Happy Holiday Season

Posted on December 13, 2011 by Susan Scolastico

December 2011 completed 300 months, 25 years of Study Group Readings. These are monthly Readings that include an opening teaching by The Guides through Ron Scolastico, answers to questions sent in by subscribers, and a closing attunement by The Guides.

This month, the closing attunement was especially inspiring to our daughter, Amy Lee Coy, who added music to Ron’s voice to create an inspiring and soothing attunement. We offer it as a gift of love this Holiday Season. You can listen or download it at this link.

Wishing you much love and joy this holiday season,
Susan and Ron Scolastico

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To Sleep Like A Baby

Posted on September 1, 2011 by Susan Scolastico

Insomnia

The following Question and Answer was included in the September Study Group Reading. Feel free to comment with your own experiences and/or solutions to sleeplessness. (Read my Haiku at the end.)

QUESTION: “Difficulty with sleep, or insomnia, appears to be a common problem in our culture. Either people have trouble falling asleep, or, they wake up in the night and can’t get back to sleep. Many rely on prescription medications or alcohol to help, and they are afraid to give up those things for fear that they won’t sleep. Many have tried the quiet darkened room approach, and other techniques, but when they fail, what is there to do? It’s clear that the explanation for this disruptive problem differs from person to person. I’m wondering what you can tell us about insomnia, its impact on our lives if we struggle with it-for example, not reaching the stage of ‘delta sleep,’ which is said to have important restorative properties. What can we look to as the best possible solution for the problem?”

THE GUIDES: When you have a thorn in your foot, then the explanation for pain in the foot is quite clear and you remove the thorn. When you have the challenge in releasing into sleep, there are invisible thorns-invisible causes that you usually cannot recognize clearly as the cause for sleeplessness, unless it is perhaps an over-infusion of strong substances that keep you awake, or unusual worry that clearly is the cause of sleeplessness.

For most of you who struggle with this challenge, the primary cause is a fear of badness of some type that you have been carrying along through the day, or through many days, or even through a lifetime. Some of it can even be fears from past lifetimes of earth. Some of it can be upset in the physiology. There are many different causes for the inability to release, self-confidently, trustingly, securely, into the sleep period to attain the normal sleep-many causes that would prevent that release from occurring.

So, the simplest way for all ones to think is: The thorn in the foot-the primary cause of sleeplessness-can be thought about as fear. Fear means anxiety, worry, anticipation of negativity, many different negative thoughts and feelings.
The primary method for healing this is: Before sleeping, you need to consciously acknowledge all that would be your fears of any types-recent, past, future, whatever is a negative sense of pressure, concern, worry, fussing, fretting. For five moments before sleep, you acknowledge the situation of being filled with many fears.

Then, you would gently think, “I am not my fears. I can detach from them. I can ignore them. Even if, as I turn my attention away from them they continue to pound upon my window of attention, I will keep ignoring them.”

Next, if you have had what you would call “chronic” sleeplessness, naturally you have developed a fear that sleeplessness will somehow bring a badness into your life. You have a fear that you will not receive the most benefit from the sleep period; or the fear that sleeplessness will cause you illness, or mental instability. You have a fear of sleeplessness itself.

Then, you would say, “I now experience these fears of sleeplessness. I notice them. I think about them for a few moments. Then, I turn my attention away from them. And, even if they continue to beat upon my window of attention, I continue to practice ignoring them.”

Then, you would decide, “What do I turn my attention to in order to create such a feeling of goodness, trust, safety, and love that I become the innocent child who fears nothing and who can gently slip into the sleep period.?”

Now, this is not easy for most humans, but, it is what is necessary to learn in order to gradually release the challenge of sleeplessness. Thus, it needs to be practiced again and again.

When you notice that this does not immediately send you into sleep, then acknowledge the troubling feeling about that, a feeling that might say, “Nothing will help. I will always have this challenge. It will ruin me. It will bring badness to my life.” Take a few moments to turn your attention to those fears. Acknowledge them as fears, not truths.

Then, turn your attention away from those fears, even if they continue to beat upon the window of your attention. Practice again turning your attention to whatever helps you feel safe, secure, innocent, childlike, relaxed.

There are many different kinds of positive feelings that automatically open the door of sleep. It might be that you turn your attention toward the Divine Love that is pouring into you from your soul and from other souls who love you. You might turn your attention toward a memory of great goodness that you have known in this lifetime.

This kind of practice develops the trust that is needed to counter the mistrust, which is the fear that has accumulated as tension-or “hyper-activity, or other words that you could use-that so captures the attention of your human self to the extent that your vigorous thinking, feeling, and fearing sends signals to the brain and the nervous system saying that there is a threat, that there is something to do about that. There is such pressure that the body cannot cooperate in initiating the physiological release and relaxation that needs to go along with the thoughts and feelings of release and relaxation in order to enter into the normal, healthy, rejuvenative sleeping period.

Then, beyond this, as you work with these areas and you still have some sleeplessness, you can remind yourself that you are a child of God living in a body that has such resources and vitality that it will not be damaged by sleeplessness. You will perhaps have periods of relaxation during the day that will compensate. So, most of you will not have health challenges from protracted sleeplessness if you take this particular attitude.

From Susan: The Guides’ answer inspired me to write a Haiku that reflects how I feel about insomnia (Haiku-an rhymed verse form of Japanese origin having three lines containing usually five, seven, and five syllables respectively):

INSOMNIA

Eyes shut, mind open
Invisible thorns stalking
My restless eyelids

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Our Divine Responsibility

Posted on July 6, 2011 by Susan Scolastico

In the opening of the July Study Group, The Guides speak about “Divine Responsibility.” They are speaking about our responsibility to experience the divine love of God and to share it with others. And they remind us to sit still and allow that love to pour over us and soothe us. From the July Reading:

the joy of being loved

the joy of being loved

“Each of you has a certain responsibility beyond personal desire. Most of you have at least vaguely sensed and understood this. Few have actually clarified what that responsibility might be.
     Let us say that you are a dog living in a small house in the yard of a human. Your desire is to run about, to sniff, and to eat. And, the desire of the human is to love you and pet you. So, if you only run about, sniff, and eat, and never sit still to be petted, you as a dog could believe that you are fulfilling your life, and that there is a great goodness in the activities that you do that come naturally to you. But, if you could be told in dog language, “If you will sit still and allow your humans to pet you,” then, there can come a great satisfaction that, in time, you will find more fulfilling and rewarding than running about, sniffing, and eating.
     In the human “dogs” that rush about fulfilling physical desires and needs, and even the need for family and human love, you could consider that a part of their desire (and rare is the human who will sit still long enough) is to allow the extraordinary perfect love that is God itself to “pet” them, and soothe them, and fulfill them.
     Many of you have established ideas, beliefs, and some practices, in which you do allow yourself inwardly to sit still, and some of you have, at times, felt the petting of the divine love. You integrate that with your doing in the physical world. But, rare is the human who understands the true importance of consciously experiencing the divine love.
     For most who do occasionally experience divine love, it is simply a fulfillment of another human desire: “I desire to feel good. I desire to feel better than running around sniffing and eating. I desire a deeper pleasure which I attain through the experience of divine love when I can achieve that experience.”
     Now, there is nothing wrong with this approach to, let us call it spiritual experience, but, it still limits you ones to your own personal self. Again, there is nothing wrong with that. It is not bad. But, you do not awaken to your hidden responsibility that has been given to you by your soul, by the forces of God itself. This is the responsibility to care for other living human beings, to help them, uplift them, serve them, guide them, minister to them, love them. Rare is the human who would fully accept this responsibility and love other humans as much as they love their own self.
     This does not mean that you must criticize yourself because you are not doing that perfect love. But, if you wish the fullness of life, and the complete mastery in the human pathway through your many lifetimes, you can at least choose to think that you have a hidden responsibility to care for other humans. An awareness of that responsibility does not automatically arise in you as a desire that is as strong as your desire to fulfill yourself, to complete your own purposes, and to have your pleasures and your completions in your daily life. So, usually, it takes remembering-reminding yourself when you awaken each morning:

Whether I naturally feel a great desire to go forth in this day and love other humans as much as I love and care for myself, I now remind myself that it is a hidden responsibility given to me by my soul, and by the forces of God itself, to care for others, love them, and serve them. I will not demand that I be perfect in this day. Most likely, being the normal human, I will be more interested in my life and myself than I am in others. But, at least, I will try to do a portion of my responsibility-the God-given responsibility-by paying more attention to others, helping them when I can and when I am willing, and doing for others.

     This does not mean that you must go forth and do large, dramatic doings. You need not spend your entire days teaching thousands, or bringing great monies to the poor, or feeding the hungry. If nothing else, you can consistently fulfill portions of your responsibility-your divine responsibility-by simply paying more attention to each human that you interact with, and, inwardly generating a feeling of deep caring about that human who is in front of you, and, by being alert for ways to speak kindness rather than criticism, or competitiveness, or mismatching, or emphasizing differences. And, if you see an opportunity to overtly serve by giving them something that they need, or to help them in tangible ways, do that.
     Now, if you did none of this divine responsibility throughout your entire lifetime, you would not become a bad person. You could thrive and fulfill many important purposes in this lifetime. But, it is similar to being a racing runner-a runner of races-in a team. In order to win the race, the entire team must cross the finish line. Let us say that you are the fastest racer, and you forget the rules. You think, “If I cross the finish line we have won the race.” So, you run very fast, and you leave your teammates behind, and they do not finish the race.
     In extraordinarily complex ways that we will try to put into simple words for you, the return of human existence on this earth to its intended state of perfect love amongst all humans–an existence that prevailed in the beginning of life on earth–involves the completion by all presently living humans at a certain period of what you would call time. And, as extraordinarily complex as this is, if you live a magnificent life but you do not serve others, then you are leaving your teammates behind.
     Clearly, you cannot pull all of the presently living humans into goodness yourself. But, there will come a time on this earth when so many presently living humans, at that point in time in the future, understand what we are now putting into words, that each individual will affect their mating one, their children. And they in turn will affect their mating ones and their children. And they will affect friends and acquaintances. And they in turn will affect their friends and acquaintances. Then, the perfect love will blossom amongst all presently living humans at that time, and the completion of the extraordinary adventure of the souls will occur in the most remarkable manner.”

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Shining the Light

Posted on April 30, 2011 by Susan Scolastico

This was taken from our Study Group Reading for May, 2011 when the Guides were asked about the presence of accelerated frequencies occurring to help people awaken right now:

Divine energies do not need to grow“Imagine that you are in a dark room, and there is the beautiful golden sunlight pouring into a window in that room, hitting a far wall. Then, you would say, “I need some light in the opposite corner of this room that is dark.” You take a mirror, hold it against the wall where the light is striking, and point it toward the dark corner. Now, that dark corner is lit.

But, you notice that the dark corner it is not lit very brightly. You say, “I now ask the sun to be brighter.” Not likely, and not necessary. What you have not noticed is that your mirror is covered with dirt.

It is very important for you ones to have positive reasons for believing that life on earth can be better, from your point of view. And, it is, in a sense, accurate to think in terms of increasing positive energies in the human world. But, it is unnecessary, and not accurate, to think, “The divine energies are growing brighter so that they will shine into our dark places. We do not even need to polish our mirror. Our fears will be eliminated by the brighter sun.” That is not true.

Your fears will be addressed and healed by you ones. And, at the present time, there are many humans who are learning this. They are opening their hearts, and they are hungering for experience of the Divine. And, some are achieving it in many ways.

So, there is accuracy in thinking in terms of growing energies of a positive nature coming from humans. But, the divine energies do not need to grow. The sun does not need to be brighter. Your mirror needs to be cleaner.

Know that in all human time, there has never been a squeezing of the actual divine energies in existence, even though, in many complex ways, there is the squeezing of their impact in human experience caused by humans. But, always, there is more than enough eternal energy for humans to create a perfect world. However, as you can observe, there is not enough human cooperation in cleaning their mirrors.”

 

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If you are seeking holy ground…..

Posted on April 2, 2011 by Susan Scolastico

urban seagull

Driving in our neighborhood after the recent heavy rain was a traffic nightmare. As far as the eye could see there were cars, lights flashing, and at every crossing there were people rushing to get across the intersection. There wasn’t even a fender bender to blame for the swarm of cars and people. “Too many people in the world!” I grumbled to myself in a curmudgeonly manner. Going nowhere, I sighed and leaned back in the seat. My eyes glanced upward to a lone seagull sitting on the top of the highest point, a very tall pole.

We live in Woodland Hills, 15 miles inland from the beach. The seagull doesn’t really belong here. But, there it was, sitting serenely above the fray, just observing, looking peaceful, and clearly not disturbed by the hubbub below.

Often, people tell us that they feel like they don’t belong here on earth, and are out of step with the world. And yet, here we are. We must then belong here. Am I going to tell the seagull, “Sorry, get off the pole. You don’t belong in Woodland Hills.” The seagull is content wherever there is food and other seagulls with whom to mate. Like the seagull, we can take the pole point of view, above the fray, and remember that our “home” is wherever we are. And, for a moment, seeing that seagull, I could imagine the wind on my face and enjoy the feeling of being my soul, observing with amusement the chaos of earth life below.

I love this quote from our book, Cosmic Moments: Inspiring Reminders of Your Eternal Nature: “If you are seeking holy ground, look under your own feet.” The seagull has got that right!

(this post was taken from our April Study Group Newsletter)

 

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Drawing From The Well of Creativity

Posted on March 9, 2011 by Ron Scolastico, Ph.D.

Ron Scolastico: I have worked with many people through the years who were frustrated because they believed that they were not creative and had no artistic ability. Often, what was holding them back was an emotional tightening. They “suppressed” their feelings in order to avoid emotional pain. They did not realize that emotional opening is an important aspect of creativity. This was explained in a Reading done by the Guides in one of our Spiritual Retreats on Creativity a few years ago.

The Guides: Each human has had deep, fulfilling creative expressions in a number of lifetimes in the past. And, as a human in the present, you have impulses to create. But, without the emotional opening to trigger your deep intuitive sensing, some of these impulses from the past lifetimes will not arrive in your conscious awareness.
If your emotional, intuitive self is blocked, you could create the impression, “I am not a creative person. I am not interested in beauty, or color, or music, or creative movement, or the more refined aspects of life. I am only interested in the practical affairs of life.”

This, then, essentially, is an emotional “squeezing,” even though you may be working in the emotional area to heal your fears and open emotionally. Emotional squeezing is not simply feeling frightened or unjoyful. It is also a kind of buildup of limiting attitudes about yourself. The small limiting attitudes, here and there, grow up to a large limiting over a period of time, without being noticed. It is as though you have a slimy scale in your pipes. Without noticing, over the years, it can close the pipes. But, you would not notice each small increment.

So, when you are managing your thoughts and feelings about yourself and your creative expression, the general direction of loosening applies to emotional loosening. It applies to a gentle loving assessment of the thoughts and feelings that you propagate through the years, that may not be particularly negative, but they can become particularly rigid, and they can begin to cause you to squeeze your perception of yourself as a creative being.

Remind yourself that the outflow of creativity from you depends upon whether you are squeezing or opening emotionally. If you feel blocked creatively, say to yourself, “By the very nature of myself as an eternal soul I am a creative being. As I remember that truth, I feel the creative forces stirring in me, seeding ideas for new expression through me.” Then, realize that you are actually participating in the creative unfoldment of humanity in your own individual way as you manifest your personal creative abilities in this lifetime.

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From Death Do I Part: How I Freed Myself From Addiction

Posted on August 1, 2010 by Susan Scolastico
From Death Do I Part: How I Freed Myself From Addiction by Amy Lee Coy

From Death Do I Part: How I Freed Myself From Addiction by Amy Lee Coy

Lately there have been many personal Readings with Ron Scolastico where either the questioner themselves or a loved one are dealing with the problems of addiction. So it is very timely that, From Death Do I Part: How I Freed Myself From Addiction is newly released. This is a remarkable memoir and self help book written by my daughter, Amy Lee Coy (Bardi).

Ron and I are so proud of her. For 25 years, Amy struggled with addition and I as her mother struggled with the constant pain, guilt and fear that she would not live to see another day. It has been nearly five years since Amy took her last drink of alcohol and smoked her last cigarette. This book tells her courageous story and process of healing without the usual “12 step” methods. The influence of Ron and the Guides in her life has been profound. You will “see” and “hear” their teachings throughout her story, not as preaching or even direct reference, but as Amy’s thoughts and feelings and through her choices and actions.

Ron and I believe that this will be an inspiring book for those of you who either struggle with addiction yourself or whose loved one is struggling. From Death Do I Part is beautifully written. As Amy says, “This is the book I wanted in my moment of terror, desperation and fear.”

She has received the endorsement of two of the biggest names in the addiction business: Dr. Stanton Peele, author of Love and Addiction, has written a magnificent foreword. And Gabor Maté, M.D., author of the #1 Canadian best seller, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction, writes, “From Death Do I Part is the account of a soul journey: a journal of liberation, authentically lived, deeply experienced and vividly written. The inspiring story of one person, it speaks to the challenges faced by many and to the possibilities inherent in us all.”

Chris Ternand, MD says, “Amy blesses us by sharing her personal inner and outer journey with a rare honesty and clarity that enlighten and enriches us all. The specifics of her journey are about recovery from addiction, but her compassion and wisdom hold valuable lessons for those on any journey of healing.”

Paige Marrs, Ph.D. says, “Amy will clearly make an important contribution to the people who struggle with addictions, and to those who love them.”

I couldn’t have said it better!

You can order this book from us, call 1-818-224-448, 1-800-359-3771, or email me, order on our website: http://www.ronscolastico.com/books.html or on Amy’s website at: www.FromDeathDoIPart.com $15.95, 286 pages, trade paperback.

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