I was also invited to speak about hypnosis to a local high school's psychology class. They were studying consciousness and the teacher thought it would be helpful to hear about the process of hypnosis from an expert. The kids had lots of great questions and I enjoyed myself.

My latest tobacco-cessation class ended well. Although the large, diverse class was challenging, it became much easier once we arranged for some assistance. The teens welcomed being in this class with adults as they learned a lot from the older folks' wisdom and experience.

Each time, she believed that it was what God wanted for her and she was supposed to learn from these calamities. She didn't consider that when she prayed for God's will that it filtered through her current beliefs, attitudes and expectations. And instead of changing them, and raising her consciousness to accept more, she passively resigned herself to whatever the Universe dumped into her life.

Einstein said, "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." When we try to solve a current problem without changing the thinking that created it, we simply compound it. Even when we hand our troubles over to the Universe, if we don't change our beliefs about them, then we'll experience more of the same.

There's another old saying, "God can only do for you what It can do through you." The subconscious creates a mold of our thoughts and acts on our dominant thought. The subconscious is the interface between our conscious mind, our lives, and the Universe. So whatever good the Infinite wants for us has to be filtered through our current beliefs and attitudes. If we're having a feeling of lack, and pray for God's will, then all the Universe can give us is more of what we expect.

In this context, "will" means choice, desire, decision, intention, purpose, determination, or decree. Since the Universe is love and all good, then God's choice, desire, or intention for us is truly to have abundance, health, joy, harmony, and all the good things that we can envision. When we will, decree or affirm a specific desire, God wants us to have something even greater than our wish, but we receive only what we can expect and accept.

However, as long as we're holding onto an old thought pattern, which is the cause of our troubles, there can't be a healing or transformation. We can't experience abundance when we're thinking of lack. Praying for God's will doesn't mean that we resign ourselves to whatever happens, but is an affirmation of knowing that God is willing us to have much more than we can even imagine.

The point of praying for God's will is to surrender to something greater than we are. Surrendering to a better possibility is important for a more abundant outcome. We have to release control of how we think it should work out and release the fear that we're going to be given something undesirable. That's why the prayer says, "Not my will, but thine." The whole idea is to trust that a Power and Presence that wants the best for us knows what will heal the problem better than we ever could.

We may not receive what we want, because what we want isn't going to be best for us. For instance, a friend of mine was convinced that a particular job would be her heart's desire. Instead of affirming that "Divine right action takes place for my Highest Good," which is another way of accepting God's will, she focused on that single position as her goal. She got it, and within three months was miserable. It wasn't what she'd been led to believe it was going to be and it was considerably more stressful than she'd expected.

Answer: For any chronic condition, including physical healing, it's recommended that a person spend ten to fifteen minutes, three times a day in dynamic meditation (using affirmations, imagery and/or visualization) or self-hypnosis (using suggestions, imagery and/or visualization). That's to flood their subconscious with health or improvement messages. Use any statement or visualization that has meaning for you, because it's your feelings and beliefs about the situation that you're working on.

According to Catherine Ponder, a minister and writer of books on prosperity and healing, she states that an affirmation about a single issue needs to be stated aloud for at least fifteen minutes every day. She said that she'd never seen a situation improve with less than that. Once it's changed, I believe that five minutes a day would probably be enough to keep it stable.

I picked up one of my roommate's book last night to rest before sleeping. I couldn't put it down. It's called "Waking The Tiger: Healing Trauma," by Peter Levine, on healing post traumatic stress disorder.

It's awesome. It talks about "helplessness," "inaction," and repeating the same patterns over and over, as part of the trauma being stuck in the nervous system. I could relate and found it so helpful. He speaks of some events we would consider normal, as potentially invoking trauma, such as surgery, dental visits, or any events that could threaten one's safety. I found this interesting as I often associated PTSD to those in war or having experience great violence. However, PTSD is far more common.

I'm almost done with it as I haven't been able to put it down. I had heard Peter Levine's name before, as a specialist with trauma. As someone who has been healing from post traumatic stress disorder, I found this well-written book very helpful. I recommend it to anyone who has experienced trauma or has a friend or relative with post traumatic stress disorder.

To order this book, click on the image of the book on the left.