As a facilitator and director at Rock The Path and as an intuitive medium, I'm often asked questions like... Do I have a spiritual guide? How can I connect? Are angels guides?
Most people I encounter on this topic are curious and interested, wanting to know who their guides are and wondering how best to connect with "higher guidance". But sometimes I encounter folks who don't believe in guides. Yet whether or not you actually believe in a separate entity, energy or spirit with the label "guide" is really irrelevant.
We all have Guides or Inner Voices, or Muses, or Angels, or a Higher Self or a connection to Spirit or God, or to use a Jungian term, access to the collective unconscious. What we label this interaction is no where near as important as participating in it. It's natural and healthy to want to know, and connecting is an endeavor truly worthy of our time and effort - it is also one very likely to be richly rewarded.
In my experience, we need only set our intention and put in a little effort regarding the things we want to accomplish, and our efforts and intentions are matched, multiplied and expanded to give us the requested experience. So, should you wish to "make contact," all you need do is clearly set your intention to do just that.
Guides are there to personally assist you, and so getting to know them is a personal quest. Therefore, get quiet and listen. A regular meditation practice is an excellent way to both initially connect with and then deepen the relationship. Start with a few minutes a day of simply getting quiet - meditation truly doesn't have to be a "big deal" and any way you personally find to "do it" easily and comfortably is the right way. Simply find a quiet space, maybe play a little soothing music and definitely unplug the phone.
When I was initially searching for contact with my guide Elvin, I used the book Opening to Channel: How to Connect with Your Guide - this is an excellent manual for finding, connecting and communicating with your guides. Through insightful discussion and simple exercises, this book takes you successfully step-by-step through the process. And don't be surprised if you meet more than one guide in your meditative travels - your guide is likely part of a group, although s/he is also likely to be your 'primary' at the moment.
Remember to call in love and light and be in a state of gratitude before your meditations, and clearly set your intention before you begin. You can also ask your guide - even if you have yet to consciously "meet" - to direct you to resources (be on the lookout for signs, synchronicity and "coincidences" in your daily life after you ask), which will aid in communicating and deepening your relationship with her/him.
And have fun for Pete's sake! Connecting with your guides is truly an incredible and rewarding journey.
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About The Author CJ Kenna holds degrees in psychology and business, is a certified psychic medium, and is a founding director at Rock The Path, a nonprofit Meditation & Retreat Center in Camden, Maine. She meditates a lot and facilitates several self discovery workshops, including Get High, a workshop for consciously connecting to higher guidance.
||| DO YOU YOI?
Is YOUR Christmas shopping complete? Have you on hand plenty of "Yardsticks of Impossibility" (also known as "YOIs") ready for use this holiday season? If you're human, you probably do.
They're really rather useful, and a snap to gift. You can use them to measure yourself (and your performance, your behavior, that thing you said a few minutes ago, what you look like, how much you weigh, etc.) quickly, easily and conveniently in pretty much any situation.
And what's more, once you've consistently applied YOIs to yourself, it's a cinch to effectively apply it to others (like your spouse, children, friends, that guy over there you've never met but you're darn sure he's a bozo).
Contrary to popular belief, and despite its widespread use and almost infinite adaptability, it's not actually beneficial; in fact it can be harmful to both the one being measured, and the one doing the measuring.
And here's why.
No matter what, YOIs will never measure fairly, or even realistically. Cleverly, they deceive by falsely making the "measurer" feel powerful, strong or like they've got it all together, while they destroy by consistently finding those they are applied to ineffective, inadequate, and "less-than." Fortunately, there's a better yardstick - available absolutely everywhere - but perhaps a tad harder to apply, at least at first: Acceptance.
This Christmas (not that getting a Kindle Fire wouldn't be cool), consider a rather radical, one-size-fits-all gift... Acceptance. Just for a day, or as the perfect stocking stuffer, pick someone you wish were different in some way, and get out and apply your "Yardstick of Acceptance" (YOA). With it, you'll be better able to see them clearly - not as you want them to be - but for who they actually are. And, like all really good presents, might just make them feel really good come Christmas morning.
It's an amazing gift, acceptance, and one most of us dearly want. So do make sure to apply it to yourself first, because once you've tried it, you'll be excited to share it. And then you'll know first hand that there are very few gifts (including the aforementioned Kindle), that can rival it.
Need more gift giving ideas? Consider compassion, love, and (all right, fine) the Kindle Fire.
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About The Author CJ Kenna holds degrees in psychology and business, thinks Radical Acceptance is a really useful idea, and is a founding director at the nonprofit Rock The Path, a Meditation & Retreat Center in Camden, Maine. She meditates a lot and co-facilitates residential self discovery workshops, including the popular Excursion Retreat.
For The Love of CAN'T
Whether you think you can -- or you think you can't -- you're right.” - Henry Ford
Do you enjoy CAN'T? The security of it? The relief CAN'T brings? The plausible excuse it offers?
CAN'T is so darn useful. It gets us out of so much, doesn't it? Yet how can just a little word accomplish all this? Simple. Just say or think you CAN'T do something, and guess what? You CAN'T! Voila! It's that easy.
But wait! There's more!
CAN'T is especially effective if you both say and think it. And want to get a real boost from this powerful word? Repeat it often. Nothing works quite as well, except maybe this word:
----> CAN <----
Like its negative counterpart, CAN is incredibly effective and very powerful in programming yourself to do just about anything. Why, just try saying CAN a few times out loud and see if you don't begin to believe it yourself! Just a snare and a delusion you say pessimistically?
Not if you believe it. And you CAN.
You see, something interesting happens to us humans when we have decided on something. Most of what we experience reinforces, rather than challenges, our beliefs and ideas. It's not that the challenges aren't out there, it just that we don't see them. Scary, huh? But also very good! This means you CAN change your mind, you CAN change your attitude, and you CAN change your reality and your life anytime you'd like, and then magically most of what you then experience will reinforce this new CAN DO idea.
Neat, huh?
Try it. Try it now. Just for this one day. If it doesn't work, you can always retreat to the comfort and safety of CAN'T. But if it does work -- and it does -- you've just changed your whole life with one little word. And you wouldn't have had to go to the gym or even eat your spinach to do it. It's a relatively easy change with literally astounding results.
So get out there and do it. Start right now. Why? Because you CAN.
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About The Author CJ Kenna is a Founding Director at the nonprofit Rock The Path, a Meditation & Retreat Center in Camden, Maine. She co-facilitates programs and retreats for self-discovery, including the popular Excursion Retreat.
I'd like to tell you a story. A really interesting story. A story about Meditation's
Wild Side, which allows us to have meditative experiences with others not physically, but in the esoteric realm of shared consciousness.
It was Thursday, October 12, 2006 and I was at the end of a weeklong group workshop called Lifeline at The Monroe Institute in Faber, Virginia. As a meditative exercise, I was learning to access a specific state of consciousness known as Focus Level 27. My previous attempts at accessing this state had been intriguing, entertaining but not all that successful. For instance, I was having trouble accessing a spot in Focus Level 27 called the Healing Center. I could get into the focus level, I could find the Healing Center and I could touch the "doors", but try as I might, they would not open for me. I found this both amusing and annoying. But on this morning, during this specific exercise, I was finally able to open the doors and enter the Healing Center.
When I walked through the front entrance, the space looked exactly like a hospital, but was a study in complete whiteness. The walls were white. The floors were white. The ceilings were white. And the people in the center, who looked like doctors and nurses, all wore white, and wrote on white charts with white implements, some of them sitting at white tables or leaning on white counters. It was not stark - it was bright and peaceful and incredibly friendly. As I walked through the entrance and down the first main hallway, various people glanced up and smiled - with their mouths and with their eyes. Genuine, lovely and warm, those quiet smiles made me feel completely at ease and totally welcome.
As I reached the end of the hallway, I saw Reggie, a member of my workshop group, who was at the time doing the same meditation I was, though he was in a different part of the building. I wasn't surprised to see him; I often "encounter" people I know during meditations. Over six feet tall and stocky, Reggie reminded me of a football player. He was gentle and several times during the weeklong workshop we'd had many long conversations about everything from politics to the strength and frailty of the human heart. In this meditation, Reggie was standing at the end of the hallway. I asked him what he was doing and he said he was about to go into a room and nodded to his right, indicating a large, white hospital room, complete with a bed, table, lamp... I commented that I thought the room was pretty stark and he said, "So change it." And I realized I could - I could make the room or anywhere else here look exactly as I wished - afterall, it was my meditation - and with that I resolved to create exciting forms with a little less white.
Before I left him though, I spontaneously took my right index finger and touched between the brows on his forehead, at what's known as the area of the Third Eye, and said "Remember." I then went off on my meditation, to a healing pool in the middle of which was a giant crystal and floated for a time, gazing through the glass domed ceiling of the watery oasis.
At the end of the meditation I returned to normal waking consciousness and, so as not to forget, furiously scribbled down my experience, including my conversation with Reggie in the hallway of the healing center. Just as I'd finished getting it all on paper, Reggie walked in, pointed directly at me and said: "I remember." He then told me of the white healing center and the conversation we'd had in the hallway. He also said he later saw me in the pool and described it to a tee. Incredible. And exciting. And what the heck are the potential implications of this amazing experience?
This was the first time I'd consciously had a corroborated shared meditative experience. It was not my last. And when they occur, I wonder what kind of reality allows for this type of experience? Certainly not the reality I live most of my waking conscious life in. In this reality, the one of alarm clocks, deadlines and traffic jams, I am separate from everyone else. But these glimpses of something... more... something... deeper lead me to think that perhaps reality is grander, broader, much more multifaceted and dimensional then I realize, and it is through meditation and other non-usual channels that I and all of us, can experience the greater reality where we share experiences not just when in physical proximity, but through thought and energy too. When we are paying attention to these oft ignored channels of existence and communication, we learn that separation may actually be false. Perhaps we are all connected, sharing a nonduality which simply allows for us to merely think we are actually very separate individuals on very personal quests, when we are actually not. And if this is so, it is this kind of construct which would explain and allow for things like shared - and corroborated - meditative experiences. And perhaps a lot of other rather esoteric experiences as well.
Hmmm. I think I'll meditate on it.
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About The Author CJ Kenna is a Founding Director at the nonprofit Rock The Path, a Hemi-Sync Meditation & Retreat Center in Camden, Maine. She co-facilitates meditative retreats, including the popular Excursion Retreat, where participants have also had shared meditative experiences.
The Healthy Mind Platter includes the essential activities that your brain needs to function at its best today and stave off serious health issues tomorrow.
Developed in conjunction with the NeuroLeadership Institute in Sydney, Australia and the University of California-Los Angeles School of Medicine, the Healthy Mind Platter involves seven daily activities - or habits - to bolster both your brainpower and level of happiness.
Do you get enough of them? No? Then make time. You'll be happier and healthier.
1. Time In: Time for Meditation (Try it now), Yoga and Prayer.
Do this daily to build neuronal connections that may reduce your risk of dementia.
2. Play: Time to laugh and simply enjoy.
Playing, doing spontaneous things, ejoying the moment sparks new connections in the brain.
3. Focus: Time to freely focus on whatever you're doing
Paying close attention stimultaes brain cell connections, keeping them strong and growing.
4. Connection: Time to relate, visit, and connect with others.
Making personal connections releases stress reducing, mood enhancing brain chemicals, like oxytocin and serotonin.
5. Exercise: Time to get moving.
Exercise releases chemicals that help the brain produce new cells, to improve improve memory and learning.
6. Down Time: Time to do nothing but just be.
Giving your mind a break recharges your brain circuitry.
7. Sleep: Time to rest and recharge.
Not getting enough spikes cortisol, lowers immunity and dulls creativity.
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About The Author CJ Kenna is a Founding Director at the nonprofit Rock The Path, a Hemi-Sync Meditation & Retreat Center in Camden, Maine. She facilitates meditative retreats, including the popular Excursion Retreat.
Have you ever thought something like... "I really should meditate. It's good for me. It reduces stress. Harvard says it makes my brain more efficient and even grow. But I just can't. A moment without thought in a weird position is impossible for me."
Most people who are interested in meditation have thought this or something like it. They also sometimes - erroneously - think meditation requires training, sitting in uncomfortable positions for long periods, having no thoughts whatsoever, and maybe facing north while chanting something strange... when in fact, it often doesn't.
Meditation can be really, really simple and its benefits easy to obtain.
• Imagine sitting down for 1 minute without any or very little external noise (ie: people, music, computers, tvs, etc).
• Imagine washing the dishes for 30 seconds while you notice the curve of the plate you're washing.
• Imagine taking a deep breath into your belly, holding it for 5 seconds and exhaling.
These are all "meditation." And they produce some significant, healing, even long term results. A study from Duke University Medical Center, for instance, has found that:
"...evidence suggests that even brief... simple meditation technique(s) can improve negative mood and perceived stress in healthy adults, which could yield long-term health benefits." (read it)
So what are you waiting for? The benefits of even very brief moments of silence and meditation can make a real, actual and measurable difference. So... Take a deep breath, get silent and improve your health, ease your mind and lift your spirits. Or as CBS MoneyWatch.com says... Shut Up & Heal (read it).
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About The Author CJ Kenna is a Founding Director at the nonprofit Rock The Path, a Hemi-Sync Meditation & Retreat Center in Camden, Maine. She co-facilitates the daylong retreat workshop, Silence.
Many decades of empirical work "...have earned its investigators the right to assert that several forms of intuition have been confirmed as real phenomena, and are widespread among the populace." - Paul Bernstein, PhD
I'm CJ Kenna, a Founding Director at the nonprofit Rock The Path in Camden, Maine, and I'd like to talk with you about Cornell University. Did you know that they've come out with proof that precognition exists… and that you yourself are capable of it? That's how amazing YOU actually are.
Professor Daryl Bem of Cornell recently completed research entitled "Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect" presenting statistically significant empirical evidence that humans can perceive the future. Recently accepted for publication in the prestigious "Journal of Personality and Social Psychology", Professor Bem's study involved over 1000 Cornell students and a total of 9 different experiments. (Read His Paper)
Bem's experiment and findings join the plethora of existing research demonstrating the existence of psi phenomena (ie: intuition, precognition, remote viewing, telekinesis, etc). Indeed, contends researcher Paul Bernstein, PhD in his paper "Intuition: What Science Says (So Far) About How and Why Intuition Works" (Read His Paper) many decades of empirical work "...have earned its investigators the right to assert that several forms of intuition have been confirmed as real phenomena, and are widespread among the populace." As someone who routinely works to develop and successfully apply my intuition, I agree.
The fact that mainstream media, from which the majority of us receive our information, is often reluctant to print these findings, even when respected academic journals bravely do, gives the impression that - and feeds the general misconception that - human psi capability does not exist. Yet given the huge well of anecdotal, experiential and scientific evidence, it may be more logical to conclude that the reason we don't, at least as westerns, see psi talents everywhere displayed is that just like many human talents, psi ability operates unconsciously and is somewhat latent until the interest and passion of the individual possessing it is piqued.
Once piqued, however, the talent is practiced and the individual makes progress, encouraged by their successes and learning from their failures, just like with any art or capability. Like playing the piano or shushing the slopes, a student of any given ability must possess the inclination and drive to keep at it if they wish to make headway. And it's only when they make some headway that we can clearly see, measure and acknowledge their talent. After all, we need listen to only one piano concerto or view one winter Olympics to know that we as humans are capable of achieving these feats.
Yet the stubborn suspicion that psi ability is nonexistent continues as a strong, but lessening, current in popular western society (though if you are, for instance, Indian, Native American, or Tibetan you are likely to view psi ability as quite obvious and natural).
But the proof is in the pudding as they say, yet experiments and research into psi ability are hampered. Yes, by the usual things that plague good research, like methodology and replication. But this type has an additional challenge: their test subjects are largely those who've never practiced consciously using the innate psi talent for which they're being tested. It's like trying to figure out if humans are capable of playing the aforementioned complex concertos by randomly testing people off the street who've never played a musical instrument - or maybe even seen one. Certainly, if I were a test subject in such a study, researchers would conclude that humans are not capable of playing concertos and cite my dismal performance as proof.
And yet - still and amazingly - numerous studies have found the evidence, showing significant, statistically relevant results. Humans have psi ability. Scientific research has time and again shown that we can accurately perceive the future, predict results and outcomes, read each other's minds and locate hidden objects. And the US federal government agrees. Look up the Stargate Project the next time you're Googling. For over 20 years, Stargate trained and utilized psychic spies for the military. The Russians had psychic departments too. And they aren't the only ones.
The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) program was established at Princeton University in 1979 by the Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science, to pursue the interaction of human consciousness with physical devices, systems, and processes. Some very interesting stuff has come out of this lab. Then there's Stanford University's SRI Lab, which studies and has found scientific evidence for the existence clairvoyance, ESP, and psychokenisis. There's also IONS, the Institute for Noetic Studies, founded by NASA's Edgar Mitchell, an aeronautical engineer and astronaut. He piloted Apollo 14, and was the sixth person to walk on the moon. IONS studies and supports scientific research into areas of human potential, including spontaneous remission, meditation, consciousness, alternative healing, psychic abilities and survival of consciousness after bodily death. And those are just a few of the more mainstream institutions studying human psi ability, making Cornell's recent findings of the human capability to successfully demonstrate this ability not all that surprising, joining a plethora of research the world over which has confirmed the same thing.
And now that you know that we as humans are capable of some pretty astounding things, including predicting the future… what now? Well… give it a try, give it a little practice and confirm for yourself the findings of Cornell, Princeton, Stanford and the US Federal Government. Chances are, you will be amazed at how amazing you are.
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About The Author CJ Kenna is a Founding Director at the nonprofit Rock The Path, a Hemi-Sync Meditation & Retreat Center in Camden, Maine. She teaches the popular weekend retreat workshop, Intuitive Development.
"If we did all the things of which we are capable, we would literally astound ourselves."
- Edison
Thomas Edison said that and in recent years I've taken him up on it as the idea of astounding myself is very exciting and the actual application of such has been, well, quite astounding! I've achieved some pretty amazing things since I began testing Thom's hypothesis for myself and received plenty of help and encouragement along the way.... and one of the more wonderful tools I've been privileged to discover on this journey is Hemi-Sync.
Hi. This is CJ Kenna of Rock the Path in Camden, Maine talking with you today about Hemi-Sync (try it online now), a unique, safe and powerful tool for self discovery, the exploration of consciousness and creating positive change in your life. Short for "Hemispheric Synchronization" Hemi-Sync, most commonly thought of as a tool for successfully and quickly achieving meditative states, is a process which uses sound to generate and support various levels of focus and awareness providing an ideal environment in which to explore and experience ourselves and our potentials.
Not subliminal nor hypnotic, Hemi-Sync instead works simply by sending slightly different tones, one to each ear, either through stereo headphones or ambiently in a quiet environment. The two hemispheres of the brain then act in unison to “hear” a third signal: the difference between the two tones. This is not a physical sound, but a signal created in the brain stem, known as a binaural beat.
Binaural beats were discovered in 1839 by physicist and meteorologist Heinrich Wilhelm Dove, yet would remain relatively obscure and little researched for 134 years when in 1973 researcher Gerald Oster, at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, picked up where Dove left off, publishing in Scientific American an article entitled "Auditory Beats in the Brain" which concluded, among other exciting things, that binaural beats were a potentially powerful tool for cognitive and neurological research. In 1975 Bob Monroe, a successful businessman, engineer and producer of such well known radio programs as "The Shadow," discovered the power of binaural beats for himself, patenting his binaural-beat technology as "Hemi-Sync" and launching himself - and eventually countless others around the world - on what would be a lifelong personal and professional journey into the exploration of consciousness.
Over the past 40+ years, research conducted at the not-for-profit Monroe Institute in Virginia and throughout science and academia, has impressively and consistently demonstrated that when the brain is entrained through the use of binaural beats, causing the two hemispheres of the brain to work together equally (with both left and right brain waves having the same frequency and amplitude, operating in a smooth and continuous pattern; basically a "whole brain functioning"), beneficial and even - or perhaps especially - esoteric states of consciousness can be more readily and easily achieved, supported and explored.
And when coupled with the organic sounds of nature, melodic tones and music and/or soothing guided imagery and meditations and listening to it in a quiet place, adding a little breath work and a relaxation technique or two... well, you've got yourself a binaural beat recipe for success, where creating positive change, experiencing and exploring states of consciousness and even boosting your immune system are possible. For thousands of individuals, myself included, this tool has been more than supportive and powerful, it has been life changing.
And because it is so easy to use, you can get very creative with it. Exercise with binaural beat programming and watch your performance improve. Meditate with it and achieve in short order what the head of a Zen Buddhist Monastery said took him literally years of sitting to achieve. Reach optimum states of rest and relaxation, decrease your blood pressure, ease depression and anxiety, support your immune system, access higher guidance, spur creativity, encourage group cooperation and effectiveness, reduce stress and increase focus and performance. (Oh yeah, if you're interested in bending spoons, it can help you there too.) But it isn't a magic pill or bullet, and like most things which create benefit in our lives, it does need your effort, intention, and commitment to optimally perform, yet this incredibly powerful tool can help you tremendously on your path whether it be one of self discovery, self improvement, physical well being, emotional healing, or achieving higher states of consciousness.
I look forward to talking with you about a few of the things - like maybe spoon bending - I've used Hemi-Sync to enhance, support and accomplish in my own life. But for now, this is CJ Kenna from Rock The Path reminding you to choose happiness, not drama, and be well.
About The Author CJ Kenna is a Founding Director at the nonprofit Rock The Path, a Hemi-Sync Meditation & Retreat Center in Camden, Maine. Along with fellow Founding Director Stephanie Rae, she facilitates several Hemi-Sync based programs, including The Monroe Institute's Excursion Retreat Workshop.
