by Emmett Miller | Dec 17, 2015
I discovered Kimberly Braun and learned about her work with spiritual freedom and meditation while browsing through TED Talks. Although she was talking about a very practical approach to spirituality, it turns out that she had spent 10 ½ years in a Carmelite monastery. I contacted her, and I am happy to share this most interesting and inspiring conversation with you.
From the age of five, Kimberly had experienced herself on the receiving end of the many moments that she has come to call “unitive experiences,” where time seemed to stop and the veils pulled back revealing the deeper essence of the moment. These experiences continued, and they led her to ask deeper questions, and eventually to become a nun. Although she loved the utter simplicity of life there, she soon found herself called to become a general contractor (with no prior training). With this she lead construction of a multimillion dollar stone monastery.
Together we explore the changes she went through, and how they have finally led her to become a meditation teacher and spiritual guide who teaches about spiritual freedom. We then discuss the similarities and the contrasts between her approaches and my own. What we found is that meditation can bring us into a presence of oneness. This ceases to identify, compare, or name “what we are,” and can help us transform our lives and the world.
About Kimberly Braun M.A. CSP and Spiritual Freedom:
Below is Kimberly’s first person biography which is a small piece of what you can learn about her and her work at her website
kimberlybraun.com :
From a very young age, (4-5 years old,) I found myself on the receiving end of many moments I now call unitive experiences. Time seemed to stop and veils seemed to pull back where the deeper essence of the moment came forward within me and around me. Naturally curious I liked the feelings these experiences evoked and began to connect the dots that THIS was a key to happiness. These experiences happened in ritual, family, school, and especially nature. Naturally curious the occurrences inspired me and motivated me to ask deeper questions. These deeper questions led me to find out that all our happiness and success is within us, we just have to discover it and surrender to it unconditionally and proactively. This can be easily said, but not always easily done, and my journey, probably similar to yours, has been an ever unfolding participation in the co-creation of my life, a yes to what reveals itself in any given moment.
So again and again I surrender. Ever ancient. Ever new.
The first large surrender was to immerse myself in silence in a monastery, impelled by Love firing within my soul I lived ten and a half years as a Carmelite nun. Within that frame came many surrenders, all impelled by the marriage of myself to God.
Another surrender led me to obtain my Masters in Theology, concentrating on spiritual direction and psycho-spiritual development. My hope was to presence others to presence the Divine within themselves…nurturing skills to hear the language of the heart
And yet another surrender, after three years on a ministry team, led me to plunge into the world as a woman, a spiritual guide whose lineage was the common essence of all people and all creation; independent of, yet bowing to all, traditions, faiths and practices, culling forth what can be shared with all.
My training continued as I studied with Rev. Laura Thornberry in developing psychic and spiritual skills, culminating in ordination with the Church of the Creator; and also studying Reiki through the Diane Stein school, bringing me to complete level 3 Reiki Master training.
Now, I surrender to the pulsing of communication through writing books soon to be published, offering keynotes to inspire all to experience their own inner Essence, teaching Essence Meditation class, and a large host of retreats and workshops including yearly stints as meditation faculty at the renowned Omega Institute in New York and a retreat in Ecuador with AmazonAndesSky. I am happily accepted as a Certified Speaking Professional and member of the National Speaker’s Association.
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Books by Today’s Guest:
LOVE CALLS touching the YES to life within us all Allow Kimberly to share her story, her hero’s journey, in the privacy of your heart and you will see that this relationship is one that calls us all, at some level to live to our highest potential. Brian Luke Seaward, Ph.D. Quiet Mind, Fearless Heart Kimberly’s quest to pursue a connection with the divine is awe-inspiring. As a woman seeking spiritual connection, too, I felt while I was reading that I was her friend and confidant … Kimberly heard the call of the mystic, and as all seem to do, eventually, left the solitary life to emerge as a missionary to share her love for the divine and what she knows as the power of the soul. Sarah McLean, Soul-Centered: Transform Your Life in 8 Weeks with Meditation Poignant, powerful and poetic, this wonderful book by Kimberly Braun is unique in the world of spirituality and personal growth and offers important insights and messages for all. -Jonathan Ellerby, Ph.D., Return to the Sacred Buy it here.
by Emmett Miller | Oct 15, 2015
Bruce Lipton, PhD
A single cell, like an amoeba, is like a little person. It breathes, eats, expels waste, moves towards the good things and away from bad things. And it has a brain: its cell membrane which communicates with the environment.
Each of us is like a huge community made up of several trillion little amoebas, all working together in harmony (hopefully) toward a common goal – our health and happiness. It is by recognizing the power of our subconscious mind and using our conscious mind wisely that we sustain this health and success.
Just as the simple little amoebas have gotten together to evolve a single organism (us), the human beings living on this planet have formed a single, individual, “superorganism,” and, according to one of Dr. Lipton’s latest books, we are ripe for this spontaneous evolution of the next level of global human wisdom – something quite necessary if we want to prevent the rapidly approaching sixth mass extinction.
Choosing his fascinating metaphors, Dr. Lipton introduces us to a new way of understanding human behavior, our belief systems, and how we can create a new foundation for future growth. Important things are happening under the radar. We are experiencing the emergence of a new global consciousness.
Finally, we touch on the role of telomeres, those mysterious molecules at the end of our chromosome strands whose disappearance brings about aging and death. Fortunately, there are ways we can produce more telomeres, including the five remarkably simple ones Dr. Lipton offers you.
About Bruce Lipton, PhD:
Bruce H. Lipton, PhD is an internationally recognized leader in bridging science and spirit. Stem cell biologist, bestselling author of The Biology of Belief and recipient of the 2009 Goi Peace Award, he has been a guest speaker on hundreds of TV and radio shows, as well as keynote presenter for national and international conferences.
Dr. Lipton began his scientific career as a cell biologist. He received his Ph.D. Degree from the University of Virginia at Charlottesville before joining the Department of Anatomy at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine in 1973. Dr. Lipton’s research on muscular dystrophy, studies employing cloned human stem cells, focused upon the molecular mechanisms controlling cell behavior. An experimental tissue transplantation technique developed by Dr. Lipton and colleague Dr. Ed Schultz and published in the journal Science was subsequently employed as a novel form of human genetic engineering.
Learn more about Dr. Lipton at brucelipton.com .
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Books by Today’s Guest:
It has been ten years since the publication of The Biology of Belief, Bruce Lipton’s seminal book on the relationship between mind and body that changed the way we think about our lives, our health, and our planet. During that time, research in this field has grown exponentially—Lipton’s groundbreaking experiments have now been endorsed by more than a decade of rigorous scientific study.
In this greatly expanded edition, Lipton, a former medical school professor and research scientist, explores his own experiments and those of other leading-edge scientists that have unraveled in ever greater detail how truly connected the mind, body, and spirit are. It is now widely recognized that genes and DNA do not control our biology. Instead, they are controlled by signals from outside the cell, including energetic messages emanating from our thoughts.
This profoundly hopeful synthesis of the latest and best research in cell biology and quantum physics puts the power to create a healthy, joyous life back in our own hands. When we transform our conscious and subconscious thoughts, we transform our lives, and in the process help humanity evolve to a new level of understanding and peace. Buy it Now.
by Emmett Miller | May 8, 2015
Mindfulness Meditation has been practiced for many centuries. Dr. Miller introduced the technique to modern medical/psychological practice for the purpose of healing in 1971. Since then, many scientific studies have shown it to be remarkably effective in managing stress, relieving pain, healing trauma, etc.
Dr. Miller’s guest on this program is Charles A. Francis, student of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, who has written a book, Mindfulness Meditation Made Simple – Your Guide to Finding Inner Peace. In this conversation with Dr. Miller we will discover the real meaning of “mindfulness,” why it is helpful for meditation, and the 12 simple steps that can get you launched and begin to transform your life.
You will learn such things as the truth about suffering, why concentration is the anchor of the peaceful mind, and how to control your mind when it starts to race. We will also explore the power of meditating with others and how to make mindfulness a way of life. Don’t miss this enlightening and relaxing program.
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Books by Today’s Guest:
Mindfulness Meditation Made Simple
Your Guide to Finding True Inner Peace
Through the clear instructions and simple exercises, you will gain a solid foundation of this time-tested ancient practice, and get the results you want. Mindfulness Meditation Made Simple explains the exact meditation techniques in an easy-to-follow process. It then gives you tips for enhancing your practice.
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Dr. Millers Programs Relevant To This Topic:
Relaxation and Inspiration
Gratitude, caring, and commitment are evoked, and the resulting peace, joy, and love then inspire you to be the person you most want to be. Through future image visualization you then project this most important inspiration through to tomorrow and ever after.
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Letting Go of Stress
No wonder it’s the world’s most popular stress management tape! Several distinct and different guided imagery and deep relaxation experiences teach powerful techniques for melting away stress and its symptoms. Learn to use progressive relaxation, autogenic self-suggestion, creative visualization and everyone’s favorite—”A Trip to the Beach.”
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by Emmett Miller | May 1, 2015
Photo Courtesy of AmenClinics.com
The Treatment of Attention Deficit Disorder
This diagnosis was at first reserved for children, but most clinicians now recognize that, although in many youngsters the symptoms abate partially or fully after adolescence, there are many adults who have Attention Deficit Disorder. It is the most commonly diagnosed psychiatric disorder in children, and 5-10% of adults are believed to have clinical ADD.
The symptoms that suggest that a person receive this diagnosis are:
- Short attention span
- Distractibility
- Impulsivity
- Disorganization
- Procrastination
- Poor Planning
- Poor Follow Through
Additionally, in boys it often presents with hyperactivity, leading to sub-type Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or ADHD. The other sub-type is the Inattentive – more common in girls, the distractability takes the form of daydreaming, or “spacing out.”
Brain scans of people with ADD reveal that areas of the cortex (the thinking part of the brain) seem to be asleep. Not surprisingly, we see telltale inactivity most profoundly in the prefrontal cortex, the seat of the “executive functions” (organization, planning, impulse control, concentration, etc.).
The prefrontal part of the cortex is actually an inhibitory part of the brain. Of the many, many stimuli going on in the brain at every moment, we would go crazy if we tried to attend to them all. Therefore, the brain has filters to filter out the noise and allow us to concentrate on what we want to concentrate on. The final filter is this executive part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex. This is the part that is sluggish in the person with ADD. For them, it is like trying to carry on a cell-phone conversation in a loud, busy barroom.
Untreated, this disorder can affect virtually every area of a person’s life, leading to poor performance at school or work, behavior or legal difficulties, low self-esteem, chronic stress, relationship difficulties, anxiety disorders, and depression. On the other hand, treatment is often remarkably easy and inexpensive.
Treatment
The standard treatment for ADHD in both children and adults is stimulant medications, such as Ritalin or Amphetamine – although some people are helped by Atomoxine, which is not a stimulant. These medications are helpful for many people, but some receive no benefit, and some may have symptoms from the stimulation.
The goal of treatment with stimulants is to awaken the hypofunctioning part of the brain. When the diagnosis and treatment are correct, we see dramatic, even amazing, changes in people’s lives when a person with severe ADD begins this type of treatment. Some folks take charge of their lives, get really organized – clean out and tidy their garage, their closet, and their file cabinet – things that they had been “procrastinating” for years! Relationships change overnight, and their true intelligence can reveal itself.
Another remarkable property of these medications is their rapidity of action. Often you can tell within a day or two whether they are effective in your case – and the change can be momentous.
On the other hand, the side effects of these medications, while they can run the gamut, generally are related to their primary effects—and include nervousness, jitteriness, trembling, over-excitability, insomnia, etc.
Typical stimulant medications are Adderall, Adderall XR, Concerta, Desoxyn, Dexedrine, Metadate, Ritalin, Vyvanse
Adjunctive and Alternative Treatment
In addition to the treatment with medication, people generally need to unlearn negative self-images they have acquired. Many have come to believe they are rather stupid, when actually they may have superior intelligence.
In my work with people, either as a treating physician or an ADD coach, we focus on developing a deeper awareness of the true Self, personal values, and positive reference memories. Through meditative and deep relaxation techniques the overactive mind can be quieted, and the techniques of Selective Awareness used to learn how to focus attention.
This focused attention can then be directed to rewriting one’s personal life script, organizing life and activities around clear purposes, developing effective strategies, and moving towards a compelling personal vision.
The following programs have been valuable for those wishing to train their brains to focus better and function more effectively.
Suggested Guided Imagery, Meditation & Self-Hypnosis Programs:
Dr. Miller has integrated a number of effective techniques and audio programs to help you focus and enhance your life, including deep relaxation, meditation, self-hypnosis, and guided imagery. All of these can help you attain a motivated and peaceful state of serenity and stress relief.
by Emmett Miller | Apr 10, 2015
Why is our world (especially our politicians) so polarized? Why do we act as if we believe that the greatest truth comes from opposing sides jousting rather than searching together for greater truth by including, encouraging, and creatively engaging a full range of diverse perspectives? What is Dynamic Facilitation and how can it help us access our collective intelligence and our collective wisdom?
Our guest today is Tom Atlee, co-director and research director of the Co-Intelligence Institute, a nonprofit organization he founded in 1996. His early co-intelligence research in the late 1980’s focused on the relationship between group dynamics and collective intelligence, society’s capacity to function as a wise democracy, and the conscious evolution of social systems.
In this highly stimulating conversation we explore polarization and how we can instead awaken the inherent (and emergent) wisdom in a group. Tom will share the principles of dynamic facilitation, where people do not have to sacrifice their passion or their positions, where, instead, the energy of the polarization can be captured and guided towards channeling the energies surrounding our 21st century social and environmental crises into positive possibilities and system-transforming initiatives.
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With compelling real-life stories, innovative ideas and hands-on guidance, this book shows how to engage the combined wisdom of citizens to solve complex social problems.It describes how powerful new forms of dialogue and deliberation enable diverse ordinary citizens to work together developing sophisticated public policy recommendations — even on technical issues. Demonstrating that groups, communities and whole societies can be more intelligent and wise collectively than most brilliant individuals, Tom Atlee shows how “collective intelligence” could revolutionize politics and governance, bringing wise common sense to every issue — from city budgets to terrorism to global warming.
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Dr. Millers Programs Relevant To This Topic:
With Dr. Miller’s guidance, you will realize that within you is the power and the desire to change the way you think, the way you feel, and the way you behave – all the way from your personal health habits and how you behave in relationships to how you participate in your family, your community, and in your world at large.
Purchase Awakening the Leader Within
Dr. Miller, live and in person, enhanced by rich B-roll images, originally presented to the Academy for Guided Imagery in 2008. This program is an Introduction to the notion of the inner leader, how the inner leader has been suppressed by family and community, and how to use imagery to awaken that potential.
We are the leaders we have waited for! This presentation is an invitation to you to do your part.
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by Emmett Miller | Feb 6, 2015
Our world is facing a terrible crisis, and the decisions we make today will determine whether or not we will survive. We live in a world of terror, danger, conflict, and complete disregard of the living creatures of this planet.
The source of the terrorism, according to Andrew Harvey, is the fundamentalist thinking we see in Islamist suicide bombers, Tea Party radicals, greedy corporations, and all the religions that claim to have the truth while punishing other paths to the sacred One, and anyone who does not believe as they do.
Andrew Harvey is Founder Director of the Institute of Sacred Activism, an international organization that invites concerned people to take up the challenge of our contemporary global crises by becoming inspired and effective agents of change. Sacred activism is a form of compassion-in-action that is born of a fusion of deep spiritual passion with wise radical action in the world. The large-scale practice of Sacred Activism can become an essential force for preserving and healing the planet and its inhabitants.
Andrew Harvey is English, although he was born in India, where he says he was exposed very early to people who deeply believed in the Divine. By his adolescence he had moved to England where his studies took him to Oxford, where he gained enormous recognition in the Western intellectual tradition. It was then he returned to India where he realized that, although he had reached the pinnacle of Western learning, he “knew nothing.”
In this passionate, inspiring conversation with this clearly brilliant and gifted man, he shares with us the essence of what he has learned and written about in his more than 30 books, and taught in his classes at Oxford and Cornell Universities. He shares with us the ideas of Spiritual Activism that have made him world famous.
“A spirituality that is only private and self-absorbed, one devoid of an authentic political and social consciousness, does little to halt the suicidal juggernaut of history. On the other hand, an activism that is not purified by profound spiritual and psychological self-awareness and rooted in divine truth, wisdom, and compassion will only perpetuate the problem it is trying to solve, however righteous its intentions. When, however, the deepest and most grounded spiritual vision is married to a practical and pragmatic drive to transform all existing political, economic, and social institutions, a holy force – the power of wisdom and love in action – is born. This force I define as Sacred Activism.”
www.andrewharvey.net
In his new book The Hope: a Guide to Sacred Activism, Andrew Harvey defines Sacred Activism as a force of compassion in action destined to midwife the birth of a new humanity able to co-create with the Divine a new world. According to Harvey, “This great birth will have to come about as the result of a massive grassroots mobilization of the hearts and committed wills of millions of people.” The vehicle for this mobilization Harvey believes will be through what he calls “Networks of Grace.”
The vision of Sacred Activism is dedicated to honoring and continuing the tremendous work of extraordinary ordinary people such as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks and Desmond Tutu. Each of these individuals rose up to meet the challenges of their time with great spiritual grace and integrated inner contemplation with decisive action.
We now have before us the possibility of using this current crisis to empower ourselves, and others, to actually get the planet to work. You will enjoy and be inspired by this brilliant conversation.
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Books by todays Guest
“Every age has its teachers, who keep the eternal truths alive for all of us,” writes Marianne Williamson, the best-selling author of The Age of Miracles. “In the case of Andrew Harvey, the light he sheds is like a meteor burst across the inner sky.”
In The Hope, Andrew Harvey offers not only a guide to discovering your divine purpose but also the blueprint for a better world. It consists of the necessary elements that can inspire greatness in each of us. Based on Harvey’s concepts of Sacred Activism, a global initiative designed to save the world from its downward spiral of greed, pain, and self-destruction, the book is an enlightening text that reflects our world today, while in turn, shapes our future.
Harvey’s concepts of radical passion and sacred activism fly in the face of restraint, of pessimism, of denial, of all that is inhumane, fusing the mystic’s passion for God with the activist’s passion for justice and for healing the division between heaven and earth, heart and will, body and soul, prayer and action. Sacred activism asks that we engage deeply on a personal, spiritual, and political level so as to become a fully empowered, fully active, and contemplative humanity that can turn tragedy into grace, and desolation into the opportunity to build and co-create a new world.
Dr. Millers Programs Relevant to this topic
Discover how you can make a difference through passion, compassion and love. In your heart is the future of our planet; learn how to empower your mental imagery to serve your most deeply held values. Experience the wisdom of the ages wedded to cutting-edge mind-body and peak performance technology.
We’ve all thought this at one time or another: So many things can trigger such a response: corporate greed, political corruption, economic disparity, environmental degradation, wars, violence…the list goes on. Why is it we keep looking to our “leaders” to make things better when they are the ones who led us into these situations in the first place?
For more than 2 hours, Dr. Miller, in his uniquely soothing and wisely entertaining way, will take you on a journey of discovery: a self-guided exploration of spirituality. Spirituality is the process of separating the superficial from the essential, and as you listen you will find that to discover spirit is to discover the relatedness of all existing things.
With this book, Dr. Miller makes his greatest contribution to the transformation, the paradigm shift, that so many of us are working toward and that must occur if we want to be in charge of setting our communal direction into the future – something that must occur if we are to create sustainability, or to even survive. Dr. Miller’s life and work have been an ongoing process of awakening to certain eternal truths about life and humanity.
Love Calls – Insights of a Former Carmelite Nun
