxed mind status you can tell our suggestions repeatedly to your subconscious mind. This will help you improvement in personal life or in business.

6) Hypnotism can help those people who really want to be hypnotized. It will not help you if you want not to be hypnotized. Hypnosis really relaxes you from your worries and stress levels. You can feel like you’ve had hours of sound sleep when you are in medium trances for minutes.

In short, you can use hypnosis for nearly anything. Even if you want to lose your body weight you can do that with hypnosis. Hypnosis also helps to get rid of addictions to smoke, drinks, drugs, computer or video games.

When I was in high school during the early 70’s the drinking age was 18 years old. Every one of my friends was a big drinker; some of them even drank in my father’s bar, where I worked. It was unbelievable how much booze these kids could consume. I witnessed kids drinking a case of beer in one night, others drinking pitchers of mixed drink, and still others drinking booze right out of a bottle. I myself would have a few beers occasionally, but my real drinking didn’t start until I was about 25 years old. By the way the girls in high school used to go crazy for the guys who were called the big drinkers. It seemed like the prettiest girls were impressed with a guy who could drink a pitcher of beer without coming up for air. Drinking was common place in the early seventies. Then all of a sudden you would hear about a group of teenagers who were killed in an alcohol related car wreck, That’s when everyone laid low for a while, and didn’t drink or at least didn’t drink and drive.

After one too many of these alcohol related accidents, the laws and the penalties got stiffer. The parents who had one of their children killed because of a drunk driver started to organize and formed the group Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). The students who had their friends killed in accidents formed Students Against Drunk Driving (SADD). Police task forces were organized and were trained to identify people who were driving a car under the influence of alcohol. The word designated driver took on meaning. This was supposed to be the person who didn’t drink at the party and could drive everyone else home who was drunk. It started to be less and less fashionable to be drunk at a party, and heavy drinking was starting to become taboo.

I spent about 10 years of heavy drinking myself between the ages of 25 and 35. I decided to quit when my daughter Sarah was born, and so I stopped all alcohol consumption. This was probably the best thing that I ever did for my own health, and for the welfare of my kids. Sarah will be 17 soon if you do the math, I haven’t been a drinker for almost 17 years. Sarah even commented to me on more than one occasion, “Dad I am so glad that you don’t drink.” She has been around some of her friends’ parents who are big drinkers and she has seen some behavior that she didn’t like. I felt very proud that I heard this from my daughter, until I discovered about 100 beer cans in the cellar of her house from a party that had gone on there about one week earlier. I started to wonder if she was going to take my place as the family lush. When I questioned her about the beer cans she said, “Oh yeah, dad can you take them to your house to get rid of them? Mom doesn’t want to put them out at the curb here because she thinks it might look bad.” I said to her, “You’re damn right it looks bad, it’ll look bad no matter where you put those cans.” I asked her why she was drinking. She responded with, “It helps you get loosened up.” “Loosened up for what?” I said. She finished the dialog by saying, “Dad I’m shy, and it makes it easier for me to have conversations with other people.”

The alcohol related problems that have occurred in society today, like people getting killed in auto accidents, or the health related issues like a rotten liver due to heavy drinking, are widely publicized by the media. Kids are told that they can’t drink and drive. But it doesn’t stop them.

I only have to go back to my daughter’s comment to find the reason why she was drinking: “Dad I’m shy and it makes it easier for me to have a conversation with other people.” Why is this comment she made so troubling to me? Because if the booze helps her with her shyness, then when will she ever develop the skills to talk to people without the booze? When young people make it a habit to drink in order to deal with problems they have socially, this causes their emotions to go dormant at the age that they started to drink, which then prevents them from maturing emotionally. Drinking becomes their social and emotional coping mechanism. These young people do not experience the natural growing pains that must be gone through where they learn how to interact with others on their own, without using the alcohol to help them. Natural growing pains that are part of the maturing process should not be avoided or salved by the use of alcohol because the alcohol will only retard maturity or cause it to never be developed.

Young people who drink become extremely one dimensional. They do not become interesting people. They don’t develop a wide variety of interests or hobbies. They have desire to hang around with anyone who seems different, so they really limit the kinds of things they talk about or do. They basically stay stuck where they are at the age they started drinking. This whole thing reminds me of a book I read by Robert Bly called The Sibling Society. This book talks about a society with no vertical vision. The only gaze that the people have is a horizontal one. This means that people can see only those who are in their immediate view.

As we now go through yet another generation of alcohol abuse it’s time to realize what alcohol is really doing to our young people who have to learn how to be emotionally mature, but won’t if they continue to drink. We can’t rely on the media to communicate this societal problem. The media without fail covers stories about stars who have alcohol and drug abuse related problems. What comes across to young people is that these stars enter a rehabilitation program for drug and alcohol addiction, and then they come out waving to the public looking perfectly cured. The only message that gets conveyed is that there are no really bad consequences to drinking.

I think the thing that troubles me the most is the observations that I have made of my own life. At 25 years old I was a heavy drinker and I really didn’t know why I drank the way I did. Often I would go the refrigerator for a beer and ask myself the question, am I thirsty or depressed? I really didn’t have the answer then. I believe that I do now. The reality is I wasn’t comfortable in my own skin. Social situations made me uncomfortable, a few drinks did the trick and I became more adept at holding conversations with other people and interacting in a group. When I was 35 years old my daughter Sarah was born and I made the decision to quit drinking so that she would never see the damaging effects of alcohol. My daughter started to drink for the same reason that I did which frightens me to no end. I guess I am going to have to go through some growing pains now at 53 years old, along with my daughter who is almost 17. I wish that I had been through this process 30 years ago. I wonder who will grow up first, my daughter or me. Time will tell.