When I came up with the concept for my first book, Make This Your Lucky Day, I decided to take important and special celebratory days off the standard yearly calendar and instead offer some empowering and powerful advice to make the most of those eventful occasions.
I wrote about specific holidays like New Years and Valentine's Day, while also sharing secrets and shortcuts to happiness, prosperity and joy for more generic celebrations like weddings, chirstenings and birthdays. But, when I was devising my list of the more generally acknowledged broad stroke specific holidays there were a few I didn't know whether I should add to the compendium or not?
The nationwide annual celebration of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday was just such a day. Because King was alive when I was a young girl, I never had much opportunity to study him from a historical standpoint, the way my son does in his 8th grade history class now. My knowledge of what Martin Luther King Jr. stood for when I was growing up in the '60s and '70's came from dinner table conversations and newspapers, as well as black and white television news reports and, well, as little musical ditty that grouped Dr. King into a chorus that included both Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy Jr.
So, when it came time to include this holiday in my book, I pondered why celebrating Martin's birthday should resonate with me personally? I mean, I'm not black and I haven't really ever had to experience that struggle, although many of my very good friends have. But I certainly can and do respect Martin Luther King Jr. as an icon of American history with his mission and inner understanding of the importance of a peace-filled planet. And, that mission, that quest to promote peace above all else on this planet was what thenprompted me to not only contemplate, but then to also research all the different ways in which Dr. King's philosophies attempted to impact a universe screaming for his slant; a planet of people who have for ages killed the messenger thereby not only denigrating but also defiling the color blind message.
And, so, upon close inspection and sort of suddenly, Martin Luther King Jr. Day then became, for me anyway, one of the most special and significant holy-days in all the year. I felt as though now, by celebrating his birthday with clarity and intent, that I/we could also celebrate his message of peace, truth and fairness for all -- in our homes, our hearts, our lives, our communities, and, then, collectively, on this entire earth. Indeed, once I started to truly take in the meaning of this man, his work and his too short life, I realized that Dr .King embodied the essence of exactly what it is that I try to do each and every day in my business, in my practice, in my life and also what I try to instill and inspire in the lives of others.
Just consider this little glimpse into the pain and the experience of the human condition that as a energetic and holistic practitioner I hear as regularly as I can hear my own heartbeat if I but quiet my mind and try:
"My spouse never listens to a word that I say!"
"My kids are fighting with each other constantly and I can't ever seem to get them to stop!"
"There's a bully on my daughter's school bus."
"My ex hasn't paid me alimony or child support in years!"
"My boss is so jealous of me and I can never get ahead at work."
Battered wives, abusive husbands, divorce, oppression, negativity, racism, poverty, terrorism! This ALL starts inside each and every one of us and travels outward reaping its ugly harvest each and every time any one of us holds on to an ugly thought or strikes out in any form at another human being. No matter the reason or the excuse, the insanity begins within as echoed by a statement that Dr. King once made, "Everything that we see is but a shadow cast by that which we do not see." Hew as talking about the energies all around us. He was talking about using that same invisible energy to get our own selves up his imaginary 'mountain', the one that he saw as representing the peace, the abundance and the prosperity that awaits each of us on the other side. He had a dream. You have many. Let's blend the two and make the world a better place for everyone. In honor of all those who have given their own lives so that we can better ours. In honor of Dr. King:
1.Make your bedroom a special sanctuary, a place of refuge that will promote deep sleep, deep thinking and even deeper dreaming. Use as many shades of blue and green, heavenly and healing colors respectively, as you can all around this space to soothe the soul and heal the spirit. Studies and research have shown that using these two hues, blues and greens, bring balance and beauty to your sleep time, your thoughts (think hospitals and other institutions of healing using the color green.) You do want these colors to be pale in nature though as big, bold primary colors don't lend themselves to this quiet and receptive state we're building in your room and in your mind.
2.Have some lush and healthy green plants in the bedroom as well as they not only offer life supporting and sustaining oxygen but will, as well, absorb the radiation stemming from any appliances or other electronics emitting electromagnetic frequencies (EMFs.)
3.At least once every year clear out everything under the bed and inside your overstuffed closet as well. Give clothes away that others might make better use of and create some great Karma with your de-cluttering. While you're at it, move your bed completely, vacuum under and all around it and then return it the same space but leave it a quarter inch off to the right or to the left. This will shake things up enough that tons of new opportunities will come flying your way. Sweet dreams indeed.
Enacting any or all of these solid suggestions will help to resolve conflicts and bring health and harmony to your house and home while helping to reflect that same shift in your subconscious and in your psyche. Examine right relationships in your life and take responsibility for your thoughts and actions. Don't gossip and wish everyone else well. Bless them unconditionally and then you will be, as another messenger who died too young once said, "the change you want to see in this world." The one that Dr. King should have lived to see as well. We can honor his memory during these January days by bringing peace to our own lives. Let there be peace on Earth. And let it begin with you.