An excerpt from Live Your Happy by Maria Felipe
Before she was an author and a minister, Reverend Maria Felipe was an actress, a model, and a TV host with a fabulous French boyfriend. She appeared in national commercials, was the first ever Latina boxing announcer, and interviewed World Wrestling Federation competitors in front of audiences of twenty thousand people. People Magazine in Espanol even referred to her as “Una Campeona Sin rival,” which means a champion without rival. But through it all, she felt insecure, unworthy, and downright miserable.
All that began to change when she began to study a book called A Course in Miracles (ACIM), and eventually went on to get her ministerial certificate from an ACIM school known as Pathways of Light. “This self-study spiritual thought system helps students develop a relationship with the ‘internal teacher’ it calls the Holy Spirit, which in turn helps us change how we see the world on a daily basis,” writes Maria. “This ‘shift in perception’ is what ACIM calls a miracle.”
In Live Your Happy: Get Out of Your Own Way and Find the Love Within (New World Library, April 22, 2017), Maria shares more than twenty years of experience studying and living the principles from ACIM. This is not a philosophic explanation of the Course. It is a practical, hands-on guide for actually living it. We hope you’ll enjoy this excerpt from the book.
You are now ready to practice the F word! And no, it’s not what you think. What I mean is forgiveness, true forgiveness. This is not the same as worldly forgiveness, which still contains some type of judgment. We practice worldly forgiveness when we say things like: “I forgive you even though you did something wrong,” or “I forgive you because I have Jesus and you don’t.”
No, I’m talking about the radical form of forgiveness as taught by A Course in Miracles. Radical forgiveness is based on this powerful idea: All that should be remembered from the past is the love we have given and received.
Before we go there, let’s start with why it’s muy importante to practice real forgiveness: It’s the primary tool for getting back to living your happy. You forgive because you want peace, you forgive because you want joy, you forgive because you want to stop suffering. How will forgiveness do all this for you?
When we choose to believe we are separate from the Holy Spirit, and thus when we believe we are a body isolated from other bodies, guilt comes along with that choice. We don’t remember making this choice, and that’s why we don’t understand all the guilt we feel. This is why the Course says that we are never upset for the reasons we think. Other people may seem to cause our problems; unfortunate life events may seem to make us unhappy; all the seemingly inevitable difficulties of life may make us feel that we’ve been treated unfairly. All that comes from our choice to feel separate, alone, and guilty.
We don’t make that choice just once, however; we keep making it all the time without realizing what we’re doing. Nor will our “normal” ego point of view ever let us in on this secret: What we give, we will ultimately receive. If we give the world our guilt, we will get back guilt. On the other hand, if we give love, we will experience love. This is why we are guided to forgive: It is our recognition that we are responsible for the way we experience other people, the world, and our life.
Judgments Kill
Here is another great reason to forgive: Judgments kill your happy. While judgments may make us feel temporarily more sure of ourselves, ultimately they keep us in fear, bound by the illusion of separateness. When we make anything outside ourselves real, we are holding a judgment. Judgment means we have forgotten we are in the mind of God, and that will inevitably make us feel miserable. As the Course puts it, “Anger must come from judgment. Judgment is the weapon I would use against myself, to keep the miracle away from me” (ACIM, workbook lesson 347).
Here are some judgments I have heard from my students:
“What kind of guy would say that he likes me and then tell me he wants to be with someone else? What a jerk!”
“How can that crazy person be running for president?”
“That killer/child abuser/terrorist is a bad person!”
However justified such thoughts may seem, they add to our fear and make the separation real. They mean we are buying into the ego’s thought system and getting lost in illusions. Of course, it’s hard not to buy into the drama, the madness, and the general BS of the ego. Our judgments seem to help us make sense of a crazy world. But it’s worth thinking about whether judging is truly helpful and making a positive difference in one’s life and the world. If a bad person dies, will that make you truly happy? When you watch the news and react with one judgment after another, do you end up jumping for joy or wanting to cut your veins? It’s vital to realize what you are thinking because whatever you’re thinking is what you put out into the world. And this will be exactly what you get back.
Whenever you are tempted to judge another person’s thoughts, beliefs, or behavior, you might find it helpful to ask yourself: Would I judge myself for this?
To get back to your happy, you must learn to hold all things in high regard, no matter the form. You must be willing to look at the battleground of the world and realize it cannot be real if only love is real. Forgiveness removes the barriers to love, so that you can begin to see the world differently. You cannot believe in love and fear at the same time.
Maria Felipe is the author of Live Your Happy. After experiencing success as a model and actress, including hosting World Wrestling Federation TV shows, she felt called inward and studied to become a reverend at Pathways of Light, an accredited religious school inspired by A Course in Miracles. She leads monthly services in both Spanish and English at Unity Church in Burbank, CA. Visit her online at www.MariaFelipe.org.
Excerpted from the book Live Your Happy: Get Out of Your Own Way and Find the Love Within. Copyright © 2017 by Maria Felipe. Printed with permission from New World Library.
"Life happens. Life in the flow."
We learn over time that nobody can solve our problems, but someone can guide you how to solve the problem. You may receive guidance through a teacher, a guru or even strangers that you run into every day. As we practice yoga we learn that the more we know, the less we truly know. Every day I am reminded how much I truly do not know; a very humbling experience.
Yoga teaches me to be present. To just live for being and enjoying life as it is right NOW. Not ten minutes from now, no five days ago, but right now. We are taught to get out of our heads, to release worries and fears of the past or the future and to only live for this very moment. Presence.
"Lead me from untruth to truth, lead me from darkness to light." ~ Buddha
Through yoga we are reminded that we do have a dark side as well as a light side. We are not to repress the dark side, but embrace that side of our Self. We are the yin and the yang. We ultimately cleanse the dark stuff we hold inside. We shine the light on this. We must make friends with dark side. Both positive and negative balance out the whole. Daily practice refines and improves our inner vision to see our Self more clearly. We no longer need to run from fears. Face them and say I'm not running from you anymore. So much is in our heads, so much dark is only in our heads, self-doubt judgment betrayal. Yoga grounds the body so that the light and dark sides of ourselves become clear. So much is truly untrue. But as we diligently practice we are able to find the middle ground and walk our centered balanced line in life. We gain balance in centered lightheartedness. We can have harmony in both light and dark.
"Yoga tells us that the world is actually a projection of our own thoughts and we can modify our inner world to manifest into our outer world. When our inside realm is at peace and in harmony, our outer world shines this projection back at us." ~ David, Jiva Mukti Yoga co-founder
Yoga is observation.
We can observe our world and see what part that is in us is begin reflected back to us. We can then see what part of us needs modification or adjustment in order to have our outer reality reflect back to us the peace, happiness and love we so greatly desire and deserve.
Yoga is already inside of you. Happiness is there. Yoga helps you peel away the onion layers to get to the core. To freedom. The deepest Divine connection to the Ultimate Light Source.
Come out of wanting and back into acceptance and Joy. A yogi or yogini can turn any situation into bliss. That is a yogi. Yoga is being now. Ultimate yoga is meditation. Just BE.
Yoga is love.
"Love is the light that dissolves all walls between souls." ~ Paramahansa Yogananda
Through a dedicated practice of all forms of yoga we can participate in the world with a sense of freedom, unaffected from trauma, depression, anger, etc. The freedom is balance in both.
Maggie Anderson is a Yoga & Spiritual Teacher, Reiki Master Teacher, Integrated Energy Therapy® Master Instructor, Soul Coach®, Past Life Coach, Magnified Healing® Master Teacher and Angelights Messenger. She is the author of How I Found My True Inner Peace and Divine Embrace. You can contact Maggie at SpiritualCompassConnection.com.
"Follow Your Bliss. It's Your Spiritual Compass."