Guest post by Lorraine Faehndrich
“If God is anywhere he is to be found in you first.” I was 23 and Gurudev was the first guru I had ever heard speak. In fact, until the week before, while flipping through the Kripalu catalog searching for a class that would teach me how to be happy, I had never heard of a guru.
I was a CPA at a big firm in Boston, feeling dead inside and knowing that there had to be more to life. The idea that God was in me sounded a little strange after 16 years of Catholic education, but it also felt right. Catholicism had taught me that to find God I should follow rules that were outside myself – be good, avoid sin, and sacrifice how I felt for the good of others. I never learned to look inside, to find my inner guidance or myself. My life had been designed around making the people around me happy, being good and doing what I thought was “right”.
I was smart and successful. My family was proud of me. People told me I was beautiful. So, what was wrong? Why was I so unhappy? Why was I depressed and tired and feeling so disconnected? I needed to answer those questions. And so began my quest to make peace with myself, to find the divine in me, and to learn how to love myself.
Discovering God inside myself didn’t happen right away. It was a gradual process that is still unfolding at ever deepening levels all the time. I started by leaving a financially rewarding career (that I hated) and exploring things that I loved – like art and psychology. I learned how to live in my body. I did yoga and meditated. I started paying attention to what felt good to me and did that. I got pretty good at following my joy. I became a massage therapist and studied nutrition and naturopathic medicine. I started liking myself more.
And then I became a mother. I read every alternative book on parenting I could get my hands on. I was attachment parenting, co-sleeping, and breastfeeding on demand. I adored my amazing daughter and I wanted to be the world’s greatest mom! I wanted to create a loving, joyful and accepting environment where she would grow up knowing her own wonderfulness. I would give her what I never had, except, I couldn’t.
I didn’t know how. No matter how many books I read, what was still inside of me kept coming out. I wasn’t joyful even most of the time. I was getting angry at her and then hating myself and feeling guilty about it. It was an endless, self-perpetuating cycle.
I hired a parenting coach who started working with me on my thinking. One day he said to me, “Lorraine I think that you are relying on other people to connect to your source. You don’t have to do that. You have your own direct connection.” That observation shifted something in me. That’s what I was looking for. I had found glimpses of it. I had connected more to my body and myself and life force energy, but I still didn’t feel solid in my own spiritual connection.
A few weeks later I was introduced to the law of attraction. I remember sitting in Border’s reading Wayne Dyer’s intro to “Ask and It Is Given” as the tears streamed down my face. I can’t really tell you why it touched me so much except that I recognized the truth, that I was and always had been connected to a source of love and well being, and that the only thing that ever disconnected me from that was how I was thinking. I wasn’t damaged. I didn’t have some kind of irreversible defect that made me angry or sad more than I should be. My emotions were actually guidance about whether or not I was connecting to who I was – love.
I’ve been working with law of attraction principles for 7 years now and I have an easy, fabulous relationship with my absolutely beautiful 10-year-old daughter who is one of the most joyful people I know. And, so am I. I know now how to connect to the love and joy that I am. It’s not always easy or instant, but I know where my power to create my life lies. It’s in me and has nothing to do with changing anything except my thinking.
This basic principle of taking responsibility for my thoughts and feelings as a way of loving myself and creating my life, has vastly improved all of my relationships, with my daughter, my friends, my family, and most importantly myself. Our home is full of love, joy and acceptance. I have a career I love and am passionate about. We have a wonderful life, and it all started when I took responsibility for my feelings and learned that no matter how crappy I felt, I could change how I felt all on my own. I saw that what was always there under my painful thinking was a feeling of limitless freedom and absolute joy. And when I discovered that I fell madly in love with me.
”If God is anywhere, he is to be found in you first.” You are God. You are Love. Don’t ever forget it. No matter what is happening in your life, you can learn how to work with your thoughts and connect to the love that you are. It never goes away, it’s always there, it’s right inside of you, and usually it’s only a few thoughts away.
Lorraine Faehndrich is a Transformational Life and Health Coach and the founder of Radiant Life Design. She offers classes and private coaching sessions to women all over the world to help them relieve pain, stress and anxiety, overcome body image issues, create vibrant health and live their dreams.
Her powerful coaching will help you fall in love with yourself, reclaim your purpose and passion, heal your body, and live an authentic, empowered, radiantly healthy life. To learn more or sign up for her monthly newsletter Living Radiance, please visit www.RadiantLifeDesign.com