Nurse Healers by Kate Loving Shenk

Tribute To Yogananda

 The Last Smile

I worked as a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner in the 1990's. In 1993, an epidemic
of Pertussis or Whooping Cough broke out across the United States.

I did not know about this epidemic at the time.

A four month old non-immunized baby came to see me who was
diagnosed with Pertussis, and died soon thereafter.

I got the disease from her, but was unaware of the seriousness of the illness and
also did not know that what I had was Whooping Cough.

The details of what I had and how I got it came together later.

For a period of a month, I could not sleep because of the violence of the cough.
It was an odd and tremendously forceful cough.

This was how it was: a series of short, hacking coughs, followed by a sharp, wheezing
inhalation,  followed by vomiting.

I could no longer sleep with my husband because the cough woke him up.

So I slept out on the sunporch, and witnessed the fireflies of summer, and the moon's
journey across the sky. I was always relieved to see the first rays of dawn.

Then I went to worked and coughed like this all day, as well.

My friend, whom I affectionately call "Pediatric Guru," head of Pediatrics at the time,
(now retired), heard the cough.

He pulled me aside. "Kate, your cough sounds exactly like Whooping Cough."

And with that diagnosis, I had permission to take a few days off with well needed
antibiotics.

The Pediatric Guru put it all together: the baby who died of Pertussis, the exact day
I took care of her, and the sadness of parents losing their baby.

But again, this all came later.

Finally at home and recuperating, I began to feel a deep spiritual emptiness deep within
my soul. I can't explain it other than to say that the illness opened the doorway to a
"Spiritual Awakening."

A publication arrived inexplicably in the mail inviting me to order the "Self Realization Fellowship
Lessons" written by Paramahansa Yogananda.

Yogananda was no stranger to me.

My mother was a fan of Yogananda and particularly of the "Autobiography Of A Yogi"
which she got ahold of and gave copies to all of her friends, around 1955.

I was four at the time and remember this well.

When my mother woke me from my nap, she gave me lectures about the third eye, which the great
Yogi loved and taught about extensively.

As a four year old, I took the concept of the third eye very literally.

Did development of the third eye mean that suddenly a third eye would appear on
my forehead?

No one else seemed to have this third eye.

Won't I look odd if I am the only one who has one?

The same was true of the stigmata.

My mother always told me bedtime stories about the stigmata that Saint Francis had,
and Theresa Neuman, too, whom Yogananda wrote about in his Autobiography.

These concepts: the stigmata and the third eye were huge to a four year old child.

Yet I remember wanting to have a third eye.

The stigmata was not necessarily as compelling!

So I knew about Yogananda.

You might say he was ingrained in my psyche.

The Self Realization Lessons came in good time and I followed their instruction to the
letter.

I healed my lungs with those lessons.

A year later, I was initiated as a Kriya Yogi in Washington D.C. by members of SRF in an
overwhelmingly moving ceremony.

Kriya Yoga is a Big Secret, so I can't tell you how to do it. Yet it is both simple and
eloquent in practice and suddenly you feel the infinite blessings of the great gurus
of India and you soar above and beyond the Universe herself.

I love Kriya Yoga and the legacy which brought this great gift to the west.

Yogananda is a Spiritual Giant. He lives still amongst the hearts of those who practice
the great spiritual techniques that Yogananda taught and are preserved because of his
prolific writings.

In his words: "Every minute becomes eternity because eternity can be experienced in
that minute. Every day and minute and hour is a window through which you may see
eternity. Life is brief yet it is unending.The soul is everlasting, but out of the short season
of this life you should reap the most you can of immortality." SRF Lessons.

Kate Loving Shenk

-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Kate Loving Shenk is a writer, healer, musician and the creator
of the e-book called "Transform Your Nursing Career and Discover
Your Calling and Destiny." The book is designed to stimulate
nurses to love their work and to prevent on-the-job-burnout.
Click here to find out how to order the e-book:
http://www.katelovingshenk.com/blog
http://www.katelovingshenk.com/nursingcareertransformation
Check out Kate's Blog: http://nursehealers.typepad.com
And the Lens: http://www.squidoo.com/katelovingshenk
http://www.squidoo.com/thinkriches
http://doganddolphin.ning.com
http://nursehealers.typepad.com/dog_lovers_unite
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Kate Loving Shenk Nursing Career Transformation Sign Up HERE For Your *FREE* Newsletter For Nurses And Healers Your e-mail address is safe with me--see privacy notice on my website!

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"Boundless Healing," by Tulku Thondup

Tulku Thondup

I never went to Omega Institute to be in the presence of Tulka Thondup's healing aura, but my husband, Tom went twice and I saw a renewed
sense of calm and dedication to his meditation practice when he
came back home, again.

When he returned, he taught me some of what he learned.

Two of the Twelve Stages Of Meditation Of The Healing Buddha

1) Bring your mind back to your body.

Allow your mind to generate thoughts of peace, calm and serenity.

Allow these thoughts of peace settle into every cell of your body,
moving from the bottoms of your feet to the top of your head.

Think that everyone around you is calm and that the room, your house,
your town, neighboring city and the whole planet and then the whole
Universe is filled with a loving, peaceful calmness.

If you feel any uneasiness, locate the area in your body where you feel
this sensation the most.

Then take a couple of deep and forceful breaths and think and feel
the uneasiness expel with your outgoing breaths: "Haaa, Haaa, Haaa!!"

Know that the uneasy feelings are completely expelled, leaving no
trace within your body.

Feel the freedom of no longer having any blocks of fear or tenseness
anywhere. Your whole body is profoundly relaxed, rejuvenated and
in a state of awakened awareness.

2) Bringing your body back to the earth energies

If you are feeling ungrounded or a sense of floating, think of where
your sitting body touches the chair or the cushion, and visualize a
unity between earth and your relaxing body.

Enjoy this feeling of boundless freedom and healing as long as you can.

The Following Are Thondup's Eight Tips for Meditation

1) Take a couple of deep breaths and expel the sensation of worry and
discomfort with your outgoing breath. Feel the peace.

2) With the outgoing breath, send the sensations far away in the form
of dark clouds that dissolve into the open, empty and clear sky.

3) Think of the word and feeling of "Boundlessness."

4) Think and feel that your body is boundless, that even its cells are
boundless. Allow your breathing to relax in this boundless feeling,
as though your breath were totally without limit or constriction.

5) Think and feel that all cells are breathing, in and out, directly
through the pores of your body.

6) Imagine your body as if it were a body of light. Light is intangible
and free. Feel what this feels life all through your body.

7) Be aware of any uneasy sensation in an open way, without judging it, and
without wanting to push it away, or clinging to it.

Continue to breath naturally and remain in the state of mere awareness.
Open awareness is considered a high form of healing and can help anyone
during meditation and also the rest of your life.

8) If you feel as if you are floating, imagine that your body is filled
with light that somehow has a heavy quality. Although light is substantial,
we could think of it as heavy, the way air is weighted down by moisture
or the way the earth's atmusphere exerts air pressure.

Just remain in open awareness of the floating sensation without judgment,
worry or grasping.

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Thondup describes healing with the meditation techniques he teaches in
workshops and in his books.

He says that in Tibet, when he or family and friends got sick, they first
went to a lama and said prayers for spiritual healing. They went to the doctor
after the spiritual prayers were completed.

A friend of Thondup, Harry Winter, had an incurable fatal cancer. When
Harry was seventy-four, he was diagnosed with lung cancer. His doctors'
told him he had only a few months to live.

Harry practiced meditation for years and was fully prepared to meet this crisis.
He firmly believed his meditation practice would slow the disease and
possibly stop it. He also believed that this meditation could reinforce
the benefits of medical treatment.

To his doctors' utter amazement, Harry survived two surgeries and his cancer
went into remission.

Five years later, the cancer returned but this time Harry refused medical
intervention. By this time, Harry was experienced at meditating in an open
and relaxed way. He often meditated for eight hours a day.

Harry used the meditation that Thondup teaches called "Receive the Healing
Blessings," in which the mind calls forth blessed nectar to wash away
impurities.

In his mind, Harry visualized Vajrasattua, the Buddha of Purification,
from whom would stream healing nectar.

The nectar entered his body from the crown of his head, purifying and healing
the cancer cells and all emotional toxicity. Harry additionally wished for these
blessings to extend to all beings everywhere and the whole Universe.

Harry was eighty-five at the time of the book's publication in 2000. He coild
still be going strong at age 93!

I have a autographed copy of "Boundless Healing." I feel as if I've been
blessed by a higher spiritual being as I gaze upon his signature.

We must learn from our teachers.

They are here to help us.

Kate Loving Shenk

-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Kate Loving Shenk is a writer, healer, musician and the creator
of the e-book called "Transform Your Nursing Career and Discover
Your Calling and Destiny." The book is designed to stimulate
nurses to love their work and to prevent on-the-job-burnout.
Click here to find out how to order the e-book:
http://www.katelovingshenk.com/blog
http://www.katelovingshenk.com/nursingcareertransformation
Check out Kate's Blog: http://nursehealers.typepad.com
And the Lens: http://www.squidoo.com/katelovingshenk
http://www.squidoo.com/thinkriches
http://doganddolphin.ning.com
http://nursehealers.typepad.com/dog_lovers_unite
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Kate Loving Shenk Nursing Career Transformation Sign Up HERE For Your *FREE* Newsletter For Nurses And Healers Your e-mail address is safe with me--see privacy notice on my website!

http://www.katelovingshenk.com/nursingcareertransformation/simplenewslettersignup.html

                           

"Life After Death," by Deepak Chopra

Deepak was on the Ellen DeGeneres show on January 7, 2009 and told us all
his New Year's Resolution, or intention for 2009: "To have at least 100,000,000
people join me in taking a vow of nonviolence in thought, speech and action as
soon as possible."

Then I got an email from my brother, sending out this vow to everyone on his email
list a few days after I decided to take the Vow, myself!

What lovely synchronicity!

This vow embraces the cessation of all forms negativity, criticism, judgment of other
people and also yourself.

So this is what many of us intend to do, starting now.

Deepak's book, "Life After Death" is an extension of all the books, tapes and lectures
he has given over the years: That we are all spiritual beings living out just one of
many physical experiences.

I was raised in a home which espoused metaphysical thought. Life after death was a
household belief and my family spoke of these matters openly, sometimes
long into the night.

We'd sit around the old round table, sipping coffee or tea, sometimes beer,
and discuss and enlarge on the great cosmic meaning of life.

Deepak also says in his "Way Of The Wizard" video that we are all healers,
shamans and wizards.

Deepak says that Jonas Salk, who discovered the Polio Vaccine, said that
Darwinian evolution theory is obsolete.

The next stage, according to Salk, is the evolution of consciousness.

The fight or flight response was appropriate for Cave Dwellers, but now this
response is triggered by imaginary fears, stock market crashes, and by what
people say to us.

This in turn causes the epidemic of Cancer and Heart Disease.

Wars, the subjugation of people everywhere and ecological disasters have made
the human species predators of Planet Earth, says Chopra.

This means we, the human family, are at risk of extinction.

At this time there is an urgent need for our wizard potential to awaken and in
a deux ex machina display, save the world for future generations.

What we all seek is ultimately freedom of mind, body and soul.

In the words of Jesus, we truly need to be in the world but not of the world.

In times gone by, others have walked the way of the wizard: Saints,
Philosophers and Sages.

But at this time, wizards are waking up. We may be unknowingly in their presence
in supermarket lines, as passer-bys in the street, as the people we watch in busy places.

The journey, says Deepak, begins with one question: Who Am I?

Deepak says we are a conglomerate of ambiguities.

We are the divine and the diabolical.

We are the sacred and the profane.

We are the darkness before the glorious light of the new day.

And beyond these polarities and dualities lies pure joy, unbounded possibility.

It is here we find the secrets of the wizard.

Chopra says there are seven components of being on the wizard journey of awakening.

1) Innocence

2) Birth of the egocentric

3) Birth of the achiever

4) Birth of the giver

5) Birth of the seeker

6) Birth of the seer

7) Birth of the spirit

As these steps yield to greater and greater experiences of freedom, we feel
a desire to embrace ourselves and each other as timeless. We may give more out
of love and compassion, dropping the need for recognition in the gifts that we give.

Ego surrenders the need to control.

Addictions wane.

We may suddenly see that the soul cannot be squeezed into the confines of a
body or a lifetime.

Thus the seeker is born.

The seeker is beginning to find the one she is looking for, and senses that this
one is the eternal presence that has always been internally awake, watching
and waiting for the seeker to recognize this truth.

She experiences the soul as spirit.

She may experience synchronistic events happening all day long!

She listens and turns her attention to the one who is listening: The eternal
listening silent presence.

She comes to know that birth and death are interruptions in the continuum.

The seeker becomes the seer who carries the consciousness of this timeless presence
and makes it real.

The seer embodies the consciousness of infinity, finally giving birth to spirit,
merging into what Deepak calls "Unity Consciousness" where love is the ultimate
truth, where humans and all living beings are perceived as the same One.

"The Cosmos is the Body" becomes the clarion call of this Unity Consciousness,
returning all of us to the great ocean of enlightenment.

This, after all, is what life after death is all about.

Kate Loving Shenk

-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Kate Loving Shenk is a writer, healer, musician and the creator
of the e-book called "Transform Your Nursing Career and Discover
Your Calling and Destiny." The book is designed to stimulate
nurses to love their work and to prevent on-the-job-burnout.
Click here to find out how to order the e-book:
http://www.katelovingshenk.com/blog
http://www.katelovingshenk.com/nursingcareertransformation
Check out Kate's Blog: http://nursehealers.typepad.com
And the Lens: http://www.squidoo.com/katelovingshenk
http://www.squidoo.com/thinkriches
http://doganddolphin.ning.com
http://nursehealers.typepad.com/dog_lovers_unite
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Kate Loving Shenk Nursing Career Transformation Sign Up HERE For Your *FREE* Newsletter For Nurses And Healers Your e-mail address is safe with me--see privacy notice on my website!

http://www.katelovingshenk.com/nursingcareertransformation/simplenewslettersignup.html